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Credit: Ebru Yildiz

MDOU MOCTAR share new song ahead of album release on Friday

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On Friday, Mdou Moctar will release its much-anticipated new album, Funeral for Justice. Today, you can hear the record’s penultimate track, ‘Oh France’, a fiery indictment of French colonialism that stands among the group’s heaviest songs to date. Listen HERE.

Mdou Moctar – ‘Oh, France’ (Official Audio)

The band was recently profiled by the New York Times, who called Funeral for Justice “A cri de coeur of screaming guitars.” “Us guitar players in the West, we all have the same base vocabulary, the same handful of stereotypical licks,” Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett told the newspaper in an interview for the article. “But Mdou’s music, it’s almost free of that stuff. And because of that, it sounds more spontaneous. It sounds fresh. It’s amazing.” 

 

Praise for Mdou Moctar:

“… an amps-on-11 polemical masterpiece that warrants worldwide respect” – MOJO

“The Nigerien guitarist issues a rallying cry (…) that seems to dismantle the past and tessellate a new future” – The Guardian 

“Us guitar players in the West, we all have the same base vocabulary, the same handful of stereotypical licks. But Mdou’s music, it’s almost free of that stuff. And because of that, it sounds more spontaneous. It sounds fresh. It’s amazing” – Kirk Hammett, Metallica

“On the guitar, he is a spellbinding psychedelic soloist, with a style that draws as much from Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen as from traditional Tuareg wedding dances” – New York Times

 “Raw-edged, wailing blend of desert blues and explosive rock” – CRACK 

“One of the world’s most exciting and important rock bands” – NME

 

Previous single ‘Imourhar’ is currently on the BBC 6 Music Playlist. Watch the video HERE.

Mdou Moctar – Imouhar (Official Music Video)

On Friday, Bandcamp will host a listening party for the album with Mdou Moctar bassist and producer Mikey Coltun on hand to answer questions throughout playback. RSVP HERE.
Recorded at the close of two years spent touring the globe following the release of 2019 breakout Afrique Victime, Funeral For Justice captures the Nigerien quartet in ferocious form. The music is louder, faster, and more wild. The guitar solos are feedback-scorched and the lyrics are passionately political. Nothing is held back or toned down.
The songs on Funeral For Justice speak unflinchingly to the plight of Niger and of the Tuareg people. “This album is really different for me,” explains Moctar, the band’s singer, namesake, and indisputably iconic guitarist. “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 in its current iteration is first and foremost a band. Alongside Moctar, it consists of rhythm guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane, drummer Souleymane Ibrahim, and American bassist and producer Mikey Coltun.
The band got their start performing at traditional weddings. These are high energy events–amps are dialed up to 11 and the whole town is invited to attend. “I grew up in the DC punk scene and this is no different,” explains Coltun. “It’s a DIY punk show: people bring generators, they crank their amps. Things are broken, but they make it work.”
Conveying that energy and feeling of community to a new audience has been an important goal for the band. Their first concerts in the US were sometimes, mistakenly,organized to be tame seated affairs. That’s no longer the case. Over 100s of shows, they’ve proven themselves as one of the world’s most vital rock bands–a group rooted in Tuareg tradition, but undeniably its own singular organism. An Mdou Moctar concert is now recognized to be a place for dancing, if not full-force moshing.
In July 2023–after Funeral For Justice had been completed–Niger’s democratically elected government was deposed in a military coup. The president was placed under house arrest and the nation plunged into a state of chaos and uncertainty. The French have withdrawn. The area continues to be threatened by terrorism. The band–then ontour in the US–was, for a time, unable to return to their families

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