Sometimes an artist will reach out of the past to grab you, shake you free of your normal listening routine and wake you up to a much wider world. I remember back in the 80s when Paul Simon’s Graceland came out that my friends were over the moon at the discovery of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, which in turn led to discovering the rich desert blues of African artists like Ali Farka Touré, Fela Kuti, Tinariwen, and others. That discovery and exploration has exploded over the last few years, and when my friends turned me on to Abdallah Oumbadougou it was another gravity-defying moment. I would normally hesitate to put a compilation up in my list of the best albums of 2024, but AMGHAR – The Godfather of Tuareg Music, Vol.1 is so good, so fresh and intoxicating that I had no choice. As the first retrospective of Oumbadougou’s work, it’s an essential album for anyone looking to explore ishumar, the specific desert blues style that originated and proliferated in the Sahara.