What do bicycles have to do with guitars? Music was frowned upon in Mdou Moctar's conservative Muslim family. It was seen as a sure path to a sinful life. So the eleven-year-old had to secretly build his first guitar from a piece of wood and the cables from the brakes of old bicycles. “Music is by no means frowned upon in Niger. Only in my strict family it was considered the work of the devil, none of us played an instrument. When I started playing the guitar, my parents were convinced that I would inevitably become drug addicts, alcohol addicts and criminals, ”Moctar recalls in an interview today. At that time he worshiped profane guitarists like Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou from Niger and Ali Farka Touré from Mali as his secular rulers.
The tall man from the Niger city of Agadez is now considered the most exciting proponent of the Tuareg or desert blues.
In this style, originally referred to as “Tishoumaren”, topics from the nomadic cultural tradition come up as well as the desolate exile situation of the Tuareg in post-colonial Africa.
It is no coincidence that the style name “Tishoumaren” is derived from the French “chômeur”, which means “the unemployed”.
Only acoustic instruments can be found in traditional Tuareg music.
Fusion of blues rock and Tuareg music
Electric guitars were not added until the end of the 1970s with the band Tinariwen from Mali. The fusion of American blues rock and Tuareg music spread as an original style of music in northern and western Africa in the early 1980s. With his innovative guitar playing, Mdou Moctar is now known as the “Hendrix of the Sahara” - an honorary title that he more than lives up to on his new album “Afrique Victime”.
First the songs simmer on a small flame before they flare up and spread a bewitching heat. Cyclical compositions with repetitive riffs rely on beguiling simplicity. Psychedelic undertones creep into the pieces again and again. The ternary beat often causes the music to sway like an enchanted snake. Mdou Moctar sings in a language that is only spoken by half a million people. And yet his blues is universally intelligible.
At the age of eighteen he emigrated to Libya as a migrant worker in order to earn money for his family as a water seeker in the Sahara and later as a soldier in the army of Muammar al-Gaddafi. In 2005 Moctar returned to Agadez and decided to try his hand at being a professional musician - initially at family celebrations and weddings. At that time, it was common among young people in the Republic of Niger to exchange music on memory cards on cell phones. The songs from Moctar's debut album “Anar” from 2008 quickly became very popular in networks. When the American Christopher Kirkley got his hands on such a memory card, it was clear to him: He had to become Moctar's agent and producer. Western music fans heard the new sounds for the first time in 2011 on the compilation "Music from Saharan Cellphones". It was Kirkley toothe Moctar brought a long-awaited left-handed Fender Stratocaster from the United States.
Boring and hypnotic
The often metallic sound of the electric guitar is piercing and hypnotic at the same time.
With a silvery shimmering flutter technique, Moctar produces endless swarms of notes that rise from the fingerboard.
The index finger of his left hand attacks - almost invisibly - the strings at breakneck speed, while the right one incessantly ties hammer-on chains.
The Tuareg troubadour masters the tapping technique of Eddie Van Halen as well as the rhythmic force of Prince.
Whether in gently driving love songs or flaming protest songs - Moctar repeatedly interlocks acoustic guitar playing with pure sound explosions.
The pieces pick up speed almost imperceptibly, pick up the pace and pull the listener into a maelstrom of leaden nonchalance. Using classic call-and-response technology, the rest of the quartet respond to Moctar's penetrating lead voice. In the seven-minute title song of “Afrique Victime” he sings: “Africa is the victim of so many crimes. If we keep silent, it will be our end. ”And Moctar wonders:“ Oh Gaddafi, who have you entrusted Africa to? ”He denounces the exploitation of his beloved home continent by multinational mining corporations as well as the fundamentalist terror of militias. "It is becoming more and more difficult to survive in Niger, Boko Haram is increasingly hunting down artists to kill them," Moctar recently told New Noise magazine. In other songs he askswhy the hopeful "Jasmine Revolution" in Tunisia of 2010 could not spread across the entire continent. But he remains optimistic that his enlightened desert blues will help the people: “The Tuareg have a long tradition. They are warriors and, in hard times, draw their encouragement and courage not least from music. "