From Tchirozérine to Agadez, a patient meditation on love, endurance, and the cyclical pulse of Tuareg guitar ahead of the forthcoming album Tartite.
On January 30, 2026, Niger Delta blues guitarist and vocalist Moussa T, the youngest new addition to the lineage of Tuareg artists Mdou Moctar and Bombino, and now playing with the legendary Tiarawan Band, released “Halas Halas,” the first of three singles leading up to his full album Tartite on Mixto Records.
The phrase “Halas Halas” (Arabic: خلاص) carries weight. It can mean “stop,” “I’m done,” “enough,” “it’s over,” “that’s it,” or even nonverbal sighs of frustration and resignation. In this song, it becomes both lament and release. A love song of unrequited love, utilizing the languid guitar-led melodies, influenced by the tempo and tones induced from hot Niger Delta blues.
I first saw Tinariwen perform at The Big Chill festival, a gone-too-soon but fabled, alternative music festival for art, live bands and crossover global acts on the grounds of a stately castle in Herefordshire on the Welsh border. That year I took my two small children. We flew all the way and camped with over 1000 others for three days and experienced a program of global electronic music as far as one could go away from Timbuktu. If sound transports the soul, then the desert blues of Mali always takes me back to a road trip with Tuareg nomads from Ouagadougou to the Mali border, with an overnight in Ouahigouya. Sleeping in the back of an open cab on a dusty one-lane highway with nomadic hosts who were most interested in including me in some sort of harem, which I politely declined, but I wanted to spend more time with the music and the mint tea. Since then they have swapped out guitarists, bassists, drummers from family members and friends to continue the legacy that is now solid.
So when I got an email from his publicist and caught up with Moussa via Zoom, I knew it would be touch and go. Whenever I have a Zoom call scheduled it’s always touch and go, a treacherous landscape for a call between Malawi and Niger, but we were brave enough to try anyway in between being frozen and cutting out. He was able to sing me his love song right there and this is what he said.
I was speaking of the bond that unites us —
not the wound that divides us.
My heart wept
for the absence of the one I loved,
the one who left.
Halas, Halas…
I endured.
I accepted destiny.
In my patience,
I found myself loving again —
a new hand to hold,
a new beginning to believe in.
I tried to forget,
to erase the shadows,
to start again from the first heartbeat.
And still… I returned,
offering her my feelings once more.
Halas, Halas…
I belonged to her again.
They promised me the best.
I promised her my truest love.
Halas, Halas —
This is the love story I lived.
Moussa gifted me a solo acoustic performance over the Internet. The line was so bad that day between Malawi and Niger that I caught only fragments of the song, but his strong presence was as clear as day. We might have to do that again one day, but today I’m excited to share the latest song from Tuareg guitarist and vocalist Moussa T, “Halas Halas.”
Born in Tchirozérine, just 45 kilometers from the musical hub of Agadez in the heart of the Sahara, Moussa began secretly learning the electric guitar at seven years old, forging his path as a young prodigy. As part of a musical family, with his younger brother now serving as his drummer, he was guided by the talents around him, including celebrated musicians such as Bombino, whom he watched perform at weddings in Agadez. In the nomadic Tuareg world, where musicians are storytellers and keepers of culture, and where the lifestyle makes artists reliant on mini-concerts to sustain themselves, Moussa plays almost every week, mostly on Saturdays at weddings, parties and festivals in Agadez and the surrounding regions, sometimes even across the border in Algeria and Nigeria. These small yet powerful concerts are essential for both cultural continuity and economic stability.
“Halas Halas,” recorded at ROP Studio in Agadez and later mixed in the United States, centers the guitar as a symbol of cultural identity. The repetition of riffs recalls endless spaces and timeless sounds, the distraction-less desert. The polyrhythmic syncopation effortlessly lulls you into surrender to heat, dust and sky. Moussa delivers a refrain that will likely find its share of remixes before the year is out, but the strength of the song lies in its restraint.
As part of the new generation there is no telling where Moussa T’s music will land. He is adamant about making it to America, but there is already a whole world out there now waiting to meet him in the desert.
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