Description
“Seymali has forged a desert blues that is built for an urban environment – harsh, noisy and hard-hitting… her lyrics may have grown out of the rich poetry tradition of Moorish culture but the rhythms are designed for dancing.” — Mojo
Noura Mint Seymali’s 3rd album Yenbett (her first since 2016) is a stunning explosion of contemporary Mauritanian griot music, and once again confirms her status as one of the world’s most potent voices.
Co-produced by Matthew Tinari (Noura’s drummer) and Mikey Coltun (Mdou Moctar) the new album’s approach is both raw and experimental; capturing the band’s powerful in situ performances with taught clarity and adventuresome sonics.
Reflecting her influence, and the acclaim that she’s accumulated throughout her career, Seymali was recently honoured with the 2025
WOMEX Artist of the Year Award.
A voice, timeless as the desert, swirls up like the sirocco, drenched in cavernous reverberation, accompanied by the solitary, meditative swells of the ardine, an acoustic harp that dials in the fundamental frequency of Noura Mint Seymali’s music. A brief pause, and the same refrain returns, this time picked out on a heavily flanged electric guitar, grounded by thunderous drums and growling electric bass. And there’s that voice again – direct and urgent, careening off into wild ululations and refracted echo.
That’s the opening two tracks on Yenbett, the brand-new album by Mauritanian force of nature, Noura Mint Seymali. In just under four and a half minutes, these two versions of the song “Lehjibb” set the tone for what’s to come – a trance-inducing and ferociously evocative blend of ancient Northwest African musical tradition and searing, electrified Saharan future rock.
Noura Mint Seymali is a living embodiment of musical tradition. She hails from a family of musical visionaries: her father, Seymali Ould Ahmed Vall, was a renowned composer and scholar and her stepmother, Dimi Mint Abba, was a cherished singer and performer.
Seymali is a practising griot – equal parts poet, singer, musician, historian and cultural custodian – and a living embodiment of Mauritania’s tradition of Moorish griot music.
“The griot are highly respected lineages in our culture and are a source of social cohesion and social history that endures,” Seymali explains. “We are still a kind of mirror for society, reflecting back the social bonds and history to the people. It’s still the griot who are the artist celebrants of traditional weddings and ceremonies. And it’s still griot representing the culture as artist ambassadors.”
In this role, Seymali performs as a powerful vocalist with both a deep connection to the griot’s timeless repertoire, and an urge to create fresh, contemporary messages.
“I have songs about a wide range of topics: love songs, praise songs, songs for dancing, narrative songs. In our tradition, poetry from different sources can be stitched together in a performance. I start with a core of my own, there are lines that I write, others I quote or reference in the way a jazz musician might riff on another song in the tradition, but the composite is always a new creation and the cleverness with which a singer can synthesize poetry in a kind of musical mosaic is indeed a part of the artform.”
At the same time, she is also a virtuoso player of the ardine – a harp-like instrument, similar to the kora, that is found only in Mauritania.
“It’s unique to our culture and has a special place in my heart. It is played only by women. My grandmother, Mounina, first taught me to play. She was known for her singing and ardine playing and at one time was even pictured on the Mauritanian currency playing the ardine. I started playing as a child, taking lessons from her whenever I could. The sound and melodies it produces for me are so evocative of the desert and my homeland.”
Not content with mastering these traditional artforms, Seymali has also built a reputation as a fearless innovator, pushing the Moorish musical tradition into bold new areas.
On albums like 2014’s Tzenni and 2016’s Arbina, Seymali pioneered a modern, electrified version of the music with a rock sensibility. Now, with Yenbett, that sound is nailed down tighter than ever.
At the heart of it is the sinuous electric guitar playing of Seymali’s husband, Mauritanian axe-hero Jeich Ould Chighaly.
“My husband Jeich is the true rocker of the house,” laughs Seymali. “Sure, we heard Western rock music growing up to some extent and were exposed to it then and now. But also it’s important to note that Mauritanian guitar just rocks, entirely in its own right. It’s intrinsically connected.”
Rounding out the band are bassist Ousmane Touré, and on drums Matthew Tinari – an American who has resided in Senegal for many years. Tinari also co-produced the album, together with Mikey Coltun, best known as bassist with Tuareg rock pioneers Mdou Moctar.
It’s no surprise, then, that Yenbett smoulders with a languid fire comparable to the desert blues played by West African groups such as Mdou Moctar. Certainly, Seymali can see a connection between the blues and West African music. “It’s sewn from the same cloth,” she says.
Yenbett just might be the most vital and seductive articulation of desert psych so far.
Inspired by Seymali’s raw ardine and mesmerising vocals, Jeich’s spindly improvisations wander into far corners of the imagination, while the muscular rhythm section ranges from stumbling, Magic Band weirdness to heavy funk adventurism. Add in ecstatic vocal exhortations, timeless call and response choruses and rousing percussive handclaps and you’ve got an album that beguiles with a singular combination of the otherworldly and the thrillingly present. As each track on the record is woven together with experimental, associative one-minute interludes, a cohesive whole comes into focus, a desert mirage made manifest by Noura Mint Seymali’s singular sound.
It’s music with deep history, pointing towards the future. It’s an eternal African sound, made for now.
