The Hendrix of The shara
When Mdou Moctar was 17, he decided he wanted his own guitar. There were just two obstacles. Firstly, the music he wanted to play was antithetical to the wishes of his strict Muslim parents. Secondly, growing up in Agadez, a town in the West African country of Niger whose main source of income stems from nearby uranium mines, guitars were hard to come by. So he did what any resourceful, rebellious teen should do: he built one.
“There was no internet, I didn’t even have a phone,” says Mdou, speaking from Niger via a French translator. “No
