Noura Mint Seymali – Arbina (Glitterbeat Records, 2016)
I remember looking at the photograph of Noura Mint Seymali on the cover of the 2010 Glitterbeat Record release of Tzenni. Posed with her ardin or four stringed lute, Ms. Seymali possesses this little mysterious smile and an I-know-something-you-don’t-know twinkle in her eye. Then I listened to this remarkable Mauritanian griot singer, musician and songwriter and I knew what that smile and twinkle meant – this woman it utterly kickass.
Wrapped up in Moorish musical traditions, draped in desert blues and ornamented in some psychedelic rock, Ms. Seymali’s sound is razor sharp and savagely hip. So it must be that all the music junkies out there are jumping for joy because Glitterbeat is set to release Ms. Seymali’s upcoming Arbina on October 14th. I can admit that after I received my own advance review copy and gave it a listen it’s powerful, mesmerizing and utterly righteous.
Vocals belted out against a backdrop of the kora-like ardin, searing guitar licks offered up by Ms. Seymali’s husband and fellow griot Jeiche Ould Chighaly, thrumming bass lines by Ousmane Toure and rocking drums by Matthew Tinari, who is also the recording’s producer, puts Arbina squarely in the wickedly good section of desert blues/rock genre.
From the opening title track “Arbina,” Ms. Seymali and company savage out a sound that’s hypnotic and intensely satisfying. Comprised mostly of praise songs in the griot tradition where poetry and praise go hand in hand, Arbina sets us poor listeners on a path of fierce guitar laced grooves as in “Na Sane” and “Suedi Koum.”
Tracks like “Richa” and “Ya Demb” seems to shimmer up from the very earth they are that good. If that’s weren’t enough, tracks like “Ghlana,” “Soub Hanak” and the richly lush “Ghizlane” thrum with all the power of the ancient griots.
Arbina is fiery and ferociously cool. Arbina no doubt will earn Ms. Seymali another Best Female Artist in North Africa award from AFRIMA (All Africa Music Awards) to go along with the one she earned in 2014. Well earned, indeed.
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Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
