[Mauritania]'s largest ethnic group is the Moors. In Moorish society musicians occupy the lowest caste, iggawin. Musicians from this caste used song to praise successful warriors as well as their patrons. Iggawin also had the traditional role of messengers, spreading news between villages. In modern Mauritania, professional musicians are paid by anybody to perform; affluent patrons sometimes record the entertainment, and they, rather than the musicians themselves, are then considered to own the recording. Moorish Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I of England The Moors were the medieval Muslim inhabitants of al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula including present day Gibraltar, Spain and Portugal) as well as the Maghreb and western Africa, whose culture is often called Moorish. ...

Instruments

Traditional instruments include an hourglass-shaped four-stringed lute called the tidinit and the woman's kora-like ardin. Percussion instruments include the tbal (a kettle drum) and daghumma (a rattle). The lute is a plucked string instrument with a fretted neck and a deep round back. ... Xalam, also called khalam, is a traditional stringed musical instrument from West Africa. ... Master Kora maker Alieu Suso in the Gambia The kora (French: cora) is a 21 string harp-lute used extensively by Mandingo peoples in West Africa. ... A percussion instrument can be any object which produces a sound by being struck with an implement, shaken, rubbed, scraped, or by any other action which sets the object into vibration. ... Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. ... A rattle is a percussion musical instrument. ...

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 (Moors of North African stock)
• Al-kahla - the black way, associated with roots and masculine music, and the Haratin (Moors of Sub-Saharan stock)
• 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. The Haratin or Harratin are an ethnic group in the Sahara. ... In music, a mode is an ordered series of musical intervals, which, along with the key or tonic, define the pitches. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require restructuring. ... For the Notorious B.I.G. Album, see Life After Death. ...

Musicians

In spite of the rarity of female musicians in Mauritania, the most famous Moorish musician is a woman, Dimi Mint Abba. Dimi's parents were both musicians (her father had been asked to compose the Mauritanian national anthem), and she began playing at an early age. Her professional career began in 1976, when she sang on the radio and then competed, the following year, in the Umm Kalthum Contest in Tunis. There seems to be a lack of Western infleunce. Dimi Mint Abba is Mauritanias most famous musician. ... The Mauritanian national anthems (Arabic: ‎) words are taken from a 19th-century poem by Baba Ould Cheikh; the melody was written by Tolia Nikiprowetzky, and was adopted upon independence in 1960. ... 1976 (MCMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday. ...

References

• Muddyman, Dave. "Ways of the Moors". 2000. In Broughton, Simon and Ellingham, Mark with McConnachie, James and Duane, Orla (Ed.), World Music, Vol. 1: Africa, Europe and the Middle East, pp 563-566. Rough Guides Ltd, Penguin Books. ISBN 1-85828-636-0