The concert is almost over when Doueh throws himself into a last solo with his guitar behind his back, à la Jimi Hendrix. The audience shouts, dances and whistles as if they were at a “Voodoo Child" concert. Doueh swiftly adds some more oriental sounds and Halima and Bashri start clapping their hands. The blues solo turns into a Sahraouian melody, to the audience’s delight.

Guillaume Loiret, FRANCE 24 Doueh playing solo guitar, "Hendrix style" Wazan Samat, from the album "Guitar Music from the Western Sahara" (Sublime Frequencies)

“My name is Doueh, I am an artist, from Dakhla, south of Morocco,” says the guitarist, in an interview before the gig. Doueh often mentions Dakhla when he explains his musical roots. Dakhla is the largest city of the Western Sahara region, a former Spanish colony nestled between Morocco and Mauritania. The region is the cradle of Hassania culture, a spoken tradition of the Western Saharan people, which includes poems, tales, proverbs and music. Doueh has always known and played this music, a desert poetry that focuses on the Saharan climate, the dryness of the earth, with simple instruments, vocals, hand clapping, tbal (Sahraouian tambourine) and a small four-string lute known as a tidnit.

But Doueh moved on to integrate new sounds. “We started off with traditional music (Doueh played for weddings and religious festivals at the end of the 1970s) and noticed that our audience liked new instruments, so we added an electric guitar in 1979,” says Doueh. And since then, listeners have been asking for more.

The electric guitar became a common instrument of Sahraouian music in the 1970s. But Doueh has succeeded in deftly blending African and Western influences, electric arpeggios and pop, folk and blues moods inherited from his models Jimi Hendrix and James Brown. “This type of Hassania music has integrated modern elements to attract a wider audience, not just Arab or Moroccan listeners.” “As a matter of fact, I mix everything,” he says in French with a smile. Doueh is a gifted guitarist, playing hypnotic solos, sometimes with a wah-wah pedal, a real desert “guitar hero”.

Guillaume Loiret, FRANCE 24 Doueh and his wife Halima.   Cheyla Ya Haiuune, de l'album "Guitar Music from the Western Sahara" (Sublime Frequencies)

The result is surprising. Doueh’s atypical Sahraouian music and psychedelic folk-blues is also a family matter because he always plays with his wife Halima (vocals, tbal), his son Jamal (organ) and their friend Bashri (vocals) in the band Group Doueh. Their music propelled them to stardom in their homeland – they electrified audiences at the Essaouira Gnawa music festival in 2005. And the Instants Chavires concert hall in Montreuil, near Paris, is full. After a dozen gigs in the UK, the group Doueh are touring Amsterdam, Stockholm, Berlin and Geneva.

foto sifichi Halima sings and plays tbal (Sahraouian drums) with Doueh.

If Doueh and his relatives can tour Europe and seduce different audiences, it’s thanks to the relentless work of a small US label, Sublime Frequencies. Thanks to a committed network of musicologists in southwest Asia, in the Middle East and in Africa, Sublime Frequencies explores “neglected territories of world folk”, in the words of the label’s founder Alan Bishop, and releases unusual discs off the beaten tracks of world music.

Sublime Frequencies has released two albums with Group Doueh, and one of the members of the label, Hisham Mayet, filmed them for a documentary on Saharan music entitled “Palace of the winds." Flipping through Sublime Frequencies’ catalogue of pop curiosities, music aficionados can also find Burmese pop, Algerian “proto-raï” from the 1970s, Syrian pop star Omar Souleyman (who is touring in Europe with Group Doueh) and even folk songs broadcasted on North Korean station, "Radio Pyongyang".

The result is surprising. Doueh’s atypical Sahraouian music and psychedelic folk-blues is also a family matter because he always plays with his wife Halima (vocals, tbal), his son Jamal (organ) and their friend Bashri (vocals) in the band Group Doueh. Their music propelled them to stardom in their homeland – they electrified audiences at the Essaouira Gnawa music festival in 2005. And the Instants Chavires concert hall in Montreuil, near Paris, is full. After a dozen gigs in the UK, the group Doueh are touring Amsterdam, Stockholm, Berlin and Geneva.

If Doueh and his relatives can tour Europe and seduce different audiences, it’s thanks to the relentless work of a small US label, Sublime Frequencies. Thanks to a committed network of musicologists in southwest Asia, in the Middle East and in Africa, Sublime Frequencies explores “neglected territories of world folk”, in the words of the label’s founder Alan Bishop, and releases unusual discs off the beaten tracks of world music.

Sublime Frequencies has released two albums with Group Doueh, and one of the members of the label, Hisham Mayet, filmed them for a documentary on Saharan music entitled “Palace of the winds." Flipping Sublime Frequencies’ catalogue of pop curiosities, music aficionados can also find Burmese pop, Algerian “proto-raï” from the 1970s, Syrian pop star Omar Souleyman (who is touring in Europe with Group Doueh) and even folk songs broadcasted on North Korean station, Radio Pyongyang.