Born near the city of Agadez in 1980, Omar Moctar taught himself to play guitar listening to recordings of Jimi Hendrix, Dire Straits and Ali Farka Touré. He performed with various Nigerian bands and was given the nickname Bombino as he was always the youngest.
In 2006, he travelled to America where he had the chance to record a desert blues version of the Rolling Stones classic Hey Negrita, written in 1976 by Jagger and Richards, alongside Ron Wood and Charlie Watts (to which Mick Jagger's harmonica track was added later). The track appears on the album entitled Stones World: The Rolling Stones Project Volume 2. In 2009, he released his first album with a Seattle-based record label. The following year, director Ron Wyman made a documentary about Bombino and also produced an album with him (Agadez). In 2013, Bombino released the album Nomad, which was recorded with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys in Nashville. In 2016, he recorded his next album, Azel, in Woodstock with Dirty Projectors frontman David Longstreth as producer (with some tracks featuring the Jamaican-inspired Tuareggae sound).
Bombino returned to Africa and his roots to record his most recent album, Deran, in Casablanca, singing in his native Tamasheq. His current world tour brings him and his band to Hungary for the first time.
Featuring:
guitar, vocals: Omara Moctar aka Bombino
bass guitar: Youba Dia
guitar, calabash, backing vocals: Illias Mohamed
percussion instrument: Corey Wilhelm