The problems of Niger, a landlocked desert country in West Africa, may be little known to most Americans, and Google Translate is no help when it comes to Tamasheq, the Tuareg language in which Moctar sings (along with some French) . But it could be time for Moctar to make his message heard widely. “Funeral for Justice,” his seventh LP, is the second to be released by Matador Records, an indie rock powerhouse with a legacy of acts like Pavement, Yo La Tengo and Liz Phair. Last summer, Moctar and his band performed at Central Park SummerStage, and earlier this month they played Coachella alongside stars like Lana Del Rey and Tyler, the Creator.
“I want to expose the crimes and injustices in the world, and I want you to feel like the sound you hear is someone shouting, ‘Help!’” he said. “If you hear a siren ‘wee-oo, wee-oo’ that means something terrible is happening, right? That’s why I want you to know how serious this is.”
THE ORIGIN OF MOCTAR IS about as far from the Coachella stage as you can get.
He grew up in Tchintabaraden, near Niger’s western border with Mali, with minimal knowledge of Western pop culture. He said he knew Michael Jackson, Bob Marley and Celine Dion but knew little about them, calling them all “white,” which he defined as “not from my hometown.” (“But Michael Jackson,” Moctar added with a sly smile, “when I see him, he’s not dark, is he?”)
Moctar built his first guitar using brake wires from a bicycle, and by the late 2000s he was tinkering with the fundamentals of the desert blues – the sound the Tuaregs are known for – by combining guitars with electronic tools like Auto -Tune and drum machines. One such hybrid song, “Tahoultine,” became a regional underground hit when people traded it via cell phones. In 2010, the tune found its way to Christopher Kirkley, an American who had quit his engineering job and was traveling through West Africa and blogging about its music culture.
At home in Portland, Oregon, Kirkley was fascinated by “Tahoultine,” but the song’s author was a mystery, identified on the song only as “Mdou” (pronounced EM-doo). After a year of searching online, Kirkley finally contacted Moctar and traveled back to Niger to meet him and discuss the collaboration. One of the first things Moctar said to him, Kirkley recalled, was, “How am I going to go on tour?”
Kirkley became Moctar’s promoter, making five albums with Moctar on his small label, Sahel Sounds, and helping organize his first tours of Europe. In 2015, Kirkley raised $18,000 on Kickstarter to direct Moctar in a Tuareg remake of Prince’s “Purple Rain,” casting Moctar as a motorcycle-riding guitar rebel struggling to make his mark. The title was “Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai,” or “Rain the Color of Blue with a Little Red in It” – Tamasheq, Moctar told Kirkley, has no word for purple.