Outfitting musicians, singers, and composers with everything that technology can offer is the principle of computer-aided music. In Bignona, a city 450 km south of Dakar in lower Casamance, singers, DJs, and musicians from the region were able to train for three days in these computer-aided music techniques, MAO, and develop their creativity through technology.
From our special envoy returning from Bignona, the atmosphere is focused. On a large screen, the content of a computer is displayed, with several sound tracks visible. Alain Touchat, a sound engineer and producer, guides his six students in the world of computer-aided music. “It’s the basics of digital audio, the basics of sound engineering,” he explains. “Even if we don’t go into all the mathematical calculations that are part of the job, the idea is to really be able to transmit all the basic settings that are technically essential – the resolution, sampling frequency, what sound is, how it works to be able to sample, to know how to recover samples, how to manage them afterwards…”
Reworking a sound, adding effects, these are things that Moussa, an artist and composer in Sedhiou, upper Casamance, who funds his music activity through his computer accessories shop, has been doing for over 10 years. But he was self-taught. “I started making sounds in 2020, and this is the first time I trained like this,” he says. “I had never undergone any training in my life. I used to go to studios but I just stayed behind to observe. I trained myself alone, with the Internet, watching tutorials. That’s how I used to learn. But when I came here, I realized I knew nothing. I know how to do things, but I didn’t know.”
Aroda Sagna, known as Atika Di Maléguène, a reggae singer from Ziguinchor confirms the unprecedented nature of this training in a region far from the capital. “For the past two days, it’s all been theory, and that’s what interests me,” he says. “In Casamance, that’s the problem, there are so many artists, but we never get this kind of opportunity.”
Aroda dreams of a more involved state. “If, for example, the state or the Ministry of Culture deployed a team in each region, where at least artists and others working in music could have a two-month training, it would benefit us greatly,” he continues.
For the past 8 years, through his association Les Rues du Sud, Alain Touchat has been training musicians in Morocco, Senegal, and Guinea Conakry, but the most challenging part is always connecting the South and the North. “To get them to export, to cross borders musically, to put them in touch with producers abroad who are looking for beatmakers,” details Alain Touchat, “to allow an exchange with professionals outside.”
In the meantime, Alain Touchat has created a Discord, an instant messaging platform where artists can exchange without visas.
