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Tzenni

by Noura Mint Seymali

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Cassie R
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Cassie R This album got me curious about traditional Mauritanian music by mixing it with blues and psychedelic -- really something for everyone
Peter Hoff
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Peter Hoff How could anyone who loves music fail to be moved by this...who else could match Chighaly? Favorite track: El Mougelmen.
Art Fin
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Art Fin This is the most awesome rocking world beat album I have heard in a long time. Noura is a singer from Mauritania with a powerful voice that reminds me of a female Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Her husband accompanies her with blistering hot guitar riffing in a "desert blues" style. I mostly listen to post-punk and pop punk these days but the intensity of this 2014 LP is freakin' amazing. The vinyl LP looks and sounds great. I eagerly anticipate her new album "Arbina" due out in September of 2016. Favorite track: Tzenni.
Interospectre
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Interospectre "Arbina is a musical act of devotion" and thats what this artist embodies in a vibrantly passionate way that combines the vibe of band like Ishraqiyun / SC3 with blinding 'Azawan' style vocals like a psych/blues/female Nusrat fateh ali khan... really hope to see Noura live someday, pls come to PERTH!
SDHoneymonster
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SDHoneymonster Add Mauritania to the list of West African countries that just get music better than we do. Favorite track: Tzenni.
Philippe Switzerland
Philippe Switzerland thumbnail
Philippe Switzerland Discovered this AMAZING piece today...by chance!? WOW!!! Just love this groovy oriental mix of great music. Important detail: the recording quality is almost audiophile level....very clear and detailed stage....with powerful punch!
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  • Streaming + Download

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      €7.99 EUR  or more

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Heavyweight 180gm vinyl in a high quality gatefold sleeve. Includes a download code.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Tzenni via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      €17.75 EUR or more 

     

  • CD ALBUM
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Deluxe 6-panel digipak with a full-color 16-page booklet.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Tzenni via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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  • NOURA MINT SEYMALI CD BUNDLE

    Noura Mint Seymali's CD bundle Includes:

    - TZENNI CD
    - ARBINA CD

    Includes unlimited streaming of Tzenni via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • NOURA MINT SEYMALI LP BUNDLE

    Noura Mint Seymali's LP bundle Includes:

    - TZENNI LP
    - ARBINA LP

    Includes unlimited streaming of Tzenni via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

1.
Eguetmar 03:22
2.
Tzenni 05:15
3.
El Barm 06:04
4.
El Madi 03:11
5.
El Mougelmen 03:59
6.
7.
8.
Tikifite 03:35
9.
Char'aa 02:28
10.

about

TZENNI in Hassaniya means to circulate, to spin, to turn. It’s the name for a whirling dance performed to the music of Moorish griots, often under khaima tents thrown up for street gatherings in the sandy quartiers of Nouakchott and out across the wide deserts of Mauritania. Tzenni is an orbit, the movement of the earth around the sun, the daily progression of light and dark, lunar cycles, tides and winds. Tzenni, the dance, comes forth as the cyclical trajectory of a Moorish musical gathering builds to a fervorous pitch. It’s a word whose expansive valence reminds us how only the most basic reality can create such romantic metaphor.

Produced and recorded across an appropriately dizzying array of locations and social contexts (New York City, Dakar, Nouakchott) the album Tzenni is a contemporary articulation of Moorish griot music from Mauritania—an artform that has been evolving and gaining momentum for centuries—as voiced by Noura Mint Seymali, an artist profoundly steeped in its history and rigorously devoted to its global resonance.

Noura Mint Seymali comes from a long line of visionary musicians. Seymali Ould Ahmed Vall, her father, was a scholar-artist instrumental in opening Mauritanian music to the world; devising the first system for Moorish melodic notation, adapting music for the national anthem, and composing works popularized by his wife (Noura’s step-mother), the great Dimi Mint Abba. From her precocious beginnings as a teenaged backing vocalist with Dimi Mint Abba, Noura Mint Seymali now drives the legacy forward, re-calibrating Moorish music for our contemporary moment. Her band’s arrangements, rigor, and experimental spirit may be understood as a continuation of the tradition of Seymali, Dimi, her grandmother Mounina, and countless others.

Together with her husband, heroic guitarist Jeiche Ould Chighaly, who brings the force of yet another powerful branch of Moorish musical lineage, the band on this recording was conceived as a distillation of essential elements, the “azawan” and the backbeat. The ardine & tidinit (or guitar) together are the “azawan,” the leading ensemble of Moorish traditional music, while bass & drums, played here by Ousmane Touré and Matthew Tinari, fortify it with genre transcendent funk and a basic pop urgency. Tzenni re-visits several classics of the Moorish repertoire, but does so within a novel formation, conversant in the pop idiom, and with Noura Mint Seymali’s personal history interwoven throughout. The practice of aligning music to a given socio-historical and personal moment is an essential charge of the iggawen, or griot, and, we believe, of artists everywhere.

As we seek to convey another turn in the Mauritanian musical dialectic, Tzenni is ultimately an album about shape shifting, faith, and stability found through instability. It’s about taking the positive with the negative in a world that can only ever keep turning at break neck speed. We invite you to spin with us, to dance with us, through the music on this recording!


--Matthew Tinari: producer/drummer for Noura Mint Seymali

credits

released June 20, 2014

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