Noura Mint Seymali
★★★★
Yenbett
GLITTERBEAT. CD/DL/LP
Mind-blowing desert blues from Mauritania.
Though it should have introduced him to a psychedelicised audience, Muddy Waters hated his 1968 LP Electric Mud, claiming the music had been so warped it was no longer the blues – you have to wonder what he would have made of the sound coming out of Seymali’s ardine, a Saharan gourd harp only played by women, ably (and noisily) backed up by Jeich Ould Chighaly, her husband, on guitar. It would be impossible to argue that these songs are not a form of blues – you can imagine a young Jimmy Page trying to figure out Moughadim Karr – but would the hard edge and transportive distortion rile Muddy? Primarily written to get people moving at weddings – with the album building in intensity until the last dancer standing ought to be fit to drop – it has both swing and a kick-the-doors-in aggression. This is Electric Sand.