Music of Mauritania

Roots and traditions

Types of Mauritanian music

There are three "ways" to play music in the Mauritanian tradition:

Al-bayda - the white way, associated with delicate and refined music, and the Bidan (North African Moors) Al-kahla - the black way, associated with roots and masculine music, and the Haratin (Sub-Saharan Moors) l'-gnaydiya - the mixed or "spotted" way Music progresses through five modes (a system with origins in Arabic music): karr, fagu (both black), lakhal, labyad (both white, and corresponding to a period of one's life or an emotion) and lebtyat (white, a spiritual mode relating to the afterlife). There are further submodes, making for a complicated system, one to which nearly all male musicians conform. Female musicians are rare and are not bound by the same set of rules.