Listen to Africa is a 24,000-kilometre cycling expedition, recording African sounds and voices.
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The good, the bad and the indestructible One way or another – with the odd casualty – we’ve reached Nouakchott, meaning we’ve now crossed the Sahara in high summer. What next? Ah yes, West Africa in rainy season…
Mauritanian music 
While we had Terjit Oasis to ourselves at night, during the daytime it thronged with visitors from around Mauritania, in Terjit to visit the oasis or for the date harvest. The day we were there, a Mauritanian woman and her daughters had hired a group of musicians “from the desert” to come and play. They set up under the date palms, powering the rickety soundsystem with a car battery borrowed from somebody in the village.
While one woman sang most songs, in this song (chosen from the three hours of recording we have) she took a rest and four young women sang. A man played a tidinit (a Moorish lute). Two other women played drums made out of oil drums and goatskins (t’bol) and a third played an upturned …
A wedding in Africa’s last colony 19 days in Laayoune: eating camel, gatecrashing a wedding and trying to make sense of the perplexing situation in Western Sahara – Africa’s last colony.
Moroccan music: Nesseem Searching for a campsite at the end of our longest day yet on the bikes, we came across six young musicians practising under an archway on a main road in Kenitra, Morocco. Their name is Nesseem, and they kindly gave us permission to reproduce their arrangement of traditional music here. The instruments include percussion and two nafirs – three metre long copper horns.
Recorded on: 3rd May 2009
Location: Kenitra, Morocco (view on map)
Copyright: Nesseem / Listen to Africa
