Chronic

Aziza Brahim, on behalf of the Forcibly Displaced and Refugees

Aziza Brahim. © Ana Valiño

11/27/2019

A figure of Sahrawi music, Aziza Brahim also embodies the tribulations of her people, to whom she provides constant support with her songs. On her fifth album Sahari , open to new sounds, the singer who resides in Spain evokes more widely the situation of all those forced into exile.

The subject is still sensitive, and the Saharawi singer Aziza Brahim found it at its expense in early 2019, reminding those who have forgotten the political stakes of the cause it defends, far from being symbolic. "For a reason beyond the control of the artist," the Institute of the Arab World in Paris had canceled its concert. Through the pressure that Morocco would have exerted against his coming, the conflict of Western Sahara that opposes the Sherifian kingdom to the Polisario Front for more than four decades suddenly came back into the news.

The case did not fail to provoke a lot of turmoil, especially with the Zone Franche network: professionals of world music have expressed their fear that "the need to host, in our most prestigious institutions, performers of minority cultures, or from conflict zones, is not an obvious one shared by all. " The incident has in any case highlighted the role played by singers who embody a form of resistance, as is the case of Aziza Brahim.

The only cover of Sahari , his fifth album, reflects this affirmed and claimed positioning, expressed in the field of poetry - that of his grandmother, Ljadra Mint Mabrouk: we see a little girl in a tutu, making spikes, with in the background the summary facilities of a refugee camp in the desert. One way at a time to alert and give hope. The starting point of this new record project? "I wanted to explain the experience of exile in terms of music and lyrics," says the young woman, who has been living in Spain since 2000, for whom the idea of ​​travel is at the center of these last two albums: "In the previous one, Abbar el Hamada , it was through this rocky desert where are located the Saharawi refugee camps, in this one, it is through the map of the world, from North to South, various deserts.

If she says that she is part of her situation, whether in Cuatro Proverbios gathering proverbs from her home "about the war and the importance of peace" or in Lmanfa ("literally exile") , she wants to expand the "I started writing about these topics because they concern me and the Saharawis, but when you look at the news, you understand that in reality, it affects more than 70 million people forcibly displaced in the world, of whom 25.9 million are refugees. "

His musical approach has also evolved for this record, with another method of work. Finished, live recordings she had privileged in recent years. The ten pieces of Sahari were designed in fragments, here and there, then brought together to form a puzzle with sounds sometimes very different from what she had proposed so far.

The involvement of Amparo Sanchez in the process is not unrelated. The Catalan artist, who played a sort of Latin alternative rock with his band Amparanoia in the late 90s before continuing solo with a bolero-tinged folk rock repertoire, proved to be an ideal partner.

The two women had met at a radio station in Madrid and had felt the flow between them . "When I finished the songs of the new album, I saw the opportunity to work together, she was in charge of preproduction and her contribution was a key point of this new sound in my music" , says Aziza . Like these electro beats, they are inspired by Sahari's hand beats, or find an almost natural place alongside guitars and percussion in Hada Jil . Surely one must also see in Las Huellas , set to the rhythm of reggae with a seductive result, the leg of that which had been supported by Manu Chao.

Beyond these remarkable aspects, everything has not changed, in the repertoire of the singer from the desert, but she gave herself the means of his desires: "Continue to update the traditional Sahrawi rhythms." Dare is a risk, an endangerment, which requires a form of courage, even in music.

Aziza Brahim Sahari (Glitterbeat records) 2019
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By: Bertrand Lavaine

Aziza Brahim

World Music - Album - Western Sahara

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