It takes less than fifteen minutes: Omara ‘Bombino’ Moctar has already played the dancing audience in a trance.
The guitarist from Niger – light purple shiny robe, flaxish mustache – starts shyly, twirling on his toes. But as soon as the drummer starts pumping a seemingly endless three-four time through the Patronaat concert hall in Haarlem, and the bass player and rhythm guitarist get stuck in the same chord, Bombino conjures up pure psychedelics from his instrument.
The guitar is the lifebuoy that turned him from a hunted desert nomad into a musical citizen of the world. Bombino’s brooding Tuareg rock and Saharan blues have been showered with praise since his 2009 debut. He was taken in tow by both a Rolling Stone (Keith Richards) and a Black Key (Dan Auerbach) and earned thanks to the New York Times the honorary title ‘sultan of shred’because of his ripping guitar playing.
It hasn’t made the lanky string prodigy any less humble. In Haarlem he does not say a word on Friday evening. He looks into the room as little as possible and tunes his guitar extensively before (and during) every song: then he has a good excuse to keep staring down.
The few lines of text that he laments with his eyes closed (about love, homesickness or the starry sky) are a necessary evil to be able to start the solo as quickly as possible.
When the room has already boiled, Bombino also starts to thaw
Bombardment
Then his long, thin fingers scream out. While the conjuring rhythm continues to bounce along at a gallop, the guitarist opens his soul. Without a pick, he strikes the strings, or draws his whole palm over it. This creates a constant bombardment of fleeting, short and scattered notes, which lack melodrama or grand gestures, but which are all the more hypnotic as a result. In that sonic expedition across the Sahara you start to wonder more and more: Are the sound waves moving forward or backward?
When the hall has long since boiled, Bombino also starts to thaw: after some uncertain connection steps, he starts to sway his hips more and more exuberantly. And when the drummer picks up the tempo and the audience starts to scream and shout ecstatically, Bombino throws in a Sahara polka: with his knees drawn up, he jumps from one leg to the other – all without missing a note. The white, triple-wrapped shawl swirls around his neck.
Haarlem may not be a desert, but it is very hot and a party. Humbly and in silence, the guitarist receives the cheer by placing his hand on his heart.
Also read an interview from 2016: Bombino, a desert nomad who makes reggae