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There have always been two sides to the music of Nigerien guitarist and bandleader Mdou Moctar: the electric and the acoustic, the sweaty ballroom and the evening campfire, the wedding dance and the lament. If Mdou Moctar’s terrific 2024 album Funeral for Justice was the electric sound of the furious political protest, Tears of Injustice is the mourning after, the bonding that takes place when people huddle together for strength as your friends are dying and your enemies are in power.

Recorded in early 2023, Funeral, Moctar’s third studio...

Five months ago, Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar released a new album called Funeral for Justice, a furious, frenetic fusion of psychedelia, hard rock, and West African desert blues that left critics across the globe stunned. “It’s hard to miss the sound of righteous fury in its opening guitar chords,” wrote Pitchfork’s Arielle Gordon, “which ricochet like the first shots in battle.” Rolling Stone’s Jon Dolan hailed it as “the band’s most forceful album yet, tailor-made to melt minds at massive festivals.”

The lyrics, delivered in Moctar’s native Tamasheq language,...

Ahead of tour dates in Europe and the United States, Mdou Moctar have released video of a special performance in Agadez, Niger, that they filmed last year. A 47-minute video, titled The Agadez Folders: Live at Sultan’s Palace, shows the band rocking out as men on camels watch and people dance to the rhythms in the city’s center at the King’s Palace. The quartet captured the performance around the time they were recording their latest album, Funeral for Justice.

In a statement included with the band’s YouTube of the performance,...

Tuareg guitar ace Mdou Moctar and his band made a triumphant return to New York City this week, playing back-to-back sold-out shows in Manhattan and Brooklyn in support of their latest album, Funeral for Justice. The album, which was released in May via Matador, is a scorching political salvo, with Moctar writing songs that bluntly address sociopolitical issues facing the Tuareg people and others in Niger, including terrorism and the long, ongoing legacy of American and European colonialism. These weighty issues are paired with some of the most forceful and propulsive rock music ever made,...

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...

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,...

Mdou Moctar unleashes a mighty solo on his new song, “Nakanegh Dich,” an upbeat outtake from last year’s celebrated album, Afrique Victime.

“This is Mdou’s very first time using a wah pedal,” bassist and producer, Mikey Coltun, said in a statement. “At some point, Mdou called Rob [Schnapf, co-producer] into the studio and asked him to control the wah with his foot while Mdou shredded a solo.” The result is a trippy yet intricately played psychedelic ripper.

“Nakanegh Dich” will feature on an upcoming expanded edition of Afrique Victime, due out digitally on Thursday,...

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,...

Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar has released a new track, “Taliat,” from his upcoming album, Afrique Victime, out May 21st via Matador.

“Taliat” is centered around Moctar’s billowing guitar lines, which twist around steady percussion as the musician sings about love and heartbreak in Tamasheq. In a statement, Moctar said, “‘Taliat’ means woman. In our community, women are queens, they have a lot of power, that’s why I use the term taliat to talk about them. A woman in the Tuareg community has to be protected, but she also...