African blues band Etran de L’Aïr to rock Santa Fe's Tumbleroot Brewery

Etran de L’Aïr (“stars of the Aïr region”) are a four-piece rock band from Agadez, Niger, a West African city that has an estimated population approximately the size of Santa Fe County, situated in a high desert shrubland remarkably similar to our own.

They might feel right at home when they play Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery in Santa Fe on Tuesday, April 22. Even if there’s an unexpected dust storm, they’ll be prepared with their headscarves and bright blue robes — Tuareg garments designed for the desert winds.

Etran de L’Aïr started as a band-for-hire on the local Agadez wedding circuit over 25 years ago, when the current frontman, Moussa “Abindi” Ibra, was only 9 years old.

“It was difficult,” Ibra said. “We would walk to gigs by foot, lugging all our equipment, carrying a small PA and guitars on our backs, 25 kilometers into the bush.”

From those humble origins, Etran de L’Aïr have become global ambassadors for the tishoumaren sound, marketed internationally as “desert blues.” Mixing traditional Tuareg folk music with Malian electric blues and trance-inducing North African chaabi music — among other influences — tishoumaren is the music of rugged desert travelers. Its gritty, twangy, stripped-down sound is well adapted to any hardscrabble desert environment, bearing striking similarities to alt-country, Texas blues and Americana music. Played by the descendants of seminomadic Tuareg herders, whose fiercely independent lifestyle is as mythic in West Africa as that of the American cowboy here, tishoumaren music exudes the laid-back, rustic confidence of a people who won’t be fenced in.

But, at their heart, Etran de L’Aïr are a crowd-pleasing party band whose repertoire consists mostly of upbeat love songs tailor-made for wedding receptions. Their romantic take on the desert blues gets people up on their feet and dancing, and often keeps them dancing for hours on end.

“Toubouk Ine Chihoussay” (“The Flower of Beauty”), a fast-paced love ballad with call and response lyrics, is emblematic of their style. A catchy melody line is repeated relentlessly, like a chugging freight train, until the audience can’t help but move and sway to the rhythm. Like most of their songs, it’s sung in the Tamasheq language, but eventgoers don’t have to know the language to catch the vibe.

Good music has a way of cutting across linguistic and cultural divisions. And Etran de L’Aïr has always been about uniting people through music.

“We play for the Tuareg, the Toubou, the Zarma, the Hausa,” Ibra said. “When you invite us, we come and play.”

Etran de L’Aïr’s willingness to perform for every conceivable audience and to put their hearts into every concert they play is what’s allowed them to become such a successful wedding band in Niger. And it’s what makes them popular with audiences around the world today.

With parts of New Mexico having a landscape so similar to where Etran de L’Aïr is from, their pulsating desert blues songs acquire an added layer of meaning, like joyful messages from long-lost relatives delivered in a musical idiom that just might sound surprisingly familiar.

African blues band Etran de L’Aïr to rock Santa Fe's Tumbleroot Brewery