Mdou Moctar Shares Hot New Concert Film Shot at a Palace in Niger and Featuring Camels: Watch

Mdou Moctar, the musician who leads the band of the same name, is an absolute guitar shredder and a true road dog who has earned a reputation as one of the best live performers on the indie rock circuit. But American indie rock is not the tradition from which Moctar comes. Moctar is originally from Niger and a giant in the Tuareg desert blues world. For a while, Moctar and his bandmates were banned from returning to Niger because they were on tour during a violent military coup. Now, Moctar is the subject of a very cool concert film, which was shot in his homeland.

Last year, Mdou Moctar and his bandmates returned to Niger to record Funeral for Justicethe excellent album they released earlier this year. While there, they filmed a 47-minute concert film called The Agadez Folders: Live At Sultan’s Palace. The title is literal. Catch Mdou Moctar performing live at the King’s Palace in downtown Agadez. Their audience includes traditional dancers, swordsmen and people on camels. It looks amazing and is a very different way to experience Moctar’s music.

This is how bassist Mikey Coltun, the American from Mdou Moctar’s band, describes the ad hoc filming:

In Mdou Moctar, it is not uncommon for well-laid plans to fall apart at the last moment. For example, this happens very often with canceled flights. Maybe one of us doesn’t get a visa to travel somewhere in time. Maybe not all of us. Maybe someone at the Niger embassy puts the visa sticker on page #1 – you know, that important page that has all your personal information, like your name or birthday. As a result, we’ve all become good at reacting and maneuvering and adapting an initial plan into something… even better!

When we arrived in Agadez in the winter of 2023, the first thing we did was to walk around together and discover locations. I went up to a small building overlooking the famous Agadez Mosque and said, “Okay, we’ll shoot here when the sun comes up.” Another idea was to shoot under a well-known bridge that connects the road from Agadez to Arlit — “Let’s put a generator and play here! The kids will love it.” There were two examples that didn’t end up happening because either it wasn’t allowed or I overslept. This is where the creative part comes in.

On our way to shoot at a location in the bush, Mdou suddenly stops the car to talk to a guy walking some camels. They exchanged numbers. Unbeknownst to me, Mdou was planning for 50 camels to appear at the palace of the King of Agadez, where the famous Agadez Mosque is located.

This was an idea we discussed, but like some of our other concepts, we just said “cool” and assumed it would fall through.

On our last day together in Agadez, we showed up at the Sultan’s palace, settled in, and then waited a few hours. Will the show happen? Perhaps a few hours later, 15-20 men appeared on camels. I didn’t count because I was so shocked that Mdou was able to pull it off — naming this random guy I met in the desert with some camels, who then made some calls to get a bunch of Tuaregs ( the youngest was probably 5 years old ) to travel from their village 3-5 hours away to be there for this special performance! Holy shit.

When we started to sing, Tuaregs dressed in traditional Agadez clothes, armed with hand drums, started dancing and beating drums. There were even some friends of ours who showed up with some swords and performed a traditional dance together while we played. All of this was totally unplanned. Mdou, Ahmoudou, Souleymane and I all wear the Mdou Moctar signature colors – Tuareg purple mixed with white, which is the same color as the Mdou Moctar bird symbol.

Watch the video below.

Funeral for Justice is now on Matador. Mdou Moctar is the subject of a recent New York profile from Stereogum contributor Hanif Abdurraqib; I can’t wait to read it.