Sahel Sounds

This music was recorded during the filming of the documentary a story of Sahel Sounds be- tween November 2013 and October 2014.
The film provides an inside look at Christopher Kirkley’s project “Sahel Sounds” - a blog, record label and platform to explore arts and music of the Sahel region through non-tradi- tional ethnographic fieldwork.

These twelve astonishing tracks are drawn from a broad spectrum of early 70s West African psychedelic classics. Yet the fact that they scarcely registered on the Richter scale of contemporary underground music must surely be one of the greatest ironies of modern popular music, given that western counterculture drew so heavily on the musical, aesthetic and visual traditions of Africa.

“It’s time. Africa, it’s time. It’s time that Africa changes. It’s time our leaders change. Everything that happens in Africa is extraordinary. We have everything: water, earth, sun, fields of oil, gas. We have all this in Africa, but Africa is still poor. It’s time we change our way of thinking. It’s time for Africans to take their destiny into their own hands. If not, others will take it.”

“It’s time. Africa, it’s time. It’s time that Africa changes. It’s time our leaders change. Everything that happens in Africa is extraordinary. We have everything: water, earth, sun, fields of oil, gas. We have all this in Africa, but Africa is still poor. It’s time we change our way of thinking. It’s time for Africans to take their destiny into their own hands. If not, others will take it.”

“It’s time. Africa, it’s time. It’s time that Africa changes. It’s time our leaders change. Everything that happens in Africa is extraordinary. We have everything: water, earth, sun, fields of oil, gas. We have all this in Africa, but Africa is still poor. It’s time we change our way of thinking. It’s time for Africans to take their destiny into their own hands. If not, others will take it.”

In the past decade, there has been an explosion of ethnically Tuareg rock bands on the world music stage. Built around the electric guitar, the genre ranges from stripped down minimalist nostalgia filled ballads to distortion heavy tracks for dancing. Known collectively in the West as “desert blues” for it’s pentatonic scales and finger styles that recall Americana, in the Sahara it’s simply known as “guitar.”

First heard by global audiences on Sahel Sounds’ Music from Saharan WhatsApp series, Malian guitar hero Bounaly (the stage name of Ali "Bounaly" Traore) makes his full-length debut with “Dimanche à Bamako” (“Sunday in Bamako”). Recorded live on location, the music on "Dimanche à Bamako" is a mix of regional favorites, traditional standards, and originals. Long songs with looping rhythms, pounding kick drums, and electric shredding guitars, punctuated by shout-outs to the guests of honor. A raw and frenetic take on Northern Mali desert sound, playing for the diaspora at a Bamako wedding.

Avant-garde cosmic sounds from Senegal, “Yaral Sa Doom” is a groundbreaking album spanning borders and musical scenes. Inspired from West African tradition, Sufi praise songs, spiritual jazz, and dub rhythms, the effect is a genre defying entry in outernational sound. Hypnotic percussion loops across sweeping pads, call and response chants echoes layer over electronic beats, and children’s voices sing out to recordings of crashing waves.

Wau Wau Collectif’s second album, Mariage, is instilled with a newfound sense of purpose. Expanding upon the inspirational themes of their acclaimed 2021 debut, Yaral Sa Doom (Educate The Young), this long-distance collaboration from musicians in Senegal, led by Aurora Kane, and Sweden’s Karl Jonas Winqvist is an even more stylistically expansive affair. Joyful children’s songs collide with fuzzy guitar solos and thumping hip-hop beats.