Mdou Moctar

Mdou Moctar is a Tuareg guitarist from Abalak, Niger, who has become one of the most electrifying live acts in contemporary music through a combination of traditional Tuareg assouf music and psychedelic electric guitar improvisation. His primary instrument is a Fender Stratocaster run through a heavily overdriven amplifier, played with a technique developed from the Tuareg approach to guitar — different hand positions, different string tensions, different melodic scales. His 2021 album Afrique Victime addressed colonialism and resource extraction in Africa with an album closer to a force of nature than a record. He is categorically unlike anything else in the indie rock world and that is precisely why he belongs in it.