Onstage before a crowd of wide-eyed, smiley fans, a local rock star positions a campo on his purple Fender and begins playing an infectious lick.
“I believe love can make you sick, crazy,” sings the phenom. “Make you lose your way…”
Dressed in purple garb and a cloth covering his face revealing only his soulful eyes, one could assume that given his long brown ring-adorned fingers and his swaying vigorously to the melody emanating from his left-handed guitar that this man is playing Prince. (Or maybe Hendrix?) But he’s neither. He’s Mdou Moctar – the young musical sensation who captured the hearts of locals in the Sahara Desert. While most recognize him from weddings, others know him as “the one from the cell phones,” as one fan remarks to another in the film. She’s referring to when Moctar’s spacey Auto-Tuned songs about peace and love went viral via the music trading networks of cell phones in Africa’s Sahel region in the late 2000s.
While paying homage to the late Prince in this fierce adaptation of Purple Rain – the 1984 classic which chronicled The Kid’s rise to fame – Moctar is not in the bustling mecca of Minneapolis playing with his band The Revolution. He’s in Agadez, Niger’s largest city with his band the Azawair group.
In Christopher Kirkley’s Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai loosely translated into English as Rain the Color Blue with a Little Red In It, the Portland native and owner of label Sahel Sounds who relocated to West Africa after college, settled for this title given the lack of a word for “purple” in Tamasheq, the native language of the Tuareg – a quasi-nomadic Muslim people inhabiting the region.
Kirkley, who documents the music scenes in cities, said the idea for the film had potential as a “cultural product” which could resonate to local audiences. The film marks many firsts: Moctar’s first full-length movie role, Kirkley’s directorial debut and the first feature film in the universe all in the Tuareg language. While doing away with the nudity and violence typified in Purple Rain, the 75-minute film stays the course of Prince’s life story – from his escapism through music, to coping with family troubles and jealous competitors, hurdling romantic woes and, of course, his ultimate triumph as the one-and-only.
Below, I speak with Kirkley about the making of the movie.
LA: How long have you been wanting to do this film?
CK: The idea to make a “Purple Rain in the Sahara” had been kicking around for years. I spend a lot of time hanging out with bands, and documenting the music scenes in various cities and towns. The wedding circuit, where musicians are competing with one another for these lucrative contracts, is one of the most winner-take-all scenes. Being a musician in West Africa is not a hobby, but very much a profession, with lots of competition. The idea of a film was originally in jest, the fever dream of a Westerner trying to make sense of something foreign. But over the years I saw it had real potential as a way of showcasing this scene to a Western audience in a familiar context as well as creating a cultural product that could resonate with local audiences.
LA: What was the eureka moment when you decided to cast Mdou for the lead role?
CK: Of all the musicians I work with around the Sahel, Mdou stands out as a “larger than life” character. He is very much an artist – his life revolves around his music. But he also is a very funny guy with a sarcastic wit, and you really need a sense of humor to make low-budget film. His most Prince-like elements have to be his flashy style, particularly his way of playing guitar – lots of flourishes and dancing around.
LA: I read you gifted Mdou with a left-handed guitar. Was that one of the guitars he used in the film?
CK: Yes, he’s still playing the same guitar that I brought for him in 2012!
LA: What were your thoughts when you first heard Mdou play live? What was that like?
LA: What were your thoughts when you first heard Mdou play live? What was that like?
CK: The first time I saw Mdou in concert was at a small wedding in the countryside of rural Niger. When he started to get into his solos, he formed a crowd, with dancing spectators clapping and kicking up huge clouds of dust. The camera and light, supposed to illuminating the bride and groom, cut to him and his entourage. It was electric.
LA: A year after the film’s release, Prince passed away. Where were you when you heard the news and how great was the affect on you knowing that you had just done an adaptation of the film?
CK: It came for all of us, at a very unexpected time. With regards to the film, I guess I was hoping that someday we could screen it for him, and that Prince and Mdou could meet.
LA: Do you know if Prince himself had seen the film? If not, what do you think he would have thought of it?
CK: I like to think he would enjoy it, and find the humor in some of our choices in adaptation.
LA: As a micro-budget film, how proud are you of the way it turned out given this being your first time directing?
CK: I’m impressed that the film turned out at all. Shooting in Niger on any budget would be challenging, let alone doing it in our DIY approach. It’s certainly raised awareness of film production in Agadez and encouraged some would be filmmakers. We’ve already shot a second film with the same crew – a Tuareg “Spaghetti Western.” And a group of Agadez youth recently pitched me a remake of Titanic, shot in the Sahara.
LA: Do you plan on making any more music-related films?
CK: As long as I keep finding good music, there will always be a larger story to tell – and why not do it through fiction?
See the film at the Winter Film Awards Indie Film Festival in New York City on March 1 at the Cinema Village Theater 1, located at 22 E. 12th St.
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