German-South African native, VJ Kathi Von Koerber, is set to digitally release "Footsteps in Africa Soundtrack: Nomadic Remix", on Earth Day (April 22, 2010). Physical copies of Von Koerber's album will be available June 1, 2010. As the soundtrack for the 2009 movie, 'Footsteps in Africa: A Nomadic Journey', the album echoes the Tuaregs' own distant roots, which stretch back through North African to Spain and Yemen to India. Fifteen percent of all profits from the remix album will be returned to the community, to support clean water projects. Von Koerber, KiahKeya Productions, the Indigenous Cultural Educational Center and Tuareg community leaders are teaming up to help the Nomadic Villagers Clean Water Awareness Fund.
This sound of the album lies behind filmmaker, producer, and former VJ Kathi von Koerber's three-part exploration of the life, worldview, and creativity of the nomadic Tuareg peoples of the Sahara. Envisioned from the start as a feature-length documentary film and soundtrack, Footsteps in Africa (KiahKeya Productions; 2009) reveals the vibrant cultural life of the world's most forbidding climate and is coming to select festivals across North America and the world in 2010.
The sounds Von Koerber uncovered deep in the desert find new resonances on re-imagined tracks of "Footsteps in Africa Soundtrack: Nomadic Remix". Brought together by producer and compiler Joshua Jacobs of Ambient Groove, DJs from across the planetary dance floor-from the ambient healing of RaRa Avis to the worldly downtempo of the Kaya Project, from rising stars like DimmSummer to global remix icons like Cheb i Sabbah -explore the nature of the desert.
Von Koerber, in the process of filming and recording, went to festivals throughout the Tuareg region, events where nomads from Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, and Niger met and made music together. In addition to obtaining recordings, von Koerber enlisted popular performers from North Africa, such as Moroccan trance legend Hassan Hakmoun. Sharifi, a Persian-American composer with a strong jazz and classical background, brought this varied vibrant soundscape together to support Von Koerber's images.
Von Koerber feels the Tuareg have something valuable to give the world. "The Tuareg are nomads, and freedom is their music," muses von Koerber. "The album awakens you to the nomad in every one of us. It brings you to that joy you feel in the desert, by getting you out on the dance floor. That joy is like water: we all need it."
"Footsteps in Africa Soundtrack: Nomadic Remix" can be purchased on iTunes. To directly support the Nomadic Villagers' "Footsteps in Africa" clean water fund, visit www.footstepafrica.com
