Coumbane Mint Ely Warakane belongs to a hereditary caste of musician-poet-singers (griots) in Mauritania called iggāwen in the local Hassāni Arabic. Her own family represents the iggāwen tradition of Trarza, in Mauritania’s southwest, where she learned from her aunt, the singer Wana mint Bouban (1933-2022), to sing and play the ardin, an angular harp with a calabash resonator that is always played by women.

Later she studied with the eminent Mauritanian guitarist, composer, and scholar Seymali Ould Hamed Vall (1949-2005). Among the iggāwen, women are typically the lead singers in a small ensemble, and Coumbane Mint Ely Warakane has fulfilled this role, leading a group consisting of tidinit, a fretless lute traditionally played by male griots, tbal, a kettle drum, and a chorus of female singers.

Beloved in her own country, Coumbane Mint Ely Warakane has eschewed the international mediatisation and global pop-inflected sound of some Mauritanian musicians in order to uphold a deeply traditional performance style. This style draws on Berber-Arab vocal techniques and melds poetry in both classical and Hassāni Arabic with a local system of modally organised melodies. Her music was recorded in 2009 by Maison des Cultures du Monde for release on their Inedit label – thus far the only commercially available recording of her music outside Mauretania.