About the 'Sahel' album:
Guitar luminary + Tuareg folk hero Omara “Bombino” Moctar knows the nomadic life well. Being constantly on the road for his music while also perpetually on the move throughout the Sahel region of Africa is the norm. So when the pandemic brought the world to a screeching halt, Bombino found himself in an unfamiliar space: being in one place, in Niamey, capital of Niger.
This new collection of songs, entitled Sahel after the African region spanning East-West from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, is Bombino’s most personal, powerful, and politically minded work to date. It’s also his most sonically diverse, and one that is meant to directly mirror the complex tapestry of cultures and people that make up the Sahel region. He says, “The general plight of the Tuareg is always on my mind and while I’ve addressed it in my music all along, I wanted to give it a special focus on this album.”
Born in 1980 in the nomadic Tuareg encampment Tidene, Bombino (born Goumour Almoctar, aka Oumara Moctar) came of age during political upheaval, fleeing with his family to Algeria by 1990, teaching himself guitar by watching videos of his heroes Jimi Hendrix, Dire Straits, Ali Farka Toure and Tinariwen, and returning to northern Niger's largest city, Agadez, seven years later, when he took on music professionally. After years of honing his skills back home and spending time as a shepherd in Libya, he traveled to California in 2006 as lead soloist on tour with Tidawt. There he recorded a desert blues take on the Rolling Stones classic "Hey Negrita" alongside Keith Richards and Charlie Watts. The following year, filmmaker Hisham Mayet captured Bombino and his electric band for the recording Music from Niger: Guitars from Agadez, Vol. 2, released in 2009 on Sublime Frequencies.
As the political landscape heated up in Niger again in 2007, Bombino fled to Burkina Faso, where in 2009 he was tracked down by another filmmaker, Ron Wyman. Released in 2011, the record Agadez showcased Bombino's captivating vocals, his hypnotic, awe-inspiring guitar playing and evocative rhythms, cited as one of NPR's best discoveries of the year. For his second album, 2013's Nomad, Bombino travelled to Nashville to record with the Black Keys’s Dan Auerbach. Bombino went to upstate New York to record his third album, Azel, with his band and producer David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors. It was on Azel that Bombino introduced a new genre he dubs 'Tuareggae' - a blend of Tuareg guitar with reggae rhythm - to the world.
His next studio album, Deran, was recorded in Casablanca, Morocco in fall 2017 with just his band and his long-time manager, Eric Herman (who produced the album). A full-page feature in the New York Times dubbed Bombino 'The Sultan of Shred'. On December 7, 2018, Deran was nominated for a Grammy award (Best World Music Album), the first-ever Grammy nomination for an artist from Niger. Thousands of proud Nigeriens attended a parade to welcome Bombino home from the Awards.
His previous album, 'Live In Amsterdam' was recorded at a performance in November 2019 and released in November 2020 (Partisan Records). Bombino dedicated the album to his dear friend and bandmate Illias Mohamed who tragically passed away a few weeks before the release of the album. Regardless of the challenges life throws at him, Bombino marches ever forward on his mission to use music to spread love, understanding, and the beauty of Tuareg culture throughout the world.
