[TR24][OF] Aziza Brahim - Sahari - 2019 (desert blues, world fusion, female vocal, african folk, sahrawi)

#777Aziza Brahim (1976) was born and raised in the Saharawi refugee camps in the Tindouf region of Algeria where her family settled in late 1975, after fleeing from the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara. Growing up in the severe conditions of these desert camps, Aziza discovered music was both a source of entertainment and a natural way to express and communicate her personal emotions and thoughts of resistance.
When she was 11 years old, she journeyed to Cuba to pursue her secondary school studies. There she experienced a different sort of economic and political crisis during the so-called “Special Period” that began in the early 1990’s.
After graduating from secondary school in Cuba, Aziza planned to study for a Bachelors degree in music but that particular year academic scholarships were not offered in that field. Though disappointed by this rebuff, she returned to the refugee camps near Tindouf, committed to self-education and the development of her own musical expression. In 1995 she won the 1st National Song Contest held as part of the RASD’s National Culture Festival. She then joined the National Saharawi Music Group and toured Mauritania and Algeria. Two years later, she participated in the European Tour of the Saharawi group Leyoad.
Settling in Spain in the year 2000, she continued to pursue her musical vision. In 2005, she collaborated with the Spanish Latin jazz band Yayabo. In 2007 she founded her own band, Gulili Mankoo (a play on Hassania and Wolof words that means: United Expression), a musical collective with musicians from different musical backgrounds that experimented with the fusion of traditional Saharawi music and contemporary styles like rock, funk and blues. Out of this project two recordings were released the E.P. Mi canto (2008) and the full-length album Mabruk (2012), both by the French label Reaktion.
In 2009, Aziza began collaborating with the Basque Txalaparta band, Oreka TX, creating music for an ambitious audiovisual show Nomadak TX. In the same year, she was a finalist for the international Freedom to Create Prize (http://www.freedomtocreate.com).
In 2011, she participated in Pedro Pérez Rosado's film Wilaya as both a supporting actress and as the composer and performer of the soundtrack. It was awarded at the Málaga Spanish Film Festival with the Silver Biznaga prize for the best film soundtrack.
Aziza Brahim is now about to release Soutak (Glitterbeat, 2014) her third album, a stark, acoustic document where she is joined by a small group of musicians from both the Barcelona and Malian music scenes. Soutak is as a vivid bridge between Saharawi culture and Aziza’s passion for Malian music, and it is without question her most empowered and fluent musical journey to date.
http://label.glitterhouse.com/artists.php?show=62

#777Источник: арт-дайджест «Солонеба»
Берберская певица Азиза Брахим родилась в Алжире, в одном из лагерей беженцев Сахарави – народа, проживающего на Западе пустыни Сахары. Сейчас она живет в Барселоне, а записывается на немецком лейбле Glitterhouse Records. Своим творчеством исполнительница старается привлечь внимание людей к африканским трагедиям. Азиза поёт и играет на ручных барабанах в сопровождении группы, в которой доминируют испанские акустические гитары, благодаря чему, в звучании ритмов Сахарави отчетливо проступают элементы фламенко и джаза. Азиза проникновенно исполняет песни, в которых часто поднимает вопросы о спорной территории Западной Сахары. В своём творчестве Брахим скрещивает традиционные африканские мотивы с блюзом, роком, испанской и афро-кубинской музыкой.
http://soloneba.com/sahara_soul/

Aziza Brahim / Sahari
On the front cover of Aziza Brahim’s new album, Sahari, a young girl poses in ballet shoes and a glistening white tutu. It’s a common childhood scene, but it’s tipped upside down. She’s not privileged and the backdrop isn’t a comfortable suburban home. She’s an exile, living nowhere near her homeland, and behind her stand the tents and buildings of a refugee camp. There’s a desert on the ground and a burning sky above. Yet even in this bleakness, she has optimism. She believes in a better future.
The music Aziza Brahim makes reflects both the sorrow and the hope of these people. She grew up in one of those camps in the Algerian desert, along with thousands of other Saharwai who were removed from their homes in the Western Sahara. The refugee camp was the place that formed her. It lives in her every heartbeat.
Her grandmother was a famous Saharwai poet, her mother well-known as a vocalist, and they passed their strength and fearlessness to her. Now, as one of North African most lauded singers, Brahim uses her position to make the plight of her people known – and of the refugees across the world who have no choice but to exist in the camps. Sahari is for them as much as it’s for her own family.
“My purpose is to denounce the extreme living conditions there and the great injustice that prevents Saharawi refugees from returning to their home,” Brahim says. “I try to capture the feeling of longing that my elders express for the land that was taken away and for their past life in their country. But I know it’s not just us; there are currently 70 million people forcibly displaced in the world. 26 million of them are refugees.”
The political remains intensely personal for Brahim. She lives in exile, in Spain, and the music for Sahari – her third album for Glitterbeat - was written there. And while her songs remain grounded in her homeland, her gaze is increasingly global. To achieve that, Brahim worked with the acclaimed Spanish artist Amparo Sánchez of the band Amparanoia on the album’s pre-production, and the collaboration has made a transformative impact on the music. The focus is broader, with programming and keyboards a vital part of the new sound.
“Amparo is an artist I’ve always admired,” Brahim observes. “She suggested introducing electronics, and that meant recording in a different way. Before, we’d record everything live. This time we all worked in different studios then put the pieces together. I produced the album, the first time I’ve done that since Mabruk in 2012, and it was a very difficult job, a very interesting challenge: to work in a new way yet make your own songs sound exactly as you want.”
That difference in approach even extends to the very root of Brahim’s music, the tabal drum that’s been the heart of Saharawi music for centuries.
“It’s the main instrument of our tradition,” she agrees. “I wanted a dialogue between traditional and electronic percussion, to have it interacting with the programming. I actually recorded two different tabal to play with the different desert sounds; you can hear that in "Four Proverbs.” For Sahari, I wanted to find that balance between the past and the present, between African and European music and to reach as many people as possible.”
The process was made smoother by having a sympathetic band who’ve been with her for years. All the members played a part in framing the new material.
“Initially I put together the structure of the songs on the demos with the help of my bassist, Guillem Aguilar,” Brahim explains. “After that, I worked out most of the arrangements and the sound of the guitars with Ignasi Cussó. That was the key; for me, guitars and vocals were the main elements. Aleix Tobias listened very thoughtfully before coming up with a number of drum and percussion parts. Finally, Amparo Sánchez supervised the electronic part, all the keyboards and the saxes.”
When Brahim began as a composer, her work reflected her own reality, growing up in the far, rocky desert known as the hamada. These days she’s become a voice for refugees across the globe, and what she sees every day on the news has inevitably affected her writing.
“The normalisation of injustice is something that the Saharawis know well,” she observes. “By addressing that in the songs, I’m trying to fight against the prejudices some people have. We all see tragic news caused by the policies of reactionary governments. Of course that’s influenced the writing of the songs on this new album. How could it not?”
And one of the most powerful pieces on Sahari is a cry for home from someone caught in the flux of exile. “Ard El Hub,” Brahim explains, speaks of “the impossibility of returning to the homeland for us. The lyrics of the song are by Zaim Alal, a great Saharawi poet. I saw him the last time I was in the refugee camps, and he wrote this poem for me to sing.”
My homeland, the land of love
The cradle of my childhood
To you the longings rise
That embrace the sky.
released November 15, 2019
https://azizabrahim.bandcamp.com/album/sahari

Aziza Brahim – Vocals, Backing Vocals, Tabal, Ezgarit & Rythm Guitar (on 'Sahari', 'Mujayam', 'Ard el hub', 'Leil' and 'Ahlami')
Badra Abdallhi – Ezgarit
Ignasi Cusso – Electric Guitar & Rythm Guitar (on 'Leil' and 'Masaa tufulati')
Guillem Aguilar – Bass Guitar
Aleix Tobías – Percussion, Drums
With special guest:
Pep Mendoza – Electric Guitar elements in 'Leil'