Mdou Moctar w/ Janel Leppin at The Iron Horse on Thursday, February 6 2025

Tears of Injustice is Mdou Moctar’s Funeral for Justice completely re-recorded and rearranged for acoustic instruments. It is an evolution of the band’s critically-adored breakout – the meditative mirror-image to the blistering electric original. Here the songs convey the grief of a nation locked into a constant churn of poverty, colonial exploitation, and political upheaval. It is Tuareg protest music in raw and essential form. 

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A composer and cellist who’s honed a singular synthesis of composition, orchestration and improvisation, Janel Leppin is best known as half of the experimental duo Janel and Anthony, which she co-leads with her husband guitarist Anthony Pirog. The chamber-jazz Ensemble Volcanic Ash materialized after years of incubation on Washington D.C.’s verdant new music, jazz and improvised music scenes. With this release, she steps forward as a bandleader in her own right, delivering a gorgeous debut brimming with singular musicians. The seven-piece group melds an illustrious array of D.C. talent into a glimmering expressive organism that surges, expands, ebbs and dances in multiple directions at once.