Music from Saharan Cellphones

Music from Saharan Cellphones is a compilation album released by Sahel Sounds of different songs by various musicians from Western and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Background
Music from Saharan Cellphones contains an assortment of different songs by various African musicians from Algeria, Niger, Mauritania, Nigeria, Morocco, Mali and the Ivory Coast. Despite their popularity within the region, the tracks which appear on the album achieved little or no commercial release outside the Sahara.

The album was initiated by Sahel Sounds, a Portland-based record label founded in 2009 that specializes in music from the southern part of the Sahara desert. As a way to accurately unveil songs popular amongst local West African residents to audiences abroad, the music was digitally extracted off cellular phone memory cards containing stored .mp3 files known to circulate the area via peer-to-peer bluetooth file sharing. In the process of the album's production, Sahel Sounds tracked down each of the featured composers in order to obtain proper permissions and pay them for using their music. Christopher Kirkley, the founder of Sahel Sounds and producer of the album reported that the artists on Music from Saharan Cellphones were given 60% of its proceed sales.

Music
Music from Saharan Cellphones showcases a diverse mixture of different contemporary African musical styles prevalent across the Sahara.

The featured artists consist of both individual musicians and musical ensembles alike. Songs on the album are exclusively sung in either Arabic and African French depending on the specific song. Some of these singers make use of the Auto-Tune effect and some vocally perform by rapping while others resort to a traditional singing style.

Legacy
Music from Saharan Cellphones was followed up by a second compilation album of the same concept, Music from Saharan Cellphones: Volume 2 - released in 2013. The record label furthered the style on the 2022 compilation album Music from Saharan WhatsApp.

The song "Yereyira" was sampled by experimental hip hop trio Death Grips for the song "Get Got" from their 2012 album The Money Store.