The mixtape of Music from Saharan Cellphones has been made into two vinyl records, but the momentum continues and two of the featured artists now have full lengths of their own. Afelan by Mdou Moctar Mdou Moctar, known for his autotuned anthems - the Hausa film interpretations of Tuareg guitar…
March 2012. We find serene lodging in the Mabera section of Sokoto, not far from the place where the two foreigners were executed in a botched rescue just a week prior - a slight stain on an otherwise spotless city. Unsurprisingly, few people mention it, either suspecting we know, and…
Bollywood, the multimillion-dollar industry of Hindi film, has a presence in the most far-flung corners of the world. The prodigious output of musical film is second perhaps only to martial arts (more on this later). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the North of Nigeria, where audiences are not…
In West Africa, as mentioned every so often here, cellphones are far more important than television in media diffusion and consumption. Videos are traded, like sound - from short comedic clips to full-length movies. But amongst the plethora of video, nothing stands out like the remix. Using pre-existing sequences, new…
. Music from Saharan Cellphones: Volume 2 is finally on vinyl! The album draws from material from both of the first two cassettes - from hi-energy Moroccan Raï, desert ishumar guitar, Sonrai rap from Northern Mali, to yet to be named genres like "Tuareg Autotune". Production of the release was…
