In the summer of 2023, Mdou Moctar had wrapped up two years touring their global breakthrough album ‘Afrique Victime’, but found themselves unable to return home. The Tuareg desert rockers were stranded in the US while a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government of Niger and plunged the nation into a state of terrified chaos. The band did not support the coup, but, as eloquently expressed throughout ‘Funeral For Justice’, they didn’t much care for the previous regime’s links to the French colonial past either.
The quartet, led by the guitarist and vocalist of the same name, rage against the subjugation of their people throughout this album, but they are not in defeat; rather, Mdou Moctar are defiant, and challenge their fellow Nigeriens to change their plight.
It is emblazoned through the title track: “Retake control of your resource rich countries / Build them and quit sleeping”, Moctar sings, with the whirling dervish drums of Souleymane Ibrahim and Moctar’s own fleet-fingered guitar licks ramming home the need for action.
“France veils its actions in cruelty / We are better without this turbulent relationship / We must understand their endless lethal games,” is the cry at the heart of ‘Oh France’, written, like the rest of the album, before the coup took place. For one of the world’s poorest countries to be so boldly and mesmerisingly represented on the world stage by a band so brazenly political and musically accomplished is a gift, and the band do not take their responsibility lightly.
‘Modern Slaves’ is the only track that reflects the mournful suggestion of the album’s title, its lament of choral voices accentuating a lyrical pain over music that is gently insistent and quietly furious.
More often, ‘Funeral For Justice’ is ablaze with energy. In an age of ten-a-penny Western garage rock bands, Mdou Moctar remind us of the heightened emotional power that footloose, searing guitar and rhythms can tap into when there is a genuine, urgent need for the musicians in question to pick up their instruments. They are not just doing this for fun – fun as it may be – but rather they are doing this because they feel they have to.
Album standout ‘Imouhar’ is a plea for the survival of the native Tuareg language Tamasheq, which is being spoken by ever-dwindling numbers. Moctar lets his inner rock god fly free, building solo upon skyscraping solo, each one more frantic than the last, until the whole monumental edifice collapses in on itself in a glorious crescendo.
The desert blues of Moctar’s predecessors lives and breathes inside him, not simply to be preserved and revered, but to be carried on into new, bolder pastures. At his band’s insistence on ‘Funeral For Justice’, the world will not just hear the glorious music of the Tuareg people, but they will understand their struggles, too.
Details
- Release date: May 3, 2024
- Record label: Matador
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