Noura Mint Seymali & Tal National to Perform at UCLA’s Royce Hall

Iconic Mauritanian musician Noura Mint Seymali and Nigerien band Tal National are set to perform UCLA’s Royce Hall on Saturday, March 5, 2016.

Noura Mint Seymali is a nationally adored star and one of Mauritania’s leading musical ambassadors. Born into a prominent line of Moorish musicians and oral historians, Noura began her career at age 13 as a supporting vocalist with her step-mother, the legendary Dimi Mint Abba.

Trained in instrumental technique by her grandmother, Mounina, Noura mastered the ardin, a 9-string harp reserved only for women.

Composer Seymali Ould Ahmed Vall, Noura’s father, sparked her compositional instincts. Raised in this transitive culture where sounds from across the Sahara, the Magreb, and West Africa coalesce, Noura Mint Seymali has become one of Mauritania’s most adventurous young artists. Her first full-length album for the international market, Tzenni (Glitterbeat), was in 2014.

By the time Tal National reached international acclaim with 2013’s Kaani, the band’s first release outside of Niger, they had spent more than a decade traveling throughout their native country, usually on dirt pathways through the Sahara, playing epic five-hour sets, seven days a week, selling their CDs on street corners and roundabouts. In the process, they became Niger’s most popular band, with songs constantly broadcast on national TV and cell phones everywhere.

Following FatCat’s release of Kaani, Western audiences and critics quickly embraced the band. FatCat released the follow-up, Zoy Zoy, in April 2015.

Ticket Information

General tickets are available at cap.ucla.edu, all Ticketmaster outlets, by phone at 310.825.2101 or in person at the UCLA Central Ticket Office on campus.

March 4, 2016 Update: a CAP-UCLA press release indicates that due to travel complications, Tal National were not able to board their flight out of Istanbul and have had to cancel their U.S. engagements including their show at Royce Hall this Saturday, March 5. Noura Mint Seymali and her band will now perform a 90 minute set.