Mdou Moctar

Bicycle-cable strings

Mahamadou Souleymane was born in Abalak, Niger, and grew up in Tchintabaraden and then in Arlit, a mining town. He is Tuareg and sings in Tamasheq. His family disapproved of electric music on religious grounds, so he learned in secret on a guitar he built himself, with bicycle brake-cable wire for strings and sardine cans for tuning pegs. In his late teens he left a job with a drilling company to concentrate on music.

He plays left-handed, usually on a Stratocaster, picking with his index finger rather than a pick. He is often compared to Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen, and he discovered Van Halen through YouTube videos. He is a practising Muslim who observes Ramadan, and has said he keeps his faith and his art separate. Esquire reported in 2019 that he was building a school for girls in Niger.

Saharan cellphones

In 2008 he recorded Anar in Sokoto, Nigeria. It was never formally released but spread across the Sahel as files swapped between mobile phones, and EarthQuaker Devices calls it the first Tuareg recording made with autotune. His songs reached Christopher Kirkley, founder of the Sahel Sounds label, who put them on Music from Saharan Cellphones: Volume 1 in 2010 and then spent years trying to find the singer. In 2011 Kirkley brought him a left-handed guitar in Mali, and the same year he released the single Tahoultine. The band Brainstorm covered two of his songs with English lyrics, and the two acts shared a split 7-inch in 2012.

Sahel Sounds issued the live album Afelan, recorded in Tchintabaraden, in 2013, the year he appeared in the short film I Sing the Desert Electric. Anar came out on vinyl in 2014, the year of his first European tour. In 2015 he starred in Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai, a Tamasheq-language homage to Prince's Purple Rain that Kirkley co-wrote and directed with money raised on Kickstarter. The German documentary A Story of Sahel Sounds featured him in 2016, and the solo acoustic Sousoume Tamachek (2017) brought him to Western listeners.

The full band

With the Brooklyn bassist Mikey Coltun producing, he formed a full band with Ahmoudou Madassane on rhythm guitar. Ilana (The Creator) (2019), cut in Detroit and finished in Niger, was his first full-band album. NPR's Bob Boilen called it the most insane psychedelic guitar album of the century. He played 112 shows across North America and Europe that year, and Third Man released a live set, Blue Stage Session.

Matador signed him on 7 October 2020 and released Chismiten the same day. Afrique Victime followed in May 2021, introduced by Tala Tannam. Recorded piece by piece while the band toured, it scored 86 on Metacritic and made year-end lists at The New York Times, Pitchfork, The Guardian and Rolling Stone.

A remix album, Afrique Refait, drew on electronic producers from across Africa in 2022, several tied to Uganda's Nyege Nyege Tapes, and two Niger EPs gathered older recordings. That year the band opened for Parquet Courts in North America before headlining in Europe.

Africa is a victim of so many crimes.

Mdou Moctar, PBS NewsHour, 2021

Stranded

In July 2023, after Pitchfork Music Festival and Newport Folk, the coup in Niger left Moctar, Madassane and drummer Souleymane Ibrahim stuck in the United States. A GoFundMe launched in August raised $100,000 within three days, with Jack White among the donors. In a largely empty house in upstate New York the band made Funeral for Justice (2024), which scored 90 on Metacritic, and then rerecorded its songs acoustically as Tears of Injustice (2025). He played NPR's Tiny Desk in 2024 and was still touring in 2026. He has said the band never writes out a setlist.