We are excited to welcome you to the Snow Fork Event Center (home of the Nelsonville Music Festival) this May as we present Etran de L'Aïr, sponsored by OHIO LIVE.

MAY 7TH UPDATE: Due to all the recent rain, this show is moving from our Creekside Stage to a much drier location: a tent where the Nelsonville Music Festival’s Main Stage is set up every year. If you’ve been to NMF at Snow Fork Event Center, you’ll know the spot! We’ll also have signage and folks directing you to parking and admissions, so no worries if this is your first time at Snow Fork. 

Thanks for rolling with the punches and embracing the adventure that is springtime in Ohio!

ABOUT ETRAN DE L’AïR

Etran de L’Aïr (or “stars of the Aïr region”) welcomes you to Agadez, the capital city of Saharan rock. Playing for over 25 years, Etran has emerged as stars of the local wedding circuit. Beloved for their dynamic repertoire of hypnotic solos and sun-schlazed melodies, Etran stakes out a place for Agadez guitar music. Playing a sound that invokes the desert metropolis, “Agadez” celebrates the sounds and dynamism of a hometown wedding.

Etran is a family band composed of brothers and cousins, all born and raised in the small neighborhood of Abalane, just in the shadow of the grand mosque. Sons of nomadic families that settled here in the 1970s fleeing droughts, they grew up in Agadez. The band formed in 1995 when current leader Moussa “Abindi” Ibra was only 9 years old. “We only had one acoustic guitar,” he explains, “and for percussion, we hit a calabash with a sandal.” Over decades, they pieced together gear and built an audience by playing everywhere. “We walked to gigs by foot, lugging equipment 25 kilometers into the bush to play for free…there’s nowhere in Agadez we haven’t played.”

From its days as a Trans-Saharan caravan hub to its modern role as a stopover for Europe-bound migrants, Agadez is where people and ideas converge. It’s here that one of the most ambitious Tuareg guitar styles has taken hold—marked by frenetic electric solos, staccato drums, and flamboyant dancing guitarists. Guitar bands are integral to the social fabric, playing weddings, baptisms, and political rallies.

While other Tuareg guitarists look to Western rock, Etran de L’Aïr plays a pan-African style emblematic of their hometown, drawing on influences like Northern Malian blues, Hausa bar bands, and Congolese Soukous. This diversity makes them beloved by all in Agadez. “We play for the Tuareg, Toubou, Zarma, Hausa,” Abindi says. “When you invite us, we come.” Their music invokes the exuberance of an Agadez wedding with an abundance of guitars—simultaneous solos passing over one another with precision and force.

Recorded at home in Agadez with a mobile studio, their album Agadez stays close to their roots. Tracks like Tchingolene (“Tradition”) modernize takamba rhythms on guitars; Toubouk Ine Chihoussay (“The Flower of Beauty”) features call-and-response lyrics and dancing solos; while Imouwizla (“Migrants”) addresses immigration with driving marches paralleling nomads’ struggles with those crossing deserts for Europe. Even at its most serious, Etran’s music remains dynamic and celebratory—a reminder that music can deliver a message while lighting up a dance floor.