In the Sahara — spread across the countries of Mali, Niger, and Algeria — live a traditionally nomadic tribe known as the Tuareg. Maybe the easiest way to describe them is as desert Gypsies, because like Gypsies (also known as Roma), the Tuareg make fantastic music and suffer incredible discrimination.

"Toumast" is a documentary that focuses on the Tuareg band of the same name led by Moussa Ag Keyna and Aminatou Goumar, which is now based in France and signed to Real World Records. Like their better-known Tuareg-musician brethren Tinariwen, Toumast (which means "Identity") play what sounds like desert blues, based around dirty electric guitars, male-female vocal interplay, and traditional trance rhythms, but often with the addition of a rock band rhythm section on bass and drums.

As music, it's powerful enough, but the film reveals the songs' context, showing the culture of resistance from which they were born. Moussa himself was a guerrilla with an armed independence group until severe wounds took him out of action; the other three members of his original band were all killed in combat.