Mdou Moctar is a prodigious Tuareg guitarist and songwriter. Mdou Moctar boldly reforges contemporary Saharan music and "rock music "by melding Eddie Van Halen pyrotechnics, full-blast noise and guitar shredding, field recordings, drum rhythms, poetic meditations on love, religion, women's rights, inequality, and Western Africa's exploitation at the hands of colonial powers to rip a new hole in the sky with the Afrique Victime album.

Mdou Moctar's home is Agadez, a desert village in rural Niger. Inspired by YouTube videos of Eddie Van Halen's six-string techniques and traditional Tuareg melodies, he mastered the guitar, which he himself built, and created his own burning style. A born charismatic, Mdou went on to tell his story as an aspiring artist by writing, producing & starring in the first Tuareg language film: a remake of Purple Rain called Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai - which translates to "Rain The Color Of Blue With A Little Red In It", winning the approval of his family and his community. The word and the sound traveled across West Africa via mobile phone data cards, a popular form of local music distribution. Grueling DIY world tours and albums on the independent US label Sahel Sounds followed, including 2019's landmark Ilana: The Creator album that earned Mdou Moctar an ecstatic international audience.