At this point, Bombino — a.k.a. Omara Moctar, a Tuareg guitarist and singer-songwriter from northern Niger — is an old hand on the international scene. It was more than a decade ago that cassettes of his music circulated in the Tuareg communities clustered around the Sahara Desert. Ten years ago, he traveled to the U.S. to record a session (with The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, no less) and then start touring these shores as a sideman with a Tuareg band. But his career in the U.S. and Europe as a solo artist has been in full force for a while now.
Bombino's new album Azel is set to release April 1, 2016 via Partisan Records.