Gig review: Khaira Arby

THE phrase "Malian music legend" on posters for this show perhaps unsurprisingly failed to inspire a particularly large crowd to take a look – even world music aficionados would struggle to name one performer from the West African nation beyond Ali Farka Tour, and Khaira Arby happens to be the late bluesman's cousin.

But however slowly, with the release of her first international album Timbuktu Tarab, the Tuareg tribeswoman's music is enjoying crossover success in the US and UK (she arrived in Glasgow having performed at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival at the weekend), as much for the inspiring story of cultural boundary-breaking it embodies as the fact that it's danceable stuff.

As a young girl, Arby was forbidden to sing by her father in a society where music is mainly a man's game. But she defied him, and has become something of a superstar at home. Dressed in a billowing patterned dress of brilliant sky-blue and bronze and flanked by a similarly colourfully attired four-piece electric band, her spiky, snaking jams – given a deliriously psychedelic edge by her two guitarists' frenzied solos – were a thing of unbridled joy.

It was impossible to tell what Arby was singing about in a mixture of Arabic, Songhai, Tamashek and Bambara, but whatever her message, she belted it out with diva-ish majesty and attitude. Attempts to communicate with the crowd in French faltered, but an apparent invitation for more dancing was steadily accepted. "Encore?" Arby pondered as the crowd roared their approval when the band tried to leave, finally finding a word everybody understood. "Encore!"