BOMBINO at Measure (296 Brunswick), tonight (Thursday, November 28), doors 8:30 pm. $22-$25. TF.
The first time Omara Moctar picked up the guitar, he says his heart almost jumped out of his body.
He and his family had just fled Niger after a rebellion forced them to seek refuge in Algeria. Moctar spent his exile days watching YouTube videos of Jimi Hendrix and Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, idolizing the musicians, envious of their independence.
He started playing his cousin’s guitar, distilling chords and words into something that contrasted with his Saharan reality.
“To me the guitar symbolized freedom and power. I wanted to speak through it,” Moctar says in an email via translator.
After the rebellion cooled, Moctar eventually moved back to Niger and played guitar with local bands, learning traditional songs of the nomadic Tuareg tribes and developing a unique take on electric blues.
As his reputation grew locally, Moctar – who now plays under the moniker Bombino – caught the ears of the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, who, fittingly, first heard Moctar’s music on YouTube.
Produced by Auerbach in his Nashville studio, Moctar’s sophomore album, Nomad (Nonesuch), released this past spring, mixes modern rock – think psychedelic guitar licks and feedback – with elements of traditional Tuareg music.
For instance, he transforms metal drums and the ngoni (the wooden West African instrument thought to be a predecessor of the banjo) by modernizing the traditional rhythms. He also sings in his native language, Tamashek.
“I will often take a traditional vocal melody and put it to a more upbeat rhythm and then add rock guitar, bass and drums,” he says.
“In the end, it’s a balanced mix between the local and the foreign.”
Onstage, Moctar also fuses his influences. Backed by musicians decked out in desert headgear, he exercises the virtuosity of a modern rock star.
Despite their cultural differences, Moctar and Auerbach, who’s known to keep his studio full of racks and racks of vintage guitars, worked together seamlessly.
“When you listen to our music and don’t pay attention to what the words mean – he cannot understand my words, and I cannot understand his – the foundation is very deeply related. We are both playing the blues and rock, but just in our own particular way.”
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