Mdou Moctar have shared a new session video: ‘Live at Smokey’s Wedding, Agadez.’ The 14-minute clip documents the band’s short electric set at a traditional Tuareg wedding celebration. “Smokey’s was the last thing we filmed during the 2023 Niger sessions,” explains bassist/producer Mikey Coltun. “It was a wedding we were aware of since we arrived in Agadez. Smokey, our friend, invited us to play. Armed with a zoom recorder and an iPhone we captured this raw footage within an hour.”
Mdou Moctar: Live at Smokey’s Wedding – Agadez,
The group has been hard at work throughout the summer and fall, including festival sets at Fujirock, Sound and Gravity, Ohanafest, Shaky Knees, and a just-wrapped US tour. The quartet also recently performed an acoustic concert at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, were interviewed on the LSQ podcast, and grace the cover of PHILM’s current print edition.
And Tears of Injustice is still sounding fresh. Released in February, it’s the acoustic version of last year’s Funeral for Justice – an evolution of the band’s critically-adored breakout and the meditative mirror-image to the blistering original.
Tears owes its existence to a national catastrophe. In July of 2023, Mdou Moctar was on tour in the United States when the president of Niger was deposed in a coup. Moctar, Ahmoudou Madassane, and Souleymane Ibrahim unable to return home to their families. They decided to seize the opportunity to record a companion to Funeral for Justice, one that reflected the newer and graver circumstances at home. Two days after the tour wrapped, the quartet began tracking Tears of Injustice at Brooklyn’s Bunker Studio with engineer Seth Manchester.
They chose to track Tears sitting together in one room, keeping the session loose, stripped down, and spontaneous. After a month, the band was able to return home to Niger and, when they did, bassist and producer Mikey Coltun gave Madassane a Zoom recorder to take along. The rhythm guitarist used it to record a group of Tuaregs performing call-and-response vocals, which were later added into the final mix.
On Funeral for Justice, anger at the plight of Niger and the Tuareg people is plainly expressed in the music’s volume and velocity. On Tears, the songs retain that weight sans amplification. They are steeped in sadness, conveying the grief of a nation locked into a constant churn of poverty, colonial exploitation, and political upheaval. It is Tuareg protest music in raw and essential form.
Praise for Funeral For Justice:
“Funeral for Justice” is, in many ways, an album of protest, of resistance, of displeasure, but it is not an album of giving up or giving in. Its thrilling sonic energy, propelled by rage, operates against defeat.” – The New Yorker
“Dazzling” – The Observer (*****)
“… an amps-on-11 polemical masterpiece that warrants worldwide respect” – MOJO (****)
“… rock revolutionaries remain wildly exciting” – NME (****)
“A cri de coeur of screaming guitars and lyrics decrying the legacy of colonialism in Niger and throughout Africa” – New York Times
“The proud sound of rebellion” – Pitchfork (8.4 – Best New Music)
“The band’s most forceful album yet, tailor-made to melt minds at massive festivals” – Rolling Stone (****)
“… use this record as a roadmap in discovering the previous odd-decade of Moctar’s talent” – The Line Of Best Fit (9/10)
“… an irresistible set that will no doubt create a serious storm when these songs are revealed on stage” – The Arts Desk (****)
“This is a band and artist working at their peak” – AllMusic (****½)
Mdou Moctar
Tears Of Injustice
TRACKLIST
- Funeral for Justice (Injustice Version)
- Imouhar (Injustice Version)
- Takoba (Injustice Version)
- Sousoume Tamacheq (Injustice Version)
- Imajighen (Injustice Version)
- Tchinta (Injustice Version)
- Oh France (Injustice Version)
- Modern Slaves (Injustice Version)
