Sahel Sounds launches Autotune The World, a new label capturing world music in transition

Autotune The World is the new label from the excellent Sahel Sounds. Whilst Sahel Sounds focuses on the sound of West African Sahel across the ages, this new venture is more global, but focused on a specific period of history.

In the early 2000s, the traditional barriers for music production collapsed. The home PC ushered in programs like FruityLoops Studio, EJay, and other cheap introductory audio tools. The intranet, wonderfully free and unshackled from today’s montrosities, created music-sharing communities with USB keys and CD mixtapes, cyber cafes for meet-ups, and a new mixture of cultural expression through music occurred. Local communities that were traditionally shut out from the expensive recording studios could now create home brews and share them online. Electronic fusions with traditional music were made in the community hall, with everyone lending a voice.

Oddly enough, that early turn of the millennium era has been harder to document and keep alive than older music, as online websites and information are more ephemeral than physical media. This is exactly what Autotune The World sets out to aid. The focus is on the almost lost files and experiments from local artists who are largely unknown outside of their immediate communities.

The first release is from Studio Simpa, an energetic and frantic collective of farmers-turned-musicians from Northern Ghana. They create music in DIY rural studios in Tamale, and the music is distributed from locally-released VCDs at the market. It’s a true indie spirit and brings me joy to know that artists are still this determined to get their music out there. Now… if those are VCD’s, that means there are video files… does this mean we have some music videos attached to these songs, too?

For more information, follow Autotune The World on Bandcamp. The lead single ‘So Tinha’ from Dickson Gawani is out now.

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