Go to Timbuktu, then keep travelling, and, in the middle of the desert, you might stumble across the world's most remote music festival, complete with bodhráns and uilleann pipes. The photographers Yvette Monahanand Sean Breithauptwere there
"What is your final destination?" asks the check-in clerk at Dublin Airport. "Timbuktu," I reply. She shoots me a look, as if to say this could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. "It's true," I say, pointing to the visa for Mali in my passport. It takes Sean and me 20 more hours to reach Bamako, the country's capital, and another two weeks of intermittent travelling before we see the city that has become a byword for inaccessibility and mystery. Even then we will have to travel for four more hours to reach Essakane, an oasis that hosts what is billed as "the most remote music festival in the world", which we have come to photograph.
The Festival au Desert is a three-day Afro-pop powwow held by the Tuareg, the "blue people" of the Sahara, who gained their power by trading salt, gold and slaves across the desert. They are feared for their banditry and have been known to kidnap tourists. They also have a 4x4 named after them - a legend before birth, according to Volkswagen.
Festivals have always been part of their nomadic lifestyle, organised to discuss ideas, make policy, race camels and play music. The Festival au Desert is something new, and is open to everyone, including westerners such as us. Tradition still rules during the day, but, after the sun goes down, the jamboree turns into an open-air pop concert, complete with stage, lights and six- metre-high speaker stacks.
In 2003 Robert Plant played a set of North African-tinged blues, finishing with Whole Lotta Love, which apparently left many Tuareg awestruck. Damon Albarn based his album Mali Music on his experience at the 2004 festival. This year's event is a tribute to the king of Malian music, Ali Farka Toure, who died last March.
We leave Timbuktu at 5am, to get on to the sand before the sun softens it. The landscape is scrub, and the road is terrible. After two hours we reach a small sign by the side of the road that announces: "Festival du Desert: Essakane. 33KLm"
Thankfully, our driver, Moussa, is a master of Dakar Rally-style driving. He knows how to avoid sinking in the sand, a technique that involves deflating the tyres, putting your foot on the accelerator and flinging the steering wheel left and right to glide the car like a hovercraft across the sand. Fortunately, there is nothing in his path except for the odd camel and a few donkeys.
Descending, at last, to the festival gates, we are greeted by members of the Malian army and their Kalashnikov rifles. They do not have the press list yet, and they want us to wait at the gate for three hours. Moussa has other ideas, and, after a few shouting exchanges, we are ushered through.
Inside the site the sand looks white and pure. Restaurants and bars operate out of tents with cooler boxes and a few chairs. Beautifully dressed Tuareg pass by on ornately decorated camels. Among the dunes stands a sand-coloured tented city, including a collection of tents marked by some cardboard signs with "press" scrawled on them.
Our tent is a bit cramped, as we are sharing it with an Italian film crew and a German journalist. We decide to set up our own tent closer to the musicians, beside Liam Ó Maonlaí, of Hothouse Flowers, and Paddy Keenan, the uilleann piper, who are in their second year at the festival.
They are billed on the festival schedule, their names a little incongruous, between mainly Malian and Tuareg performers. Musically, they fit the bill perfectly, as Keenan's pipes and Ó Maonlaí's harp have local cousins - although it is odd, when they are being tuned during the day, to hear their familiar sounds in the desert.
It is a challenging environment: the sand, the heat of the day, the cold of the night, the lack of shade and the trade-conscious Tuareg. Minutes after arriving I lose a pair of flip-flops in a particularly soft dune. We use our 4x4 as a shelter where we can clean sand from our cameras. It is a pleasant respite from the heat as we drink strong, sweet, black tea with Moussa and his friends, who fill the boot and listen to Farka Toure tapes.
Everyone - musicians, visitors and Tuareg - wears turbans for protection from the blowing sand and the midday heat, which can reach 40 degrees. Even the bread here gets gritty, as sand blows into the ovens as it is baking. It is surprisingly tasty, though, with some Laughing Cow cheese and a cup of Nescafé in the mornings. Turbans also hide the lack of grooming that is common after a short time in the Sahara.
With their strong features and beautiful dress - unusually, the men wear veils but the women do not - the Tuareg are wonderful subjects for portraits. Each picture has to be paid for with a "present", however - usually a promise to go for a camel ride or to express interest in their wares. Tuareg traders are keen that visitors do not return home without an ebony-and-camel-tooth letter opener. Given that many of them have trekked 200km on camels, navigating by the stars, to be here for this three-day sales opportunity, their determination is understandable.
In fact, everything is for sale. One Canadian broadcaster decides that some camel sounds will make a good backdrop for her radio programme. She sits near a Tuareg and his camel and asks if she can record the snorts and groans. After five minutes she thanks him. He tells her that will be 5,000 CFAs, or about €7.50. I meet another musician who was offered two women for his evening's entertainment, for substantially more than the camel grunts.
During the day impromptu gigs begin among the many musicians, professional and amateur, who have travelled here; this is a highlight of the festival.
On the second afternoon we happen upon a session by Tinariwen, a Tuareg rebel group. A Spanish film crew wants some footage, so the band sets up camp beneath a tree, which provides perfect shade from the unrelenting sun. They hook up their amps to a car battery and play for several hours, their sound mixing blues, reggae and traditional Tuareg music. A journalist from Mojo magazine says that he has been following Tinariwen around the desert for a week and that they are going to be huge.
When Mali regained its full independence from France, in 1960, the Tuareg were repressed. Many of the rebel factions were recruited to fight in the Libyan army. The members of Tinariwen met in Col Muammar Gadafy's training camps, where they were exposed to the music of John Lee Hooker and Bob Marley. They were guerrillas until a peace treaty was signed in 1996, allowing them to become full-time musicians. With faces that show signs of struggle and lyrics that document their crusade, they sing the blues of Africa.
As twilight approaches we head over to the stage. The sun has cooled, the moon has risen and the stars seem within reaching distance. The best seats are long gone, but the dunes create an auditorium that carries the sound around the crowd. I give up trying to track who, exactly, is playing - there are never fewer than a dozen people on stage; I count 20 at one point during the Ali Farka Toure tribute.
Oumou Sangare, the queen of Malian music, sings in true diva fashion. Tartit, an all-female Tuareg group, dance in a sinuous, trance-like way to syncopated claps and vocals.
Liam Ó Maonlaí and Paddy Keenan play up a storm. Afel Bocoum, who is Farka Toure's musical heir (and who made Mali Music with Albarn), gives a fiery performance. Raynald Colom, a Spanish trumpeter, gets the crowd pulsing with T3 Project, his band. Tinariwen steal the show.
The 4,000 Tuareg and 800 westerners blend together in the dark. When the rhythm intensifies, the crowd gets to its feet and becomes an excited throng.
If it all gets too much you can retreat to the rise of the next dune, where tubes of steel mesh filled with coal provide light, warmth and, for some, a setting for romance.
Lying on the dunes beneath the stars, you can push your bare feet into the sand and, to the distant grunt of camels, listen to some of the greatest music on earth.
See www.festival-au-desert.org