Mdou Moctar - Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai with a little Purple Rain mixed in

Purple Rain

• Prince himself was famously shy of interviews, but here’s The Revolution talking about Purple Rain…

If you’re curious, here’s the full story, but it does go on for two hours.

Rain the Colour of Blue with A Little Red In It

• Here's a Link to the compilation that Launched Mdou Moctar

• ...and here's one to Tom's specially curated playlist!

To quote the website “Music from Saharan cellphones is a compilation of music collected from memory cards of cellular phones in the Saharan desert.

In much of West Africa, cellphones are are used as all purpose multimedia devices. In lieu of personal computers and high speed internet, the knockoff cellphones house portable music collections, playback songs on tinny built in speakers, and swap files in a very literal peer to peer Bluetooth wireless transfer.

The songs chosen for the compilation were some of the highlights -- music that is immensely popular on the unofficial mp3/cellphone network from Abidjan to Bamako to Algiers, but have limited or no commercial release. They're also songs that tend towards this new world of self production -- Fruity Loops, home studios, synthesizers, and Autotune.”

• Where is the Sahel anyway? This article gives a brief but exhaustive overview of the history and current political situation in the area.

Mdou Moctar sampler playlist

Mdou Moctar sampler playlist on YouTube selected by Tom. Nine songs to click through.

Acknowledgement

Thank you, Christopher Kirkley, of Sahel Sounds for giving us access to the movie!

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