'It’s A Stupid Idea To Try To Ban Music'

"I am definitely an ambassador for the Tuareg culture,” says Omara Moctar, the 35-year-old desert-bluesman who records as Bombino. With the release of his third Bombino LP, 2013’s Nomad – an album produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, and released on Nonesuch – Moctar knows he’s been given a stage on which to represent his people. Historical nomads of the Saharan, spread largely across Niger and Mali, Tuareg are stateless and oft oppressed. But, thanks to bands like Tinariwen, Tamikrest, and Etran Finatawa, their music – mixing ’70s-style guitar-rock with local modalities – has been heard, loudly, across the globe.

About to embark on his second tour of Australia (“this time I want to see some of the animals that everyone talks about”), Moctar has big plans for 2015. He’s set to tour more, in Australia and Europe, wants to start work on a follow-up to Nomad, for release early next year, and, ultimately, to inch closer towards his dream of opening a school for Tuareg music in his hometown of Agadez, Niger, hoping to further his culture both abroad and at home.

Where many musicians shy from carrying political or cultural burdens, Moctar sees his music as being indivisible from his heritage. “Who is not the result of their background, experiences and culture? Of course these are the foundations of everything that I am as a person and as an artist.”

Born on New Year’s Day in Agadez, Moctar was raised by a family of herders, but his “earliest memories were watching videos of rock stars and idolising them”. During the Tuareg Rebellion in 1990, his family fled to Tamanrasset, Algeria, where Moctar first heard the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Dire Straits, and started playing guitar. By 1997, he’d returned to Agadez, Niger, and formed his own band, dreaming of playing outside of the Sahara, but “never believ[ing] that it would actually be possible”.

That changed when globe-trotting label Sublime Frequencies released 2009’s Guitars From Agadez. The album was recorded in 2007, but came out when Moctar was, again, in exile; another Tuareg uprising leading the Niger government to ban guitars among the Tuareg people, and imprisoning and executing musicians.

“Of course music is very often used politically and even as an important part of a strategy of war,” Moctar says. “In the Sahara guitars are sometimes seen as weapons because a guitar can be more powerful than an AK47. Music has the power to bring a lot of people together in one place and to inspire them. Governments are often scared of musicians for this reason. However, I think in history whenever a government tries to suppress music it always ends up damaging them even more… It’s a stupid idea to try to ban music and rob it of its power that way, because every time it will only become more powerful.”