Purple Rain, Prince’s self-mythologising rock opera based loosely on his own journey to stardom, has been remade in the Saharan state of Niger – where few in the Tuareg community have ever heard of the musician, and there is no word for purple.

In the original film, Prince plays The Kid, a downbeat Minneapolis singer trying to escape a violent home life and make it big in the world of music. It was a runaway box office success when it hit cinemas in 1984, grossing more than $80m (£53m) and instantly becoming a cult classic.

But few in Niger have ever heard of Prince. And the fact there is no Tuareg word for purple means the film is saddled with the title Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai, which translates as Rain the Colour of Blue With a Little Red in It.

“It started out as a joke, the idea to take this cult film from the west and remake it in the Sahara,” said Christopher Kirkley, an American who directed and co-wrote the remake, and runs the record label Sahel Sounds.

“But we realised if we took the original story and modified it, the remake would reflect the lives of every guitarist in the Tuareg community.”

Swapping smoky Minneapolis for dusty Agadez, the largest city in the country’s central region, the new film follows Mdou Moctar - a popular self-taught Niger musician in real life - as he rides his purple motorbike from performance to performance, struggling to make a name for himself. Kirkley claims it is the first feature film shot entirely in the Tuareg language.

“With Moctar, we wanted to make something that western audiences could watch and get a glimpse of what life is like for guitarists, but which people in Niger - in the Tuareg community - could enjoy too.”

Kirkley admits that the effort to reference one of the western world’s most eccentric and captivating stars is largely lost on local audiences. “Is Prince big in Agadez? No, I’ve encountered a few of his LPs in west Africa before, but besides that he’s not known at all.” But he insists that this is part of the charm of the project: “It’s a nice nod to the fact that some parts of the original translated well into the west African context and others didn’t.”

In Niger, the electric guitar has become synonymous with Tuareg culture, having been popularised by musicians such as Bombino, Terakaft and Tinariwen. In Agadez the so-called “desert blues” provide the soundtrack for everything from weddings to political rallies, and competition between musicians is fierce.

A still from Kirkley’s Purple Rain remix, starring musician Mdou Moctar. Photograph: Sahel Sounds

Shot on a shoestring budget over 10 days in March last year, Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai was an unusual project for both Kirkley and the people of Niger. “There are very few fictional films [about the country], so a cinematic depiction of Agadez was really special,” he said. Kirkley, who studies world music, first set up his Sahel Sounds blog in 2009 to spread the word about the music of Africa.

The site has since evolved into a record label, working with artists from across the Sahel region, including Moctar, who is performing in London this week. The film, made after a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, has been screened across the world since its release earlier this year.

“The first screening was in Niger,” said Kirkley. “A lot of the dialogue was missed because it was a raucous crowd, everyone was cheering when they saw someone they knew on the screen.”

Mdou Moctar will be performing in London on the 25-26 November

