BOMBINO

Just named Breakthrough World Music album of the Year by iTunes!

Omara “Bombino” Moctar, whose given name is Goumar Almoctar, was born on January 1st, 1980 in Tidene, Niger, an encampment of nomadic Tuaregs located about 80 kilometers to the northeast of Agadez. He is a member of the Ifoghas tribe, which belongs to the Kel Air Tuareg federation. His father is a car mechanic and his mother takes care of the home, as is the Tuareg tradition. Bombino was raised as a Muslim and taught to consider honor, dignity and generosity as principal tenets of life.

The Tuareg, known amongst themselves as the Kel Tamasheq, have long been recognized as warriors, traders and travelers of the Sahara Desert - as a people of grace and nobility as well as fighters of fierce reputation. They are a nomadic people descended from the Berbers of North Africa and for centuries have fought against colonialism and the imposition of strict Islamic rule.

Bombino spent his early childhood between the encampment and the town of Agadez, the largest city in northern Niger (population about 90,000) and long a key part of the ancient Sahara trade routes connecting North Africa and the Mediterranean with West Africa. One of seventeen brothers and sisters (including half brothers and half sisters from both his mother and father), Bombino was enrolled in school in Agadez, but he demonstrated his rebellious spirit early on and refused to go. Bombino’s grandmother took him in to keep his father from forcing him to go to school, and, like most Tuareg children, he grew up living with his grandmother.

 MATT JENNINGS

Matt Jennings grew up in Pittsburgh mimicking hard rock guitarists as a kid. After moving to Minneapolis for college, he studied abroad in Mexico and later taught English in China. In Mexico, he was entranced by the sound of mariachi trumpeters and violinists practicing on the streets. And he learned the basic techniques of mariachi guitar firsthand from a man named Nacho. In China, he played in a live karaoke band and a Chinese hard rock band, while spending countless hours watching the South China Sea out his apartment window with a $20 Kapok guitar in his hands. After soaking in how these different cultures use rhythm and melody, and learning that essentially every note in the chromatic scale is free game in bebop, he transformed his melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic hard rock roots into something akin to an open-minded journey around the globe. Upon returning from abroad he hit the American music scene with his own brand of International Rock. Since then he has self-released two albums and toured the country extensively, sharing the stage with acts such as Zee Avi, Los Amigos Invisibles, The Beautiful Girls, Forro in the Dark, and his brother Mason Jennings.

THE DOGON LIGHTS (FEAT. MEMBERS OF HAMSA LILA)

DJ DRAGONFLY

$5 Svedka Cocktails all night!

"Snatches of Jimmy Page, Jimmy Hendrix and even Jerry Garcia can be heard in the sound Bombino creates. He’s definitely an artist to watch." - No Depression

"A great guitarist is like a giant vacuum that sucks you in so quickly you’re in a new place before you know it. Very, very few do that for me – Hendrix, Mark Knopfler and Tom Verlaine of Television did that in my early, formative music years – but Bombino (noticeably influenced by the first two on that list) has that strong transporting quality, as he demonstrated in his show Friday night at Higher Ground. One of the best guitarists I’ve ever seen in concert." - Burlington Free Press

"A rhythmically intricate lattice of propulsive licks, acid stabs, and snaking leads. Bombino's clenched, nasal singing perfectly complements the restrained, meditative music, leaping out of the hypnotizing grooves with the force of a spell caster's incantations." - Chicago Reader      

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