Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow caught up with Robert Plant one morning recently at the Festival in the Desert in Essakane, Mali (60 kilometers northwest of Timbuktu)as he was about to go meet with his guitarist Justin Adams about the songs they were putting together to perform at the Festival. Robert recalled fondly his own musical journeys from over 30 years ago when he and fellow Led Zeppelin rock star Jimmy Page visited Morocco.

Banning Eyre: Let's just hear the story of your discovery of West and North African music?

Robert Plant: Well, I haven't got long. Do you have a couple of days? When I was 21 I was in one of the most groundbreaking bands that was on the scene at the time (Led Zeppelin), and we were traveling to and playing in every country that was permissible to play in. We couldn't play South America, we couldn't play in the Soviet states or the eastern block. But we could play in Japan and on the way from Japan, Jimmy Page I stopped through Thailand and India. Eventually, by meeting people in these countries- travelers who were not musicians but who were going east and around- I was encouraged by a lot of people to come to Marrakech in Morocco. From 1971 to now, 32 years, I've been traveling in the south of Morocco where the Tuareg are quite prevalent, in a line along with Berber, or "Chleu," south of Marrakech down to Sagora, and the wall that was put up or the fence that Hassan the king erected...So, I was always exposed to this amazing timbre. It was a music that was, not haunting me, but it was reminding me constantly of my youth and my love of Son House and Charlie Patton. You know, when I was 14 or 15 I was in a very arty environment and I was constantly being encouraged by older guys who were always showing me this very archaic African music, which had become a commercial enterprise in America--Paramount Records, OK Records, the Race Records of the late 20's and early 30's, were kind of jolly ditties mixed with some real primal music. When I got to Gulmin, Tantan Tarfaya and into Southern Morocco, I heard the grandfather of this music. And I've been glued to it ever since, because it has none of the vanity. It has none of the conceptions of what music can represent to the Western mind, especially in this incredibly disposable time, musically. And so now, this is my reward for putting up with and having some very tight jeans in the 70's. How sad is that?

BE: I think it's great. I'm curious about when you say you sensed right away, having listened to Son House and Charlie Patton and stuff that was really turning you on in a big way then, that you felt you had discovered the grandfather of that music. What was it exactly about the music that made you feel that way?

RP: The singers like Tommy McKennan and Bukka White had this trance-like round when they played the guitar and it's so close to Bukka's "Jitter Bug Swing." How many generations is the difference between what we're hearing now and what was recorded by Alan Lomax in 1938-39 in Parchment Penitentiary in Mississippi? I don't know. I mean, I'm a music buff. I'm a collector. I'm a vinyl junkie and I love the blue note. The blue note is everything-- that dipped vocal when you don't expect it and it arrives out of nowhere and it's just like, what is that? Just "aaauuhhh." It's just gone. It just dips down there. You know, I don't care about countries. I don't care about nationalities. I just like that heavenly moment where I learn something.

BE: And you had had that experience earlier when you had discovered Charlie Patton and then it happened again. Was it unexpected when it happened to you? I mean it must have happened to you other places as well, but when it hit you with such force in Morocco, was that a shock to you?

RP: Justin Adams (guitarist in Robert Plant's band) was invited because he had played at the first Festival (of the Desert), the year before last, and he mentioned it a year ago when we were working on our last record together. And I said "If it's on then I'm coming." And so here we come.

RP: Yeah, it's called Strange Sensation: Dreamland. You'll hear the guimbri.

RP:The organization is phenomenal, the location is stupendous, but in real terms, where are we? I mean this is fantastic to find. But my impressions are that there is a lot gasoline being used here and this is an incredibly poor country. I think the political means to an end must far outweigh any of our musical flirtations. There is stuff going on here that we are not privy to. There are bonds and friendships being made, alliances of some kind or another, and the music is, for some of the intentions, it's probably just a soundtrack. So I don't know what the full picture of what this is all about. I'm a different kind of ambassador to the ones in the next air-conditioned tents.

RP: With Led Zeppelin, from the beginning to the end, we touched on the music of Morocco and India. And being English, I was surrounded by people of India and Pakistan from the beginning of time. So we were very aware of that and Jimmy Page's work and relationship with George Harrison from the Beatles and our links through Ravi Shankar with musicians in Bombay, we recorded some amazing stuff there in '71, it was always there in our hearts--"Kashmir" and songs that came out of the ether. We weren't following in anybody else's footsteps. We were just playing the way we felt. But to take an American or English audience into this, it's just… It has to have its own feet and its own legs. You also have to be careful that it doesn't just become a coffee table moment in Western culture because it's all very well listening to Tinariwen and saying this is amazing stuff. The trouble is, with the coarseness and the cynicism of the world which we arrived from, that it is just another book on the table. It's another disc to play to replace Mark Knopfler and Sting, but yet it has nothing to do with that at all. But that's the way it goes, I guess. Robert Johnson, that packaged CBS multi-CD, 40 years after he was murdered, got a gold disc. And that's not so bad. I mean, music is music and it should be spread around. We can't covet this. Everybody should be aware of this. But taking it to a Led Zeppelin audience in 1975, that was quite a painful place to be.

BE: You said you used to play tapes of that stuff before the shows. What was the audience reaction to that?

BE: The world has changed too in terms of that audience you're talking about, in terms of their openness. They have had such much exposure now and there is this growing fringe of people that do understand the difference between all these things.

BE:It's getting wider too.

SB: Any particular groups here that you've seen who have particularly moved you or that you liked?

SB:Tartit?

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