By Jimmy Buffett | Sept/Oct 08 | Features

Who Do You Love

A true story of music, magic, and a long night in the desert with Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley saved my life one night in Africa!

Now that I have your attention, I guess I better fill in a few blanks here. I apologize for the sensationalism of the opening line, but a headline like that seems to work in these times we live in. If it sounds like I am trying to embellish a story, well, isn’t that what writers do? I readily admit to a recurrent problem of moving unpredictably between fiction and fact. But if Bo Diddley didn’t actually save my life on a trip to the land of the desert blues, then he sure as hell saved my ass. So here’s the real story...

Last year, spurred on by Lawrence of Arabia–like descriptions of camel-riding bands of Tuareg nomads sporting Fender Telecasters, portable Peavey amps, and Kalashnikov machine guns and playing at a festival in the middle of the Sahara Desert, I signed on for a wild journey to the West African country of Mali with my good friend Tom Freston. For those not familiar with the likes of Toumani Diabaté, Salif Keita, Oumou Sangare, Mory Kanté, Ali Farka Touré, Tinariwen, or the Rail Band, the music of Mali is to Africa what the music of the Mississippi Delta is to America. It is fittingly referred to as the desert blues.

In preparing for the trip, I figured the first thing to do was find out where this festival was, as in latitude and longitude. I wanted it in my GPS in case we wound up lost in the Sahara (which did happen). I Googled “festival au desert” and up it popped like a ready piece of toast. The headline on the funky festival Web site immediately fueled my curiosity. It read: “Only four hours from Timbuktu.” It reminded me of all those Stuckey’s signs I used to see as a kid driving through Florida, but Timbuktu was literally and figuratively in the middle of nowhere. That made the idea of that stamp on my passport another reason to go to the Festival in the Desert.

The Whirlwind Tour

I wasn’t the only fly captured in Freston’s trap. He managed to convince a quartet of other adventurous souls to sign on. Our cluster of middle-aged white men consisted of MTV executive Bill Flanagan; Dr. Kino Bachellier (every expedition needs a doctor on it); Jonathan Brandstein, who’d done the same trip a year earlier by himself; and the legendary Chris Blackwell, who had brought Bob Marley to the attention of the entire planet. Blackwell was truly a man without borders, and he had traveled extensively through Africa long before we arrived on the scene.

We gathered for our journey on a beautiful Sunday morning at the airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and headed east across the Atlantic, stopping in the Cape Verde Islands for a few days and then flying on to Bamako, the capital of Mali. Little did I know that I was about to have an experience that still inspires me to this day. It would be impossible to compress such a life-changing adventure and a tribute to a rock and roll legend into the columns of this magazine, so I will save the whole story of my trip to Mali for another time. But here’s a road-itinerary version of the hours leading up to the place and time where Bo saves Jimmy’s ass in the Sahara:

Monday

9:00 p.m. Arrive in Bamako and meet Syndou Samagassi, our invaluable local guide.