Nigerien guitarist Mdou Moctar plays Lagunitas Brewing today

Mdou Moctar has been called the “Jimi Hendrix of the Sahara,” but from his perspective, the Nigerien musician’s creative journey has been uniquely his own, rather than a response to other players.

“I wanted to make sure I was true to my own skills,” Moctar said, speaking in French through an interpreter. “My main influence was my native music.”

Moctar will play Monday at the Lagunitas Brewing company in Petaluma, following a week of sold-out shows in Arcata, San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles. With him will be band members Ahmoudou Madassane, Souleymane Ibrahim and Mikey Coltun. The Lagunitas show is currently marked as “Sold Out” on the website, but you can get a glimpse of the band’s style from the live-streamed concert “Mdou Moctar — Live in Niamey, Niger” on YouTube.

Moctar was born in the village of Tchintabaraden, Niger, and grew up in Arlit, a mining town.

“I was interested in guitar when I was very young,” he said by phone from Salt Lake City, a stop on his current U.S. tour. “I didn’t have access to a guitar, so I built one myself and started teaching myself to play, a little bit at a time.”

His first album, “Anar,” recorded in Sokoto, Nigeria, in 2008, was not officially released at the time, but the songs became popular when they went viral through cell-phone music trading networks.

“It is thanks to mobile phones that I am here today,” Moctar said. “The music spread by Bluetooth. I got no money from it, but it was a massive commercial for my music.”

The guitarist and composer has come a long way since then. Moctar’s sixth album, “Afrique Victime,” was released through Matador Records last year and received positive reviews from Rolling Stone and The Guardian.

His musical themes are love, religion, women’s rights, inequality and Western Africa’s exploitation at the hands of colonial powers.

Coltun, who lives in Brooklyn, is a relatively recent addition to the band and is the bassist and producer for “Afrique Victime.” To practice and record with the rest of the group, he flies 20 hours from the U.S., then takes a 28-hour bus ride to meet them in Agadez, Niger. Coltun recorded and produced the latest album“Afrique Victime” during the band’s travels in 2019, working in studios, apartments, hotel rooms, venue backstages and in field recordings in Niger.

Moctar’s crucial collaborator is Madassane, who’s been his rhythm guitarist since 2008. The band’s youngest member is drummer Ibrahim.

While some see a Van Halen influence in his work, Moctar dismissed that notion.

“I had never heard of Van Halen until 2016,” he said. “I was doing a concert in Portland, Oregon, and some friends showed me some Van Halen videos. I enjoyed it, but it was not an influence. At home, I don’t have the same Internet access you have in the United States, so I can’t say I have watched many videos.”

Moctar appeared in the short film “I Sing the Desert Electric in 2013” and starred in the 2015 film “Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai (Rain the Color of Blue with a Little Red In It),” an homage to Prince’s 1984 rock drama “Purple Rain.”