Noura Mint Seymali - 2013 Lotus World Music & Arts Festival

Noura Mint Seymali was the opening act of the 2013 Lotus world Music & Arts Festival in Bloomington, Indiana. Seymali, and her husband guitarist, Jeiche Ould Chighaly, hail from two of Mauritania’s most prominent Moorish griot families, the storied class of musician-historians in West Africa. Located at the convergence of North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Mauritania bridges the cultural divide between the Arab world and Francophone West Africa, a convergence revealed most tellingly in the music of the griot.