Mahamadou Souleymane, better known as Mdou Moctar, is a Tuareg musician from Niger who performs Tuareg guitar music-inspired rock. He initially gained popularity through a West African music trading network of cellphones and memory cards. His music is all in the language Tamasheq, and his guitar-playing is in the Saharan styles of takamba and assouf. Having gained international fame, he is the most famous musician from Niger and the leading performer of the genre of Desert blues, which combines blues and rock with traditional Saharan music.
Studio albums:
- 2008 - Anar
- 2015 - Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai (original soundtrack)
- 2017 - Sousoume Tamachek
- 2019 - Ilana: The Creator
- 2021 - Afrique Victime
- 2024 - Funeral for Justice
Tropes:
- Achievements in Ignorance: As a primarily self-taught guitarist who had to build his own guitar early on, he never learned to alternate between strumming down and up. Despite this, he can match the speeds of other notable shredders using only his index finger strumming upwards.
- Auto-Tune: His early music features autotuned vocals.
- Blues Rock: Much of his music is rock and blues.
- Darker and Edgier: Funeral For Justice takes on this tone compared to previous releases with a harder, more urgent tone in the music.
- Genre Mashup: He plays desert blues, also known as tishoumaren, assouf, or Tuareg rock, which is a fusion between rock and blues and traditional Tuareg music.
- Gratuitous French: While the album is in Tamasheq, the title of Afrique Victime is in French.
- Psychedelic Rock: Afrique Victime takes inspiration from psychedelic rock.
- Title Track: Afrique Victime contains a song of the same name.
- World Music: While this band might be traditionally categorized by this label, Moctar and his band reject the term, arguing that it is racist. They consider themselves a rock band over anything else.
