Mdou Moctar “J’ai Pas Le Choix“ | Live at Chicago Music Exchange | Sahel Sounds

Mdou Moctar performs “J’ai Pas Le Choix“ Live at Chicago Music Exchange from his album and the film of the same name Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) on Sahel Sounds. To listen to Mdou Moctar is to enter another world. First distributed through a secretive trade network of cellphones and memory cards in West Africa, the music of #MdouMoctar draws from a particular style of Berber music unique to the Tuareg, a nomadic people who occupy a vast swath of the Sahara desert stretching across Northern Africa from Burkina Faso to Mali, Algeria, all the way over to Libya and down through Moctar’s own Niger and into Nigeria. Moctar’s intoxicating sound is both deeply traditional and distinctly Western. It fuses limber, Middle Eastern-inspired melodies with raw and powerful riffs, shifting on a dime from complex West African rhythms into straight-ahead 4/4 rock beats that seem tailor-made for a drum kit or a calabash. This heady hybrid has a swirling, trance-like effect that’s only a few degrees removed from the absolute best American psych or prog rock. But Mdou himself insists, in the press release for his new album, Ilana: The Creator, out now on Sahel Sounds, that he has no idea what “rock” really is. He’s heard it, of course, and he really likes it, but what he loves is his music, and he only knows how to play it his way. Mdou and his band stopped in to show us just how that’s done in a rare acoustic performance. How did you get your start? When I was young, I sat around with the musicians and made the tea for them while they played guitar, figuring out how they play. In these times it’s an incredible challenge getting by making music, how do you make it work? I need to make people happy. That is my goal. When I see people at my concerts dancing and smiling that makes me very happy. Who were your major influences? Abdallah Oumbadougou was one of my first influences and now I really like Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, and Prince. What guides your playing style? My playing style comes from the traditional Tuareg music of Takamba - which is played on calabashes and ngonis. Read the complete Labor of Love: Mdou Moctar: Engineered and Mixed by Alex Chadwick Filmed by Andrew Tricaso, Evan Skorepa and Ryan Lodge Edited by Andrew Tricaso More Chicago Music Exchange: Instagram - Twiter - Facebook - Pinterest - Check out our Giveaways page to win gear! - #ChicagoMusicExchange #MdouMoctar #SahelSounds #CMESessions #J’aiPasLeChoix #Music