In 2021, Mdou Moctar told Rolling Stone, “My music is going to become more inspired by revolution.” That promise was truth in advertising. For more than a decade, the Tuareg guitarist/singer-songwriter, who fronts the band that shares his name, has been staking out a space as a radical guitar innovator as well as a fearless spokesman for his strife-riven homeland of Niger. As he asks in Tuareg on the opening track on his band’s excellent new LP, Funeral for Justice, “Dear African leaders, hear my burning question/Why does...
- 4/30/2024
- by Jon Dolan
- Rollingstone.com
Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar and his band are back with a new song, “Funeral for Justice,” the opener and title track for his next album, out May 3 via Matador Records.
The scorching new track is stuffed with dizzying riffs that always seem to lead to downbeat punches. The lyrics embody the strong political and anti-colonial themes across the album, with Moctar addressing Africa’s leaders directly at one point (via translation): “Retake control of your countries, rich in resources / Build them and quit sleeping.”
Funeral for Justice follows Moctar’s celebrated 2021 album,...
The scorching new track is stuffed with dizzying riffs that always seem to lead to downbeat punches. The lyrics embody the strong political and anti-colonial themes across the album, with Moctar addressing Africa’s leaders directly at one point (via translation): “Retake control of your countries, rich in resources / Build them and quit sleeping.”
Funeral for Justice follows Moctar’s celebrated 2021 album,...
- 2/28/2024
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
Mdou Moctar, the acclaimed Tuareg guitarist, has launched a GoFundMe to help him and his bandmates stay in the United States since military officers in his home country of Niger overthrew its leadership in a coup d’état last month.
Moctar, whose full name is Mahamadou Souleymane, and his Nigerien bandmates — Ahmoudou Madassane and Souleymane Ibrahim — had been touring the States at the time of the coup.
“At present, the band is stuck in the United States indefinitely,” one of the band’s managers, Dan Oestreich, wrote on the fundraiser’s page.
Moctar, whose full name is Mahamadou Souleymane, and his Nigerien bandmates — Ahmoudou Madassane and Souleymane Ibrahim — had been touring the States at the time of the coup.
“At present, the band is stuck in the United States indefinitely,” one of the band’s managers, Dan Oestreich, wrote on the fundraiser’s page.
- 8/3/2023
- by Kory Grow
- Rollingstone.com
Mdou Moctar was halfway around the world, in the middle of a lengthy tour in 2019, when his partner gave birth. The Tuareg guitarist, who hails from the Saharan desert City of Agadez in central Niger and is the latest in a growling line of tishoumaren (loosely translated to “desert blues”) musicians to find a receptive audience abroad, was already missing his hometown — “the vibrations of my environment,” as he put it in a recent interview with Rolling Stone (with the help of a translator). And now his partner, Layla, “was calling out for me,...
- 5/20/2021
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
In the early 2000s, Will Oldham and guitarist Matt Sweeney decided to try a collaborative experiment inspired by the working relationship of Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter.
Oldham — who went by Bonnie “Prince” Billy at the time — would write lyrics from his home in Louisville, Kentucky, and then send them to Sweeney, the guitarist who had played in the innovative New York rock band Chavez and Billy Corgan’s Zwan. The result was 2005’s Superwolf. The follow-up to that record, Superwolves, will be released by Drag City on April...
Oldham — who went by Bonnie “Prince” Billy at the time — would write lyrics from his home in Louisville, Kentucky, and then send them to Sweeney, the guitarist who had played in the innovative New York rock band Chavez and Billy Corgan’s Zwan. The result was 2005’s Superwolf. The follow-up to that record, Superwolves, will be released by Drag City on April...
- 2/9/2021
- by Patrick Doyle
- Rollingstone.com
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