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Four men wearing blue outfits and white headscarves, three holding a guitar and one holding a drum cymbal.

Etran de L’Aïr

6 March 2025

In the Utzon Room

Contemporary Music

Legendary Nigerien four piece Etran de L’Aïr make their way to Australia for the very first time, performing their hypnotic Saharan blues rock and unstoppable party grooves in the Utzon Room.

Ferocious danceability, no-nonsense Saharan groove.

MOJO

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Saharan blues and desert grooves from Tuareg legends

Nigerien band Etran de lAïr are bonafide legends in their native city of Agadez, the Saharan trading hub where they formed way back in the early 1990s. Now, with their latest album 100% Sahara Guitar generating buzz worldwide, the desert rockers are set to head down under for their very first Australian shows, making their Sydney Opera House debut in the Utzon Room.

Hailing from the nomadic Tuareg tribe in the high Sahara desert, the Nigerien quartet – whose name translates to “stars of the Aïr region” – make music rooted in the exuberance and celebration of Agadez weddings, all hypnotic guitar solos and sun-scorched melodies designed for the dance-floor. The band – three brothers on guitar and bass, a close family friend on drums – play a pan-African style that brings together sounds as diverse as Northern Malian blues, Hausa bar bands and Congolese Soukous.

The band attracted global attention with their first record, 2018’s No. 1, which the New Yorker – calling it “giddy and mesmeric rock” – named as their album of 2020. Their latest – 2024’s swaggering 100% Sahara Guitar – blends call-and-response vocals with galloping rhythms that feel at once Arabic and African, with hints of both California surf and a Middle Eastern bazaar.

Endless grooves that stretch as far and wide as the desert itself.

Presented by Sydney Opera House

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