Noura Mint Seymali, the desert-rock ‘Diva of Mauritania’, shines a light on an Afro-Futurist designer, the need to save the kidnapped girls in Nigeria and why she loves NYC
Noura Mint Seymali credit Joe Penney

Place
The energy in New York is just incredible. Everyone knows New York from the movies, but Times Square is actually very impressive at first sight. I was there for the first time in 2013 during our first US tour and then again this past January for a festival and to record tracks for Tzenni. I loved eating Yemeni food in Queens with Mauritanian friends, shopping at the Fulton Street Market in Brooklyn and running into people we’ve met over the years from all over the world. New York has so many different cultures, interesting people and great music. We’ve got to play all around the city at some different kinds of venues: Issue Project Room and Barbes in Brooklyn, Webster Hall on the Lower East Side and Silvana in Harlem. The crowds are always fantastic.

“Knowledge is a gift from God; when people try to suffocate it and impose violence, they can’t be said to be acting in the name of God.”
Cause
#bringbackourgirls is very important. As a mother, a woman and a muslim, I support education for girls and scholarship as an important part of Islamic tradition. Knowledge is a gift from God; when people try to suffocate it and impose violence, they can’t be said to be acting in the name of God. I have two daughters, both roughly the same age as those kidnapped in Nigeria. It’s horrible to imagine what their families must be going through. Kidnapping has absolutely nothing to do with Islam. Women have every right to education and it’s something that can actually expand and enrich their Islamic faith. The idea that this poses some kind of moral threat is bankrupt and absurd.

Musician
Jay Gandhi is an Indian flute (bansuri) player who we had the pleasure of collaborating with in Dakar in Senegal last year during the Asamaan Festival of Music and Astronomy. He really blew me away. It was fascinating to hear him integrate the bansuri with our music. Moorish tonality is quite complicated and it generally takes foreign musicians some time to get acclimated, but Jay was able to jump right in and contribute a very powerful new energy – a wonderfully reactive musician. The timbre of the bansuri itself was a beautiful discovery as well; the instrument creates almost a flying sensation. Since then, I’ve been following more Indian music. My children follow some Indian TV series and Bollywood films, so I’m always hearing the soundtracks in the house.

Magazine
Brownbook is a magazine based in Dubai that takes a broad view of the Middle East and the Arab World. They profile lots of artists from North Africa as well. The coverage is quirky and interesting, and the photography is always great. I’ve enjoyed listening to some of the mix tapes they’ve posted and seeing travel pieces on unusual places like Constantine, Algeria, where we played last year for Festival Djemila. It’s really cool to see a magazine look at the Arabophone world with such a wide scope and focus on emerging arts and culture. This isn’t typically the kind of coverage one sees of the region in the international news media.

Designer
Selly Raby Kane, aka Seraka, is a fashion designer based in Dakar, Senegal. She’s someone who’s consistently rethinking the concept of a runway show. Most of her recent work, like African Spaceship and Alien Cartoon at the 2014 Dak’art Biennale, had a heavy Afro-Futurist element to it. She’s working with some great dancers, musicians and doing installation art that really creates a whole stylistic atmosphere. SRK is part of a collective called Les Petites Pierres. We met while doing a concert at their space in Dakar last year and then collaborated with Les Petites Pierres for the cover art design on Tzenni.

Website
Okay Africa (okayafrica.com) is one of the more interesting channels for contemporary music, art, and fashion from all over Africa. I feel like they really make an effort to follow current trends in African culture. It’s maybe a bit heavy on South African house music and it can be slanted towards Anglophone audiences, but they always feature interesting up and coming artists in fun ways. The other okayplayer channels are all great too, especially okayfuture and Largeup, the Caribbean culture site, which has this great reggae mixtape feature every Monday called Mixtape Mondays. Each week’s post leads off with a cleverly edited image of a vintage cassette tape.

Noura Mint Seymali is a singer from Mauritania.
Her album Tzenni is out now on Glitterbeat Records.
Noura and her band are touring across the US in July, kicking off in NYC’s Central Park at SummerStage (July 5). She’s also playing alongside Aziza Brahim (Western Sahara), Tartit (Mali), Nabil Baly Othmani (Algeria) and more at the Sahara Soul event at the Barbican (www.barbican.org.uk) in London (UK – Sept 27). For more tour dates, see www.nouramintseymali.com