Noura Mint Seymali

Habibi Festival • Oct 11 & 15, 2022

Noura Mint Seymali is a nationally beloved star and one of Mauritania’s foremost musical emissaries.  Born into a prominent line of Moorish griot (West African praise singers, poets and musicians) Noura began her career at age 13 as a supporting vocalist with her step-mother, the legendary Dimi Mint Abba.  From a very early age, she was trained in instrumental and vocal technique by her grandmother, Mounina, mastering the ardine, a harp reserved only for women, and singing at weddings with family.  Seymali Ould Ahmed Vall, Noura's father, was similarly an important teacher, himself a seminal figure in Mauritanian music who devised the first system for Moorish melodic notation and composed many works popularized by his wife, Dimi.  Seymali sparked Noura’s compositional instincts and encouraged her earliest experimentations with fusion music.  Reared in this rich and transitive music culture where sounds from across the Sahara, the Magreb and West Africa coalesce, Noura Mint Seymali currently drives the legacy forward as one of Mauritania's most adventurous young artists. 

Fueled by the exploratory sound of her husband Jeich Ould Chighaly’s emotive psych guitar lines, Mauritania’s premier bassist Ousmane Touré, and drummer/producer Matthew Tinari, her band conjures "a full blown sandstorm of hypnotic grooves, melding traditional Mauritanian instruments within an electrified psychedelic rock band.” Expanding a sound born of Arab and Sub-Saharan roots, Noura Mint Seymali bends the arc of Moorish musical tradition to fit our contemporary moment, as described by NPR, “the arrival of Mauritanian vocalist Noura Mint Seymali in front of Western audiences feels like the start of a new era.”

Photo credit: Jacob Crawfurd