Chicago Music Exchange | 5 years ago

To listen to Mdou Moctar is to enter another world.

First distributed through a secretive trade network of cellphones and memory cards in West Africa, the music of #MdouMoctar draws from a particular style of Berber music unique to the Tuareg, a nomadic people who occupy a vast swath of the Sahara desert stretching across Northern Africa from Burkina Faso to Mali, Algeria, all the way over to Libya and down through Moctar’s own Niger and into Nigeria.

Moctar’s intoxicating sound is both deeply traditional and distinctly Western. It fuses limber, Middle Eastern-inspired melodies with raw and powerful riffs, shifting on a dime from complex West African rhythms into straight-ahead 4/4 rock beats that seem tailor-made for a drum kit or a calabash. This heady hybrid has a swirling, trance-like effect that’s only a few degrees removed from the absolute best American psych or prog rock.

But Mdou himself insists, in the press release for his new album, Ilana: The Creator, out now on #SahelSounds, that he has no idea what “rock” really is. He’s heard it, of course, and he really likes it, but what he loves is his music, and he only knows how to play it his way.

Mdou and his band stopped in to show us just how that’s done in a rare acoustic performance.

How did you get your start?
When I was young, I sat around with the musicians and made the tea for them while they played guitar, figuring out how they play.

In these times it's an incredible challenge getting by making music, how do you make it work?
I need to make people happy. That is my goal. When I see people at my concerts dancing and smiling that makes me very happy.

Who were your major influences?
Abdallah Oumbadougou was one of my first influences and now I really like Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, and Prince.

What guides your playing style?
My playing style comes from the traditional Tuareg music of Takamba - which is played on calabashes and ngonis.

Read the complete Labor of Love: Mdou Moctar:
https://www.chicagomusicexchange.com/pages/labor-of-love-mdou-moctar

Songs Played
00:08 - 04:17 - Asshet Akal - Mdou Moctar
04:41 - 10:24 - J'ai Pas Le Choix - Mdou Moctar
11:06 - 22:06 - Tarhatazed - Mdou Moctar

Engineered and Mixed by Alex Chadwick
Filmed by Andrew Tricaso, Evan Skorepa and Ryan Lodge
Edited by Andrew Tricaso

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