The Rough Guide To Desert Blues is a world music compilation album originally released in 2010.

This was first popularized in the West by Ali Farka Touré and has more recently been carried by a new wave of artists such as Tinariwen.

Robert Christgau called the compilation an "accessible variant" of the Rough Guide to the Music of the Sahara.

[7] Chris Nickson of AllMusic named it a "thorough introduction" to desert blues but called the Amadou & Mariam track "the odd one out", claiming it doesn't represent the genre.

Calling Tinariwen "the greatest band in the world right now, bar none", Maine explained that he'd long wondered whether similar acts were "ripping off" Tinariwen, and that the album had emphatically proven that they are "not simply mimicking" the band's success.