Drummer Souleymane Ibrahim practices on a drum pad while hanging backstage with Moctar before the gig. Moctar secured his own fresh trim earlier in the day after stopping at a neighborhood barbershop further out in Brooklyn (a visit lovingly documented on Instagram by one of the barbers).
Just before hitting the stage: Moctar, rhythm guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane, Ibrahim, and bassist Mikey Coltun (from left). Moctar, Ibrahim, and Madassane all come from Niger — Moctar a small Sarahan village in the north, Ibrahim and Madassane from the city of Agadez. Coltun, who’s from the U.S., has been playing with Moctar since 2017, also serving as producer and recording engineer, as well as the band’s tour manager (and occasional interpreter).
Mdou Moctar kicked off their show at Warsaw with “Funeral for Justice,” the scorching title track of their new album. Bursting with downbeat punches and dizzying riffs, the song finds Moctar delivering an anti-colonial rallying cry, directly addressing Africa’s leaders at one point: “Retake control of your countries, rich in resources / Build them and quit sleeping.” (These are translated lyrics; Moctar sings primarily in the Tamasheq language.)
Moctar and Coltun settling into the show. The band’s set primarily featured songs from Funeral for Justice, though they also broke out “Chismiten” and “Afrique Victime” from 2021’s Afrique Victime; “Tarhatazed” from 2019’s Ilana (The Creator), and “Sousoume Tamachek” from the 2017 album of the same name.
Funeral for Justice may have just come out a few months ago, but Mdou Moctar already appear to be cooking up some new tracks. The second song in the band’s setlist was a new one, which doesn’t appear to have a title just yet (per a rep for the band).
While Mdou Moctar’s music has always had political undercurrents, Funeral for Justice is the band’s most direct statement to date. In a 2021 interview with Rolling Stone, Moctar hinted that he was going in this direction, saying: “What’s inspiring me at the moment is what’s happening here in Africa. My music is going to become more inspired by revolution, I really want to compose on that theme. It’s what seems relevant to me at the moment. We’re facing problems related to terrorism, injustice, corruption, and the ongoing exploitation of the country by France. I want future albums to touch on those themes.”
Mdou Moctar’s first NYC show took place at Manhattan’s Bowery Ballrom, a much smaller venue compared to the 1,000-capacity Warsaw. To make the most of that additional space, the band packed the stage with Orange amplifiers and cranked the volume.
Mdou Moctar recorded Funeral for Justice in 2023 after two years of near-constant touring in support of Afrique Victime. As such, the album is suffused with the live energy and chemistry the band had honed on the road. “As the band got tighter and heavier live, it made sense to capture this urgency and this aggression — it wasn’t a forced thing, it was very natural,” Coltun previously said of the album in a statement.
In a recent interview with Pitchfork about Funeral for Justice, Moctar spoke about finding the right sound to match the band’s political message: “We need something very heavy, strong, fast, and crazy — you feel like it’s an emergency,” he said. “It’s the same as when you hear the ambulance. The guitar has to do the same crazy sound.”
Long before he was playing sold-out shows around the world, Moctar was doing whatever he could to make music (despite the wishes of his religious parents). He famously built his first guitar using bicycle cables for strings, and his earliest recordings, from the late 2000s/early 2010s, spread like much music does in the Sahel region, via Bluetooth and cellphone memory cards. His story was so cinematic, it was turned into a movie in 2015, Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai, also based on Prince’s Purple Rain. (Because there’s no word for “purple” in Tamashek, the title translates to “Rain the Color of Blue With a Little Red in It.”)
Mdou Moctar’s NYC shows happened to overlap with that of another Tuareg guitar hero, Omara “Bombino” Moctar (no relation to Mdou). Rolling Stone‘s Sacha Lecca says Bombino basically showed up at the venue, said, “I have a guitar, want me to go get it?” and was promptly added to the set.
Bombino (who starts his own North American tour June 28) joined Mdou Moctar on stage for the final song of the night, “Tarhatazed,” the stunning seven-minute opus from Ilana (The Creator).
Mdou Moctar and Bombino waving to the crowd at the end of the show. Moctar and his band are set to wrap up the first leg of their North American tour on June 28, in Philadelphia, after which they’ll immediately head over to the U.K. and Europe (that next trek begins just a few days from now, on June 30, with a set at Glastonbury). The band will be back in North America for another run of shows starting Oct. 4 in Rhode Island, and wrapping Nov. 2 with a set at the Hipnosis Festival in Mexico City.