(This article was first published in The Boston Phoenix.)

Conservative, Muslim Mauritania, with its wealth of Arab, Berber (Amazight), Fulani and other African peoples, and its isolation from the changing ways of the world, is inherently vulnerable to an artist like Malouma.  All she has to do is harness the deep emotional  pull of the country's trancey, seductive desert music to its natural cousins, rock and blues, and then sing about modern themes--the goodness of love, the dignity and rights of women--and bang: you've got scandal, controversy, and a world music milestone all in one.  Of course, Malouma, was no ordinary singer to begin with.  The fact that she comes from one of Mauritania's most respected traditional music families has made her taste for blues, pop and civil rights more shocking at home, and more satisfying for listeners abroad.

After years of strict vocal training by her famous griot father, Moktar Ould Meidah, Malouma penned her first song at fifteen, and before she ever saw the lights of the capital, Nouakchott, star singers there were already performing it.  "In Mauritania," she said after a concert in Spain about a year ago, "all the artistic families are known.  If something comes from our family, people appreciate it.  They came to our village with tape recorders, recorded this song, took it to Nouakchott and sang it." 

Malouma was still a teenager when she hit the city herself and discovered international music.  The emotional timbre and slippery vocal melodies in American blues quickly became an obsession, in part because the music reminded her of traditional singing from the south of Mauritania.  Soon, Malouma began to imagine ways to blend this and other sounds with her traditional art.  "If Mauritanian music were worked on," she reasoned, "and well arranged, it could be much more interesting.  Because it's a music with blues origins, groove, and all that is needed is for artists to be more intelligent, more artistic in the way they arrange it and the messages they put in it."   All the clever arranging in the world would have come to nothing, though, had Malouma not possessed a staggering voice, both elegant and raw, miraculously connecting the finesse of a Middle Eastern classical/pop diva like Fairuz with the elemental grit of Janis Joplin.

Malouma's musical brew became more potent still when she left aside the clan histories traditional singers are supposed to concern themselves with and sang about AIDS, arranged marriages, and the evils of divorce, where men marry young girls, sire children and then abandon them to the streets as they leave in search of other young women to marry.  Such songs led to attacks on Malouma in the press, wounding her pride, but not dissuading her.  Unfortunately, on Malouma's first international recording, Desert of Eden (1998, Shanachie), producer Pape Dieng of Senegal stripped the traditional string instruments and ancient sensibility from her sound and fashioned bland, electronic pop, a result she was "not happy" with.  (Even her photo on the cover telegraphs awkward ambivalence.)  But her 2003 follow-up, Dunya (Marabi) redeems all in a set of twelve intriguing songs in which the dark, dry twitch of desert harps and lutes, and the slap of hands on skin drums, blend with electric guitar, bass, and layers of richly arranged vocals, always featuring Malouma's own spectacular instrument.

The slow, hypnotic 12/8 of "El Moumna" delivers a mystic vibe as the tap of high-pitched hourglass drum rubs against the low lope of bass and a booming frame drum.  Malouma sings from the point of view of a young man who tells how the beautiful girl who loves him has been married off to an old man.  "Jraad" alternates between a similar trance feel and lyrical, hook-laden pop as it laments the way love has become a commodity sold to the highest bidder.  "In the past," said Malouma, "you could love someone for their looks, for their smile, for their soul.  Today you look at the pocketbook."

Allusions to blues, pop and jazz in these songs are playful and sometimes quirky, but in the end, originality outweighs calculation.  Malouma said that what sounds like a bizarre refraction of boogie-woogie in the song "Tab ley' ât" is in fact a Mauritanian folk genre called "serbat."  In all the music being marketed these days as "desert blues," rare is the song that, like "Mreïmida," actually follows the standard blues form rather than hovering endlessly on a single minor chord.  Such sophistication can border on gimmickry--the song's distorted guitar solo crosses the line--but Malouma's effortless, parched vocal passion--sand-blasted rather than whiskey-soaked--makes them work.   Malouma is one of the great new voices to emerge in world music in recent years, and with her young band, Sahel Hawl Blues, she puts on a pageant of modern North Africa rarely seen on an American stage. 

REMAINING MALOUMA TOUR DATES

Friday, April 15 in Boston (Summerville Theater)

Thursday and Friday, April 20 - 22 in Lafayette, LA (Festival Intenrational de Louisiane)

Saturday, April 23 in NYC, NY (Symphony Space)