Desert Rock Legend Bombino Talks Surviving War and Sharing the Stage With Robert Plant Ahead of Dec 12 Yugong Yishan Gig

Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors. These are but a few of the rock stars with whom Bombino has collaborated or shared the stage. And while he has yet to attain their fame, the Nigerien troubadour would surely become a household name if Hollywood ever made a film about his life.

The highlights of his harrowing and eventually triumphant journey include: fleeing to neighboring Algeria with his family, as members of their fellow Tuareg minority rebelled against the Nigerien government; teaching himself to play the guitar while living as a refugee; showing so much promise that top Tuareg guitarist Haja Bebe became his mentor; continuing to perform even after the government banned guitar playing as a dissident act, and two of his musician friends were executed; starring in a documentary and releasing his critically acclaimed album Agadez; being invited by Auerbach to work on a new album, Nomad, in Nashville; and headlining a cathartic concert in his hometown of Agadez to celebrate the resolution of the region’s conflict. This singularly inspiring troubadour tells us about all that and more ahead of his Dec 12 gig at Yugong Yishan.

Just how significant was it to have renowned Tuareg guitarist Haja Bebe as a mentor?
He was like a father to me in the first years of my career. He was a very kind and soft-hearted man, and he had an incredible knowledge of both traditional Nigerien and Western music. He brought me into his band as the lead soloist even though I was so young and inexperienced. This gave me a lot of courage that I have carried with me throughout my career.

After that, your government deemed guitars to be tools of dissent. You once said that crackdown inspired you to “see my guitar as a hammer with which to help build the house of the Tuareg people.” Tell us more about that.
I am merely walking the path that was laid out for me. I am not an educated man and I have no other skills that I can really use professionally. So all that I can do is to play music and direct my efforts with music toward the goals that I wish to see achieved for the Tuareg people, for Niger, for all of humanity.

What did you love most about working with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys?
He would have an idea, like “I know! We need a lap steel on this song!” or something very strange and foreign to me. And, within a few minutes, someone would be there recording something wonderful on my song. I had never been in a proper music studio before, forget about a situation like this where we could have anything we could imagine. That was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Since then, you’ve been an opening act for superstars like Robert Plant. What was that like?
I had listened to Led Zeppelin since I was a child, but I had not heard of Robert Plant or any of his music outside Led Zeppelin. He is an older guy now, but still very cool. You can tell he has lived a very complicated life just by shaking his hand and looking at his face. To share a stage with him was an honor I can never forget.

Tell us about headlining the concert in Agadez and celebrating the end of the conflict.
I cannot describe the feeling of joy and of pride that I felt in playing that concert, to signify the return of the free Tuareg people to Agadez. I can remember that everyone came, even from surrounding towns, and the party lasted well into the early morning and we could see the sun rising. There is no feeling like a return to a home from which you were banished. We did not know if we would ever see our home again. To this day I get emotional thinking about this, and tears begin to form in my eyes. 

Bombino will perform at Yugong Yishan on Dec 12 at 8.30pm. Tickets are RMB 120. For more information, click here.

This article first appeared in the Nov/Dec 2017 issue of the Beijinger.
Read the issue via Issuu online here, or access it as a PDF here.

More stories by this author here.
Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
Twitter: @MulKyle
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Photos courtesy of Split Works