In 2021, Mdou Moctar told Rolling Stone, “My music is going to become more inspired by revolution.” That promise was truth in advertising. For more than a decade, the Tuareg guitarist/singer-songwriter, who fronts the band that shares his name, has been staking out a space as a radical guitar innovator as well as a fearless spokesman for his strife-riven homeland of Niger. As he asks in Tuareg on the opening track on his band’s excellent new LP, Funeral for Justice, “Dear African leaders, hear my burning question/Why does your ear only heed France and America?” His band’s swarming attack and his searing solos turn that position-paper directness into a rousing call to arms.
Moctar has been making his own revolution since he was a kid, fashioning his first guitar out of spare household items in defiance of his strict parents’ anti-music edict. On albums like 2019’s Ilana (The Creator) and the 2021 breakthrough Afrique Victime, he and his band combined the earthy, ethereal guitar fire of Tuareg music with Moctar’s Stratocaster pyrotechnics, which can plausibly bring to mind Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and his early influence, Eddie Van Halen.
Funeral for Justice is the band’s most forceful album yet, tailor-made to melt minds at massive festivals. “Imouhar” opens with rippling guitars and call-and-response, rendered with a low-fi distance, before the sound becomes brighter and bigger, and rhythm guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane, drummer Souleymane Ibrahim, and bassist Mikey Coltun provide a charging, circular backing for Moctar’s clarion shredding. “Tchinta” opens with Moctar’s voice echoing like a herald over a chasm of prescient distortion, before the band takes off at a gallop. “Sousoume Tamacheq” starts with dense feedback worthy of Sonic Youth, then bursts into overdrive, with Moctar’s guitar pushing out dense clusters of frenetic notes over the band’s relentless precision.
Funeral for Justice is full of anti-colonial and anti-corruption declarations; “France’s actions are frequently veiled in cruelty/We are better off without its turbulent relation,” Moctar offers on “Oh France,” which manages to feel sprawling yet dramatically urgent. “Imajighen” is a call for African solidarity that fittingly stays closer to home musically in its acoustic desert-blues beauty. “Modern Slaves” closes the set with a plea; after mostly blasting away for the entire album, the band locks into a steely yet somber, mainly acoustic groove as it demands answers from the global powers that be: “Oh, world, why be so selective about human beings/My people are crying while you laugh,” with Moctar’s voice — and his ax — lighting us toward a freer tomorrow.
Anika Nilles of Rush performs onstage during the 2026 JUNO AwardsCindy Ord/Getty Images
