These are two covers of songs by the incredible contemporary Nigerien musician, Mdou Moctar. His tracks reached western audiences thanks to the hard work of Sahel Sounds Records, which discovered his music being traded on cellphone SIM cards in Saharan Africa. This fast, economical, and populist means of file-sharing is a major kind of information transfer in western Africa, where personal computers are rare, and vinyl records don't stand up to the heat of the sun.

We took several liberties in our re-interpretation of these tracks, and gave them our own flavor. Most notably, we rewrote the lyrics, as we have no idea what Moctar is singing about whatsoever. Adam listened to Moctar's vocals and translated them phonetically (i.e. wrote English lyrics that most closely resembled the sound of the original words). We kept, however, the definitive auto-tuning...

To hear Mdou's orignal tracks, or check out more great Saharan Cellphone music, go to Sahel Sounds.
sahelsounds.com