Niamey by night
The bar is called The New’s. The blue and white painted walls encircle a courtyard of broken mosaic tile. The crowd pours back beer in amber bottles, men in tight fitted t-shirts and suit jackets...
View ArticleNiger Guitars Pt. 1
Mohamed Karzo – C’est La Vie Guitar music in Niger is curiously distant from its Malian cousins. Looking at a map of the Sahara and following the roads, it makes sense – though the two countries share...
View ArticleMammane and his Electronic Organ
Lost in a music archive in the capital of Niger was the first I heard of the legendary Mammane Sanni Abdoulaye. The space was overflowing with dusty CDs, cassettes, and Nagra reels, and hunkering down...
View ArticleNiger Guitars Pt. 2
Haïdara and Abdoulaye live with their friends in a compound on the fringes of Niamey, the capital of Niger. The two concrete buildings house perhaps thirty students who have come here to attend the...
View Articleon the regional variation of id3 tags in the western sahel
Bus field recording, Ansongo, Mali The first time I heard the music was (naturally) on a cellphone. It was March of 2012, and I left Gao in a rush as the Northern cities fell to the rebellion. I...
View Articlehama, electronic keyboard wizard
Recently in Niamey, I met up with Hama, keyboardist and electronic music composer (previously, more previously) A few months ago we released an EP of Hama’s recordings, a collaboration with Boomarm...
View ArticleMohamed Barky, synth from Niger
It’s been quiet around here lately as we’ve been doing this and that, but there’s still so much to share in the archives! Today’s tracks come from a mysterious cassette from Djadje, one of Niamey’s...
View Articletimia pt 2
Visiting Niamey, we lodge with the students from Timia. Our last sessions of recordings have made their way throughout the diaspora (previously). Haidara tells me they’ve been playing one of his songs...
View ArticleRadio Niger with a little distortion
http://sahelsounds.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/radio_niger.mp3 Happy 2017, and onto a new year. Stumbled across this beautiful piece of technology in Niamey last month. The masons were busy working...
View ArticleHauka, music for the spirits
Mamoudou Amadou Seini Lingo & Group – Song for Water Djinn Seini Lingo & Group – Captain Salama I come to Niamey looking for the supernatural. Fresh off speaking at a conference for the...
View Articlelost and found
On one of my visits to Niger, Mamman Sani gave me a box of cassette tapes. I digitized a few and promptly forgot about the rest. In the piles of media and recordings collected, they went from one...
View ArticleHama – Houmeissa
Houmeissa by Hama Hama, real name Mouhamadou Moussa, make some undeniably forward thinking music. He first started playing when he was gifted a Yamaha PSR-64, an interesting and now very hard to find...
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