MDOU MOCTAR is the next-gen Desert Blues wiz with the Prince-like energy and film star charisma. But the Nigerien’s axe pyrotechnics might never have ignited without some bicycle brake cables and a sardine tin. “What’s this word, ‘psychedelic’?” he asks D

‘‘ IWAS IN THE DESERT MOUNTAINS IN SPAIN THE FIRST TIME I HEARD Jimi Hendrix. Was it 2014? It was a long journey and our driver put on Hey Joe. I was sleeping and suddenly I woke up. It nearly made me sick, just how incredible it was. At first, I thought it must have been a Tuareg playing because it was very similar… I didn’t know America had any musicians who were so talented.” Reclining against his bed, Mahamadou Moctar Souleymane, AKA Mdou Moctar, the hottest shredder in the Sahara, the Tuareg currently taking the desert blues deeper into space than anyone else has yet dared, is reminiscing quietly while children run freely around the room. Not his. This, he’ll explain, is standard Tuareg life wherever you are: if you go to someone’s place, make yourself at home, tea will be served and guitars produced.

Home is Agadez in Niger. Catch a flight to the capital, Niamey, via Paris, Istanbul or Casablanca; then grab a bus for the 28-hour drive into the emptiness. “It’s three to a seat,” says American bass player Mikey Coltun, who has just returned to New York after recording Moctar’s latest album, Afrique Victime in situ. “There are animals on the bus, people in the aisles. They fit a lot of luggage underneath and on the roof, but your bags and guitars are on your lap.” As you travel through the endless brown, keep an eye out for the site of the Tree of Tenéré, the world’s most remote tree and a rare clue to the Sahara’s previous life, more than 6,000 years ago, as woodland (sadly, said tree was mown down by a drunk Libyan lorry driver in 1973), and the Grand Mosque, at 90ft the world’s tallest mud minaret.

There’s not a great deal beyond Agadez. The uranium mines that make ownership of Tuareg territory hotly disputed in Niger. An American drone base, keeping an eye on insurgent

“I never could have dreamt what was to come”: Mahamadou Moctar Souleymane (centre) with band members (from left) Souleymane Ibrahim, Mikey Coltun and Ahmoudou Madassane; (inset, below) “I didn’t know America had musicians who were so talented.”