Hochman brings us Noura Mint Seymali, an artist from the country of Mauritania in North Africa which usually gets lost on the world music stage between heavy hitters like Mali, Algeria and Senegal.

But the music, rooted in the Moorish and Berber cultures, is as tied to the desert just as strongly as the sounds of the region’s Tuareg nomads that have gone worldwide in recent years. With the right artist and the right album, and the right timing, this music could take its place on the world stage. Noura Mint Seymali may be that artist, and her new Tzenni could well be that album. And the timing? Well, we’ll see.

She’s certainly got heritage on her side. Her father Seymali Ould Ahmed Vall was a composer and invented the first system of notation for Moorish melodies, a giant in Mauritanian music, as was her step-mother, singer Dimi Mint Abba, both teaming to bring new sounds and approaches to Moorish traditions with forceful vocals and stinging electric guitar. Noura Mint Seymali started out as a background singer for her step-mother as a teen. In time she became a star in Mauritania in her own right, but with this album she steps up in a way that could appeal well beyond her country’s borders.

The press material calls this an album about “shape-shifting, [with] faith and stability found through instability,” about finding permanence through change, all captured in the ancient spinning dance from which the album takes its title. The song “Tzenni” is a perfect representation of that, the frantic pace of the asawan — the instrumental combination of the traditional ardine harp and here the electric guitar played by husband Jeiche Ould Chighaly — and Seymali’s trill-filled, just-shy-of-shrill vocals, put over solid, even funky rhythms. But it’s the singing, the forthright attitude embodied, that is the real stable foundation here.

On the song “Tikifite,” a song often sung by and associated with her step-mother about a healing herb, the ardine and voice combination takes a lilting tone, the rhythm section playing almost like a pop ensemble, yet firmly planted in her homeland and cultural traditions.

Noura Mint Seymali will be performing July 24 in the Skirball Cultural Center's Summer Sunset Concert series.