| Music from Saharan Cellphones | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Compilation album by Various Artists | |
| Released | December 2, 2011 |
| Genre | |
| Language | French, Arabic |
| Label | Sahel Sounds |
Music from Saharan Cellphones is a compilation album released by Sahel Sounds of different songs by various musicians from Western and Sub-Saharan Africa. [5]
Music from Saharan Cellphones contains an assortment of different songs by various African musicians from Algeria, Niger, Mauritania, Nigeria, Morocco, Mali and the Ivory Coast. [6] Despite their popularity within the region, the tracks which appear on the album achieved little or no commercial release outside the Sahara. [1] [4] [7]
The album was initiated by Sahel Sounds, a Portland-based record label founded in 2009 that specializes in music from the southern part of the Sahara desert. As a way to accurately unveil songs popular amongst local West African residents to audiences abroad, the music was digitally extracted off cellular phone memory cards containing stored .mp3 files known to circulate the area via peer-to-peer bluetooth file sharing. In the process of the album's production, Sahel Sounds tracked down each of the featured composers in order to obtain proper permissions and pay them for using their music. Christopher Kirkley, the founder of Sahel Sounds and producer of the album reported that the artists on Music from Saharan Cellphones were given 60% of its proceed sales. [8] [9]
Music from Saharan Cellphones showcases a diverse mixture of different contemporary African musical styles prevalent across the Sahara. [10]
The featured artists consist of both individual musicians and musical ensembles alike. Songs on the album are exclusively sung in either Arabic and African French depending on the specific song. Some of these singers make use of the Auto-Tune effect and some vocally perform by rapping while others resort to a traditional singing style. [11]
| No. | Title | Artist | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Tinariwen" | Group Anmataff | 6:16 |
| 2. | "Abandé" | Yeli Fuzzo | 3:31 |
| 3. | "Alghafiat" | Amanar | 6:37 |
| 4. | "Guetna" | Negib Ould Ngainich | 1:14 |
| 5. | "Yereyira" | Papito (featuring Iba One) | 4:48 |
| 6. | "Tahoultine" | Mdou Moctar | 5:37 |
| 7. | "Moribiyassa" | Kaba Blon | 3:40 |
| 8. | "Faroter" | Joskar & Flamzy | 5:27 |
| 9. | "Aicha" | Bayta Ag Bay | 6:08 |
Music from Saharan Cellphones was followed up by a second compilation album of the same concept, Music from Saharan Cellphones: Volume 2 - released in 2013. [12] The record label furthered the style on the 2022 compilation album Music from Saharan WhatsApp. [13] [14]
The song "Yereyira" was sampled by experimental hip hop trio Death Grips for the song "Get Got" from their 2012 album The Money Store . [15] [16] [17]
Mali is a landlocked nation in West Africa, located southwest of Algeria, extending south-west from the southern Sahara Desert through the Sahel to the Sudanian savanna zone. Mali's size is 1,240,192 square kilometers.
The Sahel region or Sahelian acacia savanna is a biogeographical region in Africa. It is the transition zone between the more humid Sudanian savannas to its south and the drier Sahara to the north. The Sahel has a hot semi-arid climate and stretches across the southernmost latitudes of North Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea. Although geographically located in the tropics, the Sahel does not have a tropical climate.
The Tuareg people are a large Berber ethnic group that principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern Algeria, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. Traditionally nomadic pastoralists, small groups of Tuareg are also found in northern Nigeria.
The Sahara is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of 9,200,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi), it is the largest hot desert in the world and the third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Arctic.
Tinariwen is a collective of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara region of northern Mali. Considered pioneers of desert blues, the group's guitar-driven style combines traditional Tuareg and African music with Western rock music. They have released nine albums since their formation and have toured internationally.
Trans-Saharan trade is trade between sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa that requires travel across the Sahara. Though this trade began in prehistoric times, the peak of trade extended from the 8th century until the early 17th century CE. The Sahara once had a different climate and environment. In Libya and Algeria, from at least 7000 BCE, pastoralism, large settlements and pottery were present. Cattle were introduced to the Central Sahara (Ahaggar) between 4000 to 3500 BCE. Remarkable rock paintings in arid regions portray flora and fauna that are not present in the modern desert.
The Mandé peoples are an ethnolinguistic grouping of native African ethnic groups who speak Mande languages. Various Mandé-speaking ethnic groups are found particularly in the western regions of West Africa. The Mandé languages are divided into two primary groups: East Mandé and West Mandé.
The Great Green Wall or Great Green Wall of the Sahara and the Sahel is a project adopted by the African Union in 2007, initially conceived as a way to combat desertification in the Sahel region and hold back expansion of the Sahara desert, by planting a wall of trees stretching across the entire Sahel from Djibouti, Djibouti to Dakar, Senegal. The original dimensions of the "wall" were to be 15 km wide and 7,775 km long, but the program expanded to encompass nations in both northern and western Africa. The concept evolved into promoting water harvesting techniques, greenery protection and improving indigenous land use techniques, aimed at creating a mosaic of green and productive landscapes across North Africa. Later it adopted the view that desert boundaries change based on rainfall variations.
Sublime Frequencies is a record label based in Seattle, Washington that focuses exclusively on "acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers," mostly from Southeast Asia, North Africa and West Africa and the Middle East.
Operation Juniper Shield, formerly known as Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara (OEF-TS), is the military operation conducted by the United States and partner nations in the Saharan and Sahel regions of Africa, consisting of counterterrorism efforts and policing of arms and drug trafficking across central Africa. It is part of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The other OEF mission in Africa is Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa (OEF-HOA).
The Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) is an interagency plan by the United States government, combining efforts by both civil and military agencies, "to combat terrorism in Trans-Saharan Africa. The military component of TSCTI comprises the U.S. efforts of Operation Enduring Freedom - Trans Sahara. The goal of TSCTI is to counter terrorist influences in the region and assist governments to better control their territory and to prevent huge tracts of largely deserted African territory from becoming a safe haven for terrorist groups." The first partner nations in the program included Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Nigeria and Tunisia. Current membership includes eleven African countries: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal. The goal of the alliance is not to fight in hot spots, but to provide preventive training and engagement with governments to help prevent the growth of terrorist organizations in the partner countries. Exercise Flintlock 2005, a joint military exercise first held in June 2005, was the first result of the new program.
The Trans-Sahara Highway or TAH 2, formally the Trans-Saharan Road Corridor (TSR), and also known as the African Unity Road, is a transnational infrastructure project to facilitate trade, transportation, and regional integration among six African countries: Algeria, Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Tunisia. It runs roughly 4,500 km north to south across the Sahara desert from Algiers, Algeria on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa to Lagos, Nigeria on the Atlantic coast of West Africa; subsequently, it is sometimes known as the Algiers–Lagos Highway or Lagos–Algiers Highway.
The Pan-Sahel Initiative, according to a November 7, 2002, by the Office of Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State, was "a State-led effort to assist Mali, Niger, Chad, and Mauritania in detecting and responding to suspicious movement of people and goods across and within their borders through training, equipment and cooperation. Its goals support two U.S. national security interests in Africa: waging the War on Terrorism and enhancing regional peace and security." It was in 2005 superseded by the larger-scope Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative, which in turn was incorporated into the United States Africa Command in 2008.
Tishoumaren or assouf, internationally known as desert blues, is a style of music from the Sahara region of northern and west Africa. Critics describe the music as a fusion of blues and rock music with Tuareg, Malian or North African music. Various other terms are used to describe it including desert rock, Saharan rock, Takamba, Mali blues, Tuareg rock or simply "guitar music". The style has been pioneered by Tuareg musicians in the Sahara region, particularly in Mali, Niger, Libya, Western Sahara, Algeria, Burkina Faso and others.
A large-scale, drought-induced famine occurred in Africa's Sahel region and many parts of the neighbouring Sénégal River Area from February to August 2010. It is one of many famines to have hit the region in recent times.
Mahamadou Souleymane, known professionally as Mdou Moctar, is a Tuareg songwriter and musician based in Agadez, Niger, who performs modern rock music inspired by Tuareg guitar music. His music first gained attention through a trading network of mobile phones and memory cards in West Africa. He sings in the Tamasheq language. Moctar's fourth album, Ilana: The Creator, released in 2019, was the first to feature a full band. He plays guitar in the takamba and assouf styles.
Sahel Sounds is an American record label, based in Portland, Oregon which specializes in music from the southern part of the Sahara desert.
The Algeria–Mauritania border is 460 km in length and runs from the tripoint with Western Sahara in the west to the tripoint with Mali in the east.
Ahmed Ag Kaedy is a Malian guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is the leader of the group Amanar de Kidal. Originally from Kidal, he is a member of the nomadic Tuareg people, whose distinct style of rhythm and use of the guitar is often referred to as Tishoumaren, or desert blues. He is one of the main characters in the 2016 documentary Mali Blues.
The wheel in Africa was used, to various extents, throughout the history of Africa. While it may have been common for Africans to manually carry their goods or use pack animals to transport economic goods in Africa, there was broad awareness, knowledge, and use of wheeled transports in Africa. However, the environment in some parts of tropical Africa, as well as alternative forms of travel and transport, such as via canoe and beasts of burden/riding animals, may have resulted in decreased use of animal-drawn wheeled transport in Africa. The wheel was also given other technical applications in Africa, such as a water wheel and a potter's wheel.