When the Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar enters the screen’s frame for our interview, he gazes fondly at the small glass of green tea he’s holding. “We cook it, like, three times. I didn’t like the first, it’s so strong for me. I prefer number two and number three,” say Moctar of a Tuareg tea service’s successive steepings. “It’s so sweet, I love sugar.”
Moctar and band – rhythm guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane, drummer Souleymane Ibrahim and bassist Mikey Coltun; the band is named after its frontman but considers itself an egalitarian unit – have just released their seventh album. Titled, the album’s a blistering screed of political protest and mournful desert poetry cementing them in the upper echelons of guitar-based heavy music.
“The young generation think learning the French language is better than learning Tifinagh. If you learn French, you degree or masters. If you read just Tifinagh, you can’t get a job in our country,” says the 39-year-old Moctar, clearly distressed. “To see someone 20 years old write you something in Tifinagh? Impossible. If no one can write Tifinagh in the future, even our language is gonna go away.
“The Tuareg doesn’t care about the borders… we feel we are brothers. It’s difficult, the politics and the governments try to divide us, but we still push ourselves and push the younger generations to understand what is going on,” says Moctar.“We understand that we don’t have the power to break all those borders, but we have the power to keep our in our heart, share our feeling between us and try to make our community stronger than before.