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On Thursday, November 5th the Community Center for the Performing Arts with Mammoth NW & Desert Daze present Mdou Moctar (solo) to the WOW Hall with special guests. Since the late 2000s, Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar has explored new approached to the West African desert blues first popularized by bands like Tinariwen and Tartit. His songs include acoustic odes to his arid homeland, but also psych-rock odysseys supercharged with galloping rhythms and rock-star techniques.
Moctar was born in the mid-’80s in Tchintabaraden, Niger. Although raised in a Muslim family that disapproved of music as a career, he was mesmerized by Tuareg guitar icons like Abdallah Oumbadougou and taught himself to play using a homemade instrument with the cables from bicycle bakers serving as strings. He first came to international attention in 2011 when the Portland-based label Sahel Sounds’ Christopher Kirkley cast Moctar as the star in an independent Tamashek-language film remake of Prince’s Purple Rain set in Niger’s desert-blues boomtown Agadez.
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Moctar and his backing band have since hit the road on numerous international tour dates, while Matador-released 2021 album Afrique Victime shows the songwriter continuing to explore a sound that’s equally heady and fiery. On February 28, Matador will release Tears of Injustice, the acoustic version of Mdou Moctar’s acclaimed album Funeral for Justice. The album owes its existence to a national catastrophe.
In July of 2023, Mdou Moctar was on tour in the United States when the president of Niger was deposed in a coup. Moctar, Ahmoudou Madassane, and Souleymane Ibrahim unable to return home to their families. They decided to seize the opportunity to record a companion to Funeral for Justice, one that reflected the newer and graver circumstances at home.
Two days after the tour wrapped, the quartet began tracking Tears of Injustice at Brooklyn’s Bunker Studio with engineer Seth Manchester. They chose to track Tears sitting together in one room, keeping the session loose, stripped down, and spontaneous. After a month, the band was able to return home to Niger and, when they did, bassist and producer Mikey Coltun gave Madassane a Zoom recorder to take along.
The rhythm guitarist used it to record a group of Tuaregs performing call-and-response vocals, which were later added into the final mix. On Funeral for Justice, anger at the plight of Niger and the Tuareg people is plainly expressed in the music’s volume and velocity. On Tears, the songs retain that weight sans amplification.
They are steeped in sadness, conveying the grief of a nation locked into a constant churn of poverty, colonial exploitation, and political upheaval. It is Tuareg protest music in raw and essential form. Learn more about Mdou Moctar online on Spotify , Facebook , Instagram , YouTube and at: www.mdoumoctar.com Mdou Moctar – NPR Tiny Desk Concert Mdou Moctar – Tarhatazed (LIVE)
Description from WOW Hall.
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