Culture

In Moorish society, musicians occupy the lowest caste, iggawin. Musicians from this caste used song to praise successful warriors as well as their patrons, and had the traditional role of messengers, spreading news between villages. In modern Mauritania, professional musicians are paid by anybody to perform.

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).

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.