These are two covers of songs by the incredible 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 northern Africa.

We took several liberties in our re-interpretation of these tracks, and gave them our own sound and flavor.  Most notably, we rewrote the lyrics, as we have no idea what Moctar is singing about whatsoever.  So we listened to his vocals and translated them phonetically (i.e. wrote English lyrics that most closely resembled the original words and sounds).  We kept, however, the auto-tuning...

Both original songs are also included here.
http://sahelsounds.com/

The Devil Cannot Wait

BRAINSTORMtheband

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