SIM Cards from Northern Mali

Podcast

Christopher Kirkley offers on his MP3-blog Sahelsounds a great variety of music from Northern Mali. He frequently visited the city of Kidal where today French, Malian and African troops are trying to push back Islamist rebels, and where musicians recently were forbidden to perform music. Kirkley collected music that people in this region listen to and share on their mobile phones, and he recorded singers and musicians. He challenges outdated concepts of ethnographic fieldrecording and documentation. And he offers a wild mix of autotuned DIY-pop and unplugged music. Enjoy our first podcast in the new norient series on MP3-blogging.

Film

Trailer for I Sing the Desert Electric, a short film of electronic based musical phenomena occurring from Mauritania to Northern Nigeria. A film by Christopher Kirkley.

Albums

«From dreamy Niger guitar ballads, Bamako club juke, to hi energy Moroccan child Raï – with a focus on the Autotuned DIY creations circulating the desert.» Sahelsounds produced severall albums. Buy downloads online, and/or order vinly. Support the musicians of Northern Mali in buying the album Songs for the North Country!

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Cover-Art

Art

The Portland Museum of Modern Art showed Christopher Kirkley‘s exhibition «Azawad Libre! New Media and Imagined Geographies in the Sahel», from November 18th to December 15th 2012. Kirkley exhibits his travels in this multimedia showcase, exploring a flourishing intersection of folk art, computers, and cell phones through the Sahel, and the political implications of these new forms of expression. Kirkley uses these words to describe the exhibition: «Examining the rich content of the digital artifacts which circulate through the networks of the Sahel, Azwad Libre! considers not only the roles of new media and democratization of creative tools, but the beauty of uninhibited inspiration.»

Biography

Dr. Thomas Burkhalter is an anthropologist/ethnomusicologist, AV-artist, and writer from Bern (Switzerland). He is the founder and director of Norient and the Norient Festival (NF), co-directed AV-performances and documentary films (e.g. «Contradict», Berner Filmpreis 2020 + Al-Jazeera Witness), and is the author and co-editor of several books (e.g., «Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut», Routledge, «The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East», Wesleyan University Press). He teaches regularly at universities, and runs workshops for arts institutions. Since 2022 he produces the Norient Mixtape for Swiss National Radio SRF3. Currently, he is working on his new music duo «Melodies In My Head», and on the podcast series «Long Take: Life as an Artist». Follow him on Instagram, Research Gate, Academia.edu, Bandcamp, Spotify, or Meta.

Published on February 12, 2013

Last updated on May 01, 2024

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The World at 78 RPM

Podcast

by Thomas Burkhalter

Jonathan Ward runs the blog Excavated Shellac, where he uploads rare 78 rpm records. Plus he compiled the 4-CD Box Opika Pende – Africa At 78 RPM, Grammy nominee for best historical album of 2012. In this Norient podcast Ward talks about his fascination with shellac, how bloggers and ethnomusicologists don’t meet, and a typical phenomena: «Blogger fatigue».

Picture from the 4-CD Box «Opika Pende» (Dust-to-Digital)

Quotes from the Podcast

«Let’s face it, there is a narcissistic element to blogging, maybe not narcissistic but egotistic. You are posting things online where you are saying ‘hey I have this, it’s really rare and you don’t’ (…) I have the collector bug too. But I also try to counter that by actually doing some real research on this material and not just saying ‘hey it is a rare record, here you go.’»

Jonathan Ward, 2013

«Early 78 RPM recording is a very narrow scope. In the grand scheme of music, in the grand scheme of recorded sound it is giant scope. I think most people need someone to tell them that this music is interesting, because otherwise it just seems old.»

Jonathan Ward, 2013

«You never really own a record, you just rent it.»

Jonathan Ward, 2013

«There is something called blogger fatigue, which usually happens after a couple of years, where the blog disappears, or the person does not post as much or just kind of says ‘I am done. I uploaded all this music, I got to stop.’»

Jonathan Ward, 2013

Playlist Podcast

Four Sounds – Imbishi Mbishi (South Africa)

The Bells of Kloster Einsiedeln (Switzerland)

Muhyiddin Bayun – Taxim Alal Wahidat (Lebanon)

Grupo da Guarda Velha – A Tua Vida É Um Segredo (Brazil)
Kosta Šarćanski-Koča – Bačvansko Kolo (Serbia)
Flying Jazz Queens – Siyahamba (South Africa)
The Bells of Kloster Einsiedeln (Switzerland)
Mahieddine Bachtarzi – Mestakhbar Mezmoum (Algeria)
Four Sounds – Imbishi Mbishi (South Africa)
Muhyiddin Bayun – Taxim Alal Wahidat (Lebanon)
Algrouane – Pt. 2 (Burkina Faso, Mali)
Chanson de Dyahadi – Pt. 2 (Niger)
Wilson Makawa and his Guitar – Bambo Siyaya (Malawi)
Kiko Kids – Tom Tom (East Africa)
Chanteurs a la Croix de Cuivre – Batata dia Bwanga (Congo)
Sekinomu – Kayanda (Uganda)
O.S. Africa Jazz Onema Pascal – Furaha Ya Kanu (Kenya)

4-CD-Box Opika Pende

From the Introduction to Opika Pende:

It is truly astonishing to consider the tremendous variety of music that was pressed to shellac discs on the continent of Africa. Popular songs, topical songs, work songs, comic songs, songs of worship, ritual, dance, and praise—the sheer range of musical styles resists any easy categorization. Further, African geography itself resists boundaries. The boundaries of cultures and languages are often far more complex than political boundaries. Complicating things further, entire countries seem to have been skipped over by both commercial 78 rpm record companies and ethnographers during the 78 rpm era. No doubt it was the same with many cultures. But that doesn’t mean that 78s weren’t everywhere, even in remote parts of the continent. By the mid-1960s, 78s were still a popular if not preferred medium in much of Africa, as a significant amount of the population still used wind-up gramophone players.

I have created this compilation with one simple goal in mind: to showcase a diverse amount of long-forgotten music from Africa that transports me as a listener. It is one person’s offering of music that is wholly unavailable except in its original elusive and fragile format. While it is not definitive, nor am I attempting to construct or invent a narrative, there are important connections to be made. Around one musical corner is another corner, and another. Within these 100 tracks, traditional music stands side by side with popular music as traditional culture coexists with so-called modernity. As a non-African, I offer this set as an example of the riches that lay in waiting when considering the tens of thousands of phenomenal African 78 rpm discs that were issued, played, dispersed, and in large part, forgotten.

«Opika Pende», is a saying in the Lingala language that means «be strong» or «stand firm». It can also mean «resist». — Jonathan Ward, 2011