Mdou Moctar

Sahelsounds Mdou Moctar : Anar -digi/LP- (NI,2014)***°

I think it was about time to renew the Touareg guitar music, which had began to repeat itself a bit too often. Mdou Moctar had recorded a renewal in 2008. It was described as “Spaced out autotune from Niger. Tuareg guitar accompanied with loping drum machines and vocal plug ins, interpreted via the filter of Bollywood influenced Hausa pop.”.. It “was never officially released but widely distributed via the cellphone file sharing networks of the Sahara.” Hausa Pop is the movie-related pop music from Nigeria, as it can be heard on the compilation “Harafin So - Bollywood Inspired Film Music from Hausa Nigeria” (2013, see review), to which this fits well.

The album features a foundation of acoustic picking, enriched with an electronic rhythm box (but not all tracks), which fit with the usual handclap originating rhythms, mixed with some element of simple drumming, with vocoder-like voice leads and partial harmonies and sometimes responses. The voices have special effects of breaking here and then which all makes these voices attractive in an amplified guitar way. There definitely kept something hypnotic in the rhythmic flow, and the whole package works brilliantly well. The music is like an adaptation of Touareg songs and acoustic blues to Hausa Nigeria Pop. Here and there an additional keyboard arrangement is done. Very nice.