Country in West Africa. The former French colony, which achieved independence in 1960, has an area of 1,030,700 km2. The population of 2·58 million (2000 estimate) is composed of several peoples, most of whom are Arab-speaking Moors (Maures). These Moors, who call themselves the Beni Hasan, are mostly nomadic, descendants of Berbers who in the 11th century founded the Almoravide dynasty in Morocco, of Bedouin Arabs who arrived at a later date and of Africans. In the south, the Moors live in contact with sedentary settlements of Wolof from Senegal and Mbara (Bambara) from Mali, as well as with two other Mauritanian peoples, the Tukulor or Toucouleur (FulBe/Fulani group) and the Soninke (Sarakole).
Each of these peoples is subdivided into hierarchical castes, each caste often having its own characteristic musical activities. The common religion is Islam, which generally regards secular music, especially music for string instruments, as a somewhat disreputable form of entertainment. Nevertheless, hereditary classes of griots, professional musicians, who accompany themselves on string instruments, are found throughout Mauritania: the īggīw among the Moors; the gawlo and bambado among the Tukulor; and the gesere and diare among the Soninke. In the past, these griots depended on the patronage of chiefs and warriors and built up the reputations of their patrons and patrons’ ancestors by praising the family’s wealth and deeds. Thus they functioned as the historians of the various societies, and also as poets and buffoons. Today the griots can be employed by anyone, in return for numerous gifts, but their social status remains low.
It is important to distinguish the various musical traditions according to their folk or professional nature, the ethnic groups to which they belong and their origins – Arabo-Berber in the case of popular Moorish music, western Sudanic in the case of other groups (Tukulor and Soninke), of whose music, however, little is known.
MICHEL GUIGNARD (1–2), CHRISTIAN POCHÉ (3)
Each hierarchical group of Moorish society has its own musical practices in which it is possible to distinguish traces of the different cultural components.
The music of the nobles and their white tributaries is primarily vocal and performed chiefly by women who sing in groups for their own diversion, accompanying themselves on percussion instruments. In their simple repetitive songs, soloists’ verses alternate with choral refrains within a limited vocal range. Girls of noble family also practise the custom of singing solo love-songs at night to their lovers.
The black tributaries have a musical style of their own, in which the songs are also responsorial and are sometimes accompanied by the zawzāya, a rim-blown flute, or the neffāra, a side-blown flute; they are performed at festivities in the course of animated dancing, or on Thursday evenings in praise of the Prophet.
The gambra, a single-string plucked lute, and the rabāb, a single-string fiddle, are usually played by soloists before a small audience of friends; these instruments are distinctly western Sudanic in manufacture and manner of performance.
Percussion instruments are used both by the tributaries and by the freed peoples. The tabl, a large kettledrum, and hollowed gourds are found throughout the country. Utensils such as upturned basins, millet mortars covered with skin, and tea chests may also be used. Only the freed peoples in the east of Mauritania use other kinds of drum.
The īggīw, professional musicians who hand down their skills from father to son, have cultivated an original musical tradition that shows both Arabo-Berber and western Sudanic influences. Traditionally the īggīw were the familiar attendants of noble warriors and especially emirs; they defended the honour of these patrons and their people through songs, and encouraged the warriors in combat. The music of the īggīw was also the most prized form of entertainment in the emirs’ camps, with interludes reserved for dancing and poetic competition; they attended all festivities. They were the objects of both adulation and scorn, and considered to be as cowardly and grasping as their noble patrons were brave and generous.
As a result of contact with other forms of music, however, these traditional musical activities are changing. The modern īggīw repertory includes songs that are Middle Eastern in character and others that are simple enough to be taken up in chorus by young audiences. Some īggīw are endeavouring to ‘modernize’ local melodies and to establish orchestras, whereas traditional music was originally performed by only a few musicians often acting as soloists.
The music of the īggīw is based on a highly sophisticated modal system which derives from Greco-Arab music theory. It comprises five modal complexes, which should always be played in the order karr, faaġu, lakhal, labyad, lebtayt. Omissions are possible, but it is not permissible to reverse the order or to return to a dhar (mode) previously heard. Each modal complex consists of various individual modes that are related by their scale, generally with a pentatonic basis. All these scales have a single common tonic which must not change during performance. Each modal complex has its own ethos: faaġu corresponds with the excitement of fighting or dancing, labyad with sadness and lebtayt with nostalgia.
The individual modes in each group are differentiated from each other by stressing certain degrees of the scale, adding particular ornaments or notes, or emphasizing specific intervals. A distinction is made between lakhal (‘black’) modes, in which importance is given to degrees forming dissonant intervals with the tonic, and labyad (‘white’) modes, which have simpler modal structures, and in which all the degrees of the scale are equally important. ‘Blackness’ renders the ethos of a modal group more forceful and tense, while ‘whiteness’ softens and embellishes it. Thus ‘black’ faaġu, which stresses the 2nd degree of the scale (d') as well as the interval b'–d'' (see ex.1), incites to combat; while ‘white’ faaġu, which reposes on the tonic (c') and stresses successively each degree of the scale (see ex.2), incites to dance.
The Moors believe that this classification can be applied to all kinds of music and even to all natural sounds. There is, however, a series of intermediate stages between the black and white modes. When a musician performs a modal group, he must always move from blackness to whiteness: he begins with an introduction, which is typically black and whose rhythm is generally not measured; then he plays a series of eŝwaar (measured pieces) that mix in various proportions black, white and zzraag (‘spotted’) melodic formulae. At the end, he plays an introduction to the white mode; the pieces that follow must be entirely white. This sequence will allow for omissions, but never for a reversal of order.
The introduction and eŝwaar are composed on melodic and rhythmic motifs called raddāt, which are either traditional or invented by the performer. Each part of this sequence is associated with a certain type of poetry. Quatrains with a specified metre and rhyme scheme are sung in the eŝwaar; in the introductions, more complicated poems are sung on subjects and in metres that match the particular ethos of the mode. Karr, for example, is a suitable mode for praising the Prophet and for religious poems, black faaġu for praising princes and for martial poems, lebtayt for nostalgic poetry. All these modes have kept their traditional character except lakhal, which has begun to be reserved for ‘modern’ compositions, generally inspired by music from the Middle East, so that it has lost most of its former characteristics.
The only traditional instruments used by the īggīw were the tidīnīt, a plucked lute played by men, and the ardīn, a harp played by women (see illustration).
The tidīnīt has four strings: two long ones on which the melody is played, and two short, which provide a fixed accompaniment. Certain musicians from eastern Mauritania, however, use three or four accompanying strings. The soundboard is made of skin, and the unfretted neck allows for abundant ornamentation. It is an instrument ideally suited to art music.
The number of strings on the ardīn varies from ten to 14. They are tuned to the principal notes of the mode (usually pentatonic); other intervals cannot be played, nor can glissando ornaments. Consequently its music is more restricted than that of the tidīnīt, and it is less easy to distinguish between the black and white modes of the same modal complex. Musicians sometimes tap the soundboard of the ardīn, adding a percussive element to the melody.
Other features of the two instruments further differentiate their repertories. The lutenists are able to play the series of modal complexes in two different ways (once again distinguished as black or white), but it is not possible to make this distinction on the ardīn. When a mode is performed ‘in the black way’, the tonic is the lowest note of the range, whereas ‘in the white way’ (the plagal version of the black way) it falls in the middle of the range. The fixed accompaniment is also different for each of these two ways, as well as for an extension of the black way, called gnaydiiya. It should be noted that the ‘way’ is never changed during a performance.
The lutenists distinguish two white modes in the groups karr and faaġu, whereas the harpists have only one. Here again, the īggīw differentiate these modes by the fixed accompaniment associated with each mode and by the location of the tonic in the range.
With the birth of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania in 1960, there has been a noticeable weakening of the griot art form in the new city of Nouakchott. The general Mauritanian public have for long known nothing about griot high cultural music traditions, since such music was written for the nobility; griots flattered and praised the nobility while ignoring the rest of the population. Music of the griot began to disseminate to the mass public in the 1960s, first by radio broadcast (Radio Nouakchott was founded in 1961), then through a series of concerts given by the griots at the Maison de la Culture in Nouakchott and elsewhere, and finally on television. Although the Ministry has declared its official protection for this music, a serious problem is likely to arise. The art form called azawan (‘of the connoisseur’) is threatened due to its difficulty and incomprehensibility. The meaning of azawan has been transformed and is now pejorative.
The griot is now urged by the public to be more accessible to the people and to update their repertories, that is to introduce new motifs, forms and melodies that are more accessible and appealing in order to enable Mauritania to share in the great popularity of music elsewhere in the Arab world. New terms for ‘song’ were introduced around 1988: ughniya or loughniya ilmuritaniya (al-ughniya al-mūritāniyya, ‘Mauritanian song’). There are, however, groups of musicians who refuse to conform, forming a strong group of traditionalists. Sidaty Oul Abba, for example, has attempted to update the poetic content of his songs without changing the musical rules. In contrast, others such as Seymali Ould Hemed Wall, son of the great Mennina Mint Aliyen, began his career by fiercely defending his ancestors’ art but now feels that it is time to open up and renew the musical genre, by bringing it closer to Arab music traditions and moving further away from the traditional music of the griots.
Thus, poetic texts such as those by the Syrian poet Nizār Qabbānī, particularly prized by the people of Nouakchott, are identified with a circle of reformers. Seymali Ould Hemed Wall exchanged the tidīnīt lute for the Arab ‘ūd, and was the first to introduce officially this instrument into the Mauritanian musical scene. Another technical innovation included structural modifications to the tidīnīt; Bouh Ould Mohamed Ali changed the instrument from two double strings to five in 1981. In addition, the popularity of acoustic and electric guitars led to their integration into the local instrumentarium from about 1975. The guitar is considered to be a superior kind of tidīnīt that has adapted to changes and thus functions as a renovated tidīnīt and not as a foreign instrument with a foreign technique. This instrument is always played by men. With the arrival of the guitar, other instruments were introduced to Mauritania, such as the saxophone, synthesizers and drums.
At the Lagos Festival of 1977, where Mauritania offered an impressive performance of all its ethnic musics, a clear line of demarcation was apparent between tradition and reformist griots. Among the most prominent representatives, the griot Malouma Mint el Meydah felt that this renewal of Mauritanian music could come only from the acknowledgement and approval from abroad, in particular at the Carthage Festival in Tunisia, where she appeared in 1988. On the other hand, her colleague Dimi Mint Abba, perhaps the best-known griot in Europe in the late 1990s, is only moderately in favour of this renewal.
This shift is also taking place at the level of the transmission of tradition. Griots now succeed one another within families; individuals of both genders are called to become musicians, whether they are gifted or not. In the context of the young republic, the question arises whether the profession of musician should be strictly limited to the griot or enlarged to include all those who aspire to it. During the 1990s, this debate has become the cornerstone of the country’s musical future. The polemic that has arisen is gradually eroding the traditional monopoly, and traditional griots are now obliged to give ground.
Mauritania took part for the first time in the 6th Congress of the Academy of Arab music held in Tripoli in 1979, resulting in varied reactions that reflected the power of globalization and of the media. The classic image of the griot as practitioner and preserver of a scholarly art, sometimes hermetic, but in any case significant, has completely changed as a consequence.
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