Tuareg rock band Mdou Moctar’s latest singles “Imouhar” and “Funeral for Justice” tell us they’re not holding back anything in their upcoming album Funeral for Justice, set to release on May 3. Similar to their breakout album, Afrique Victime released in 2021, these tracks poignantly critique French colonialism and foreign military intervention in lead singer Mahamadou Souleymane’s home country of Niger. Themes from the band’s previous work remain central in this current project, such as the relevance and resiliency of their Tuareg identity.
The music of Mdou Moctar belongs to the musical genre known as Tishoumaren, commonly referred to by English-speaking audiences as “Desert Blues” or “Tuareg Rock”. The genre’s roots trace back to a 1973 drought that forced the Tuareg people, an Amazigh ethnic group indigenous to North Africa and the Sahel, to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and take refuge in urban centers across the Sahel. Here, they encountered modern popular music and the electric current of Pan-Africanism that invigorated the continent’s leaders in the wake of decolonization. The genre can be best described as a mixture of Tuareg traditional music and modern rock music, laced with political messages about the Tuareg experience.
Yet this description does not fully capture the story of Mdou Moctar. Lead guitarist and singer, Mahamadou Souleymane, started playing music with a guitar he built from plywood and bicycle brake cables as a kid in the 1990s—not recording an album until 2008. Although it was never officially released, Souleymane’s work gained notoriety across West Africa, landing him a spot on independent record label Sahel Sound’s 2010 compilation, Music from Saharan Cellphones. This compilation album reached far corners of the globe, as experimental hip-hop group Death Grips incorporated many samples from Music from Saharan Cellphones on their infamous 2012 release, The Money Store.
Nevertheless, Souleymane’s initial discovery by Sahel Sounds granted him access to a recording studio, band members, and a left-handed guitar. While he would go on to produce three additional studio albums, he would eventually be joined by drummer Souleymane Ibrahim, bassist and producer Mikey Coltun, and guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane to create Ilana (The Creator) in 2019. Mdou Moctar’s early works featured heaping portions of autotune, drawing heavy inspiration from Nigerien pop music. Simultaneously, the band took cues from titans of Sahelian music such as Nigerien Tuareg rock band Tinariwen and Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré. However, the sound that Souleymane has cultivated lends itself more to the moniker that fans have given him: “Hendrix of the Sahara.” The works Ilana (The Creator) and Afrique Victime are sun-scorched onslaughts of psychedelic rock, defined by Souleymane’s dizzying technical skill on the guitar.
The expansion of Souleymane’s one-man show to a full band coincided with a growing effort to platform the Tuareg people and their stories—inspiring solidarity on their behalf. Whether it be lyrics, music videos, or album covers, everything that Mdou Moctar creates is infused with deeply cultural and political messaging. Mdou Moctar uses the Saharan bird, a symbol that has now become synonymous with the band’s image, in their 2019 release, Ilana (The Creator). The cover of Ilana depicts the Saharan bird with outstretched wings and its beak holding an Agadez Cross, a type of Tuareg jewelry that represents their collective identity. Afrique Victime depicts the same Saharan bird, this time holding the continent of Africa in its beak, relaying the message of African unity through anti-colonial struggle. The cover for Funeral for Justice once again depicts the bird, bloodied and surrounded by his dead and dying kin, situated above a coffin inscribed with the outline of the African continent.
In an interview, Souleymane described the dire context of Funeral for Justice, stating: “This album is really different for me. Now the problems of terrorist violence are more serious in Africa. When the US and Europe came here, they said they're going to help us, but what we see is really different. They never help us to find a solution.”
Mdou Moctar’s lyrics leave nothing up for interpretation, instead spurring listeners to political action. Invoking the political currents of both the Arab Spring and Pan-Africanism on the song “Afrique Victime,” Mdou Moctar sings: “The Wind born in Tunisia/Invaded all of Arabia,” as well as, “Oh Gaddafi/you left/Who have you entrusted your continent of Africa to?”
However, in the song “Funeral for Justice,” Souleymane shifts his tone from introspection to desperation, pleading for solidarity among African peoples as the solution to growing disparities in Niger and the Sahel: “Dear African leaders, hear my burning question/Why solely invest in your own kin’s learning?/While other children suffer on your watch?,” he shouts on the titular song of the band’s upcoming album.
Desertification driven by climate change is consuming the Sahara, driving the Tuareg out of their ancestral homelands. Even among other Tamazight peoples, the Tuareg languages and culture remain invisible to Arab and African governments. Political instability driven by Western interference in African politics threatens to undermine the basic rights of the Tuareg in countries where they are already discriminated against. Funeral for Justice is a celebration of the resilience of the Tuareg people and their culture despite the plethora of hardships they face. But, at the same time, it is an act of mourning and an expression of deep sorrow for the erasure and exploitation of the Tuareg that colonization and Western interventions in Africa bring.
Jasper is a junior in the SFS studying Regional and Comparative Studies.
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