• Filmstill: Oulaya’s Wedding (Hisham Mayet, Brittany Nugent, Cyrus Moussavi, USA, 2017).
    When Voyeurism Exceeds Exotism
    Commentary
    In the film «Oulaya's Wedding», one is thrown into the middle of a traditional wedding in the Western Sahara. But is the overwhelming proximity to the filmed Sahraoui culture able to bypass exoticism, asks the director and archivist Christopher Kirkley.
  • Challenging Ethnomusicology
    Quotation

    «I would challenge that definition of what an ethno-musicologist is anymore.»

  • Mammane Sanni Abdoulaye (photo: Christopher Kirkley)
    Mammane and His Electronic Organ
    Portrait
    Mammane Sanni Abdoulaye played the possibly first synth organ in Niger and recorded his only album in 1978. Christopher Kirkley from Sahelsounds not only found one of the rare copies in an archive in Niamey, he also found Mammane himself.
  • photo: Sahelsounds
    Music from Saharan Cellphones
    Mixtape
    A compilation of music collected from memory cards of cellular phones in the Saharan desert. And it’s coming to vinyl.