It was hot outside and I was tired and had to go to the bathroom. We had just come from dinner at Agave in downtown Lafayette and it was packed. All of downtown was packed for the Festival International. Wildly overpriced street vendors crowded the streets, selling hummus, shrimp etoufee and bad quality jewelry. We had to pass through this bottleneck to get to the international stage, where all the good bands had been playing. It was called the “drum circle”, but there were zero drums there. Instead it was a lot of kids with fresh chest tattoos and strong opinions. We lost Joe and Haley in this bottleneck, somewhere in the haze of the vaporizers, and decided to go on without them. Bombino had started 5 minutes ago and he was supposed to be good.  
          He spoke little English, but he didn’t really need to. His guitar did the talking for him. It’s hard to “genrify” his sound, somewhere between the blues and ancient desert earthiness. I didn’t understand a word of what he was saying but everyone in that crowd knew what he was trying to communicate. He was born in Niger 34 years ago into a a nomadic group known as the Tuaregs. Growing up in an incredibly turbulent atmosphere, Bombino manages to weave the tension and conflict into an incredibly complete and thorough sound. In 2013 he released a fantastic album, “Nomad”, out of Dan Auerbach’s studio, and you can see why Auerbach got involved. His sound is reminiscent of the “old” style of harsh and loud rock guitar, a sound being preserved and developed by the likes of Annie Clark and Jack White. The set also began with an entrancing acoustic set of songs, drawn from his second album, ”Agadez”. If you are reading this article right now, do youself a favor and look him up. You’ll enjoy it.