01. Bein trab u lihjar (02:46)
02. Thajliba (03:26)
03. Duaa (03:09)
04. Marhabna 2.1 (03:36)
05. Bubisher (03:33)
06. Ljaima likbira (03:25)
07. Mawja (03:11)
08. Metal, madera (03:58)
09. Haiyu ya zuwar (03:03)
10. Fuadi (04:47)

“Brahim’s keening take on Afro-blues, is beautiful, bewitching, aquiver with timeless sorrow.” — Mojo

“This is a sound and message that reaches the heart, beyond imposed borders, curfews and barbed wire, with a dream for the end to the struggle.” — The Quietus

Sahrawi singer-songwriter activist Aziza Brahim’s fifth album Mawja (Wave in Hassaniya Arabic) is fashioned from a simple but powerful foundational palette: Saharan and Iberian percussion entwining with stately guitars and warm, enveloping bass.

Co-produced by Brahim with long-time collaborator Guillem Aguilar, the record from her oeuvre that Mawja most sonically resembles is her revered and graceful debut Soutak (2014).

That noted, there is a confident eclecticism found here, an expansive take on her vision that even includes a drum pattern inspired by the Clash.

Brahim’s voice, as always, is a wellspring of deep and resonant emotions. The yearning for homeland. The struggle for freedom. The love for one’s elders. The unfurling of time. Waves of history, waves of sound. Mawja.

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Growing up in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria, after her family was forced into exile from Western Sahara, singer and songwriter Aziza Brahim spent hours listening to the radio. Mawja, her grandparents would say as they changed stations. Wave. Medium wave, FM. Radio brought the world to her, music from across the globe carried over the airwaves. When she left, first to study in Cuba, then to live in Barcelona, Brahim never forgot the radio and the education it offered. Now the waves carry her again on Mawja, her fourth album for Glitterbeat. It’s coloured by her own travels, her personal diaspora, and the music she heard through the speaker of that transistor radio as a child.

“Music lets you enrich your original sounds with others you learn,” Brahim says. “Mawja reflects everything that involves me.” It reflects what she’s heard around the Iberian Peninsula, especially the rhythms and percussion instruments. “There’s the tambourine, square tambourine, the almirez (pestle and mortar) that you hear in folk music everywhere on the peninsula. But I mixed with other African percussion instruments, and even ones from other continents. There’s a fusion in the root of each song.”

Mawja is a powerful statement, building on all Brahim achieved with her last album, the lauded Sahari (2019), which offered a portrait of her displaced Sahrawi people. But the four years since that release have been difficult ones for her.

“I had a bad anxiety crisis,” she recalls. “Just as I was recovering, Covid and lockdown happened, and we had to stop the tour we had planned. That made my condition worse. I had to fight to keep my equilibrium. Then, as I began to recover, in November 2020, my country, Western Sahara, was back at war against Morocco. It still is.” All of that was more than enough to experience. But life had one other huge blow for her. A year later “my grandmother Ljadra passed away. She was very important to me and that brought a relapse.”

Gradually, though, out of the pain came inspiration and the songs for Mawja, looking back but definitely also looking forward. In with the sorrow and loss, there’s a strong spirit of hope, of exploration and adventure.

Her adventurous side shows most obviously on “Metal, Madera.” It stands out, raw and electric, with sharp, bluesy chords and a fiery attitude. “It has lyrics that needed a very specific rhythm on the drums,” Brahim explains. “It’s very rooted in the blues, but with an inclination towards punk – desert punk! To get the feel, I made the drummer listen to some of my favourite Clash songs before we recorded.”

The members of her band are an important ingredient in Brahim’s sound. They’ve worked together for years, a tight group that can listen and respond to each other. They’ve built up a trust. But the most important person is undoubtedly bassist and guitarist Guillem Aguilar. He is, she says, a “specialist in folk music, roots music, with a great ear and a refined judgement. In relation to music, we understand the other perfectly.”

A sign of that understanding in that he’s her co-producer on Mawja. Having control of the music and the sound in her head is vitally important to her, Brahim says. During recording “I am open to dialogue, and if it works, I integrate it. But I like to enforce my opinion and working on production lets me do this.”

Mawja is an album that shifts across moods, from the loud rattle of “Metal, Madera” through her reimagination of “Marhabna 2.1,” a song that appeared on her debut, to “Duaa” and “Ljaima Likbira,” Brahim’s tender, loving elegies for her grandmother.

“She was a very important poet of the Sahrawi revolution and culture,” Brahim says. “People like her are immortal and her legacy will live forever on the memory of many people. “Duaa” is a prayer to honour her memory. My grandparents’ home was called “the big haima,” where she was the great matriarch. It’s where I was born and raised. Where we were able to learn to be proud, tenacious, to become activists. First in El Aaiun, then in refugee camps and today in Bucraa in Algeria. Life never have been easy for the Sahrawi.”

But there’s an escape from pain into magic and myth that she follows on “Bubisher,” about a legendary bird of Sahrawi literature. “In popular belief, the bubisher is a lucky bird because it brings good news, its sighting is a sign that we will receive good news. Based on that idea, people created a project for those in the refugee camps and it carries the bird’s name.”

The refugees and the camps were Brahim’s childhood. They, and the Sahrawi struggle to reclaim their homeland of Western Sahara from its nearly fifty-year occupation, formed her, and remain a vital part of her identity. “Haiyu Ya Zawar” is a summary of that, she says, “a popular Sahrawi song of resistance and struggle. I wanted to include it because it is very related to my people and the meaning of its lyrics at this time of war is evident.” She made the tune more Spanish and brought in Raúl Rodríguez, an Andalucian guitar player who created the Tres Flamenco, on the Cuban Tres. All three geographical strands of her history come together in the anthem.

It stands like the photographs of the desert, the waves of sand and the refugee camps that feature in the album booklet. Brahim might no longer physically be there, but so much of her heart is wrapped up in those places.

“They’re not only my past, but they are also my present. My mother, one of my daughters, my brothers and sisters continue living there. Fifty years have passed. Anyone who’s lived in this situation knows perfectly that this fact marks you forever.”

Past, present, future. Waves of history, waves of sound. Mawja.

01. Cuatro proverbios (1:56)
02. Sahari (3:20)
03. Hada jil (3:26)
04. Lmanfa (4:00)
05. Mujayam (3:41)
06. Leil (3:34)
07. Masaa tufulati (3:18)
08. Ard el hub (4:25)
09. Las huellas (3:50)
10. Ahlami (2:33)

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.

01. Buscando la Paz
02. Calles de Dajla
03. El canto de la arena
04. El wad
05. La cordillera negra
06. Abbar el Hamada
07. Baraka
08. Mani
09. Intifada
10. Los muros

Western Saharan musician/activist Aziza Brahim’s new album Abbar el Hamada (Across the Hamada), is a commanding and compassionate musical statement about, and for, the tumultuous age in which we live.

Raised in a Saharawi refugee camp in the Algerian desert, and living in exile for more than two decades (first in Cuba and currently in Barcelona), Brahim’s life and music embodies both the tragedies and hopes of the present-day migrant and refugee experience.

As walls and borders are again being raised though-out Europe and other corners of the world, Aziza Brahim’s passionately sung poetic defiance, is especially timely and profound.

Los Muros (The Walls), a dignified desert dreamscape; is emblematic of Aziza’s artistry. The lyrics morph from condemning the sand fortifications Morocco has erected along the Western Saharan border (to prevent the return of the Saharawi to their homeland), to a recognition that while walls are tragically universal, so is the imaginative spirit that encourages us to transcend them.

Another fleeting star was seen
Crossing the wall tonight,
Undetected by the radar,
Unnoticed by the guard.
On the land and the sea
The walls keep rising still.

Brahim’s previous album, the resplendent Soutak, made great strides towards spreading her message of liberation and resistance. Soutak spent an unprecedented three months atop the World Music Charts Europe, and was the chart’s top album for 2014. The album was also selected as one of Songlines magazine’s “Top Ten” albums of the year and appeared on several other year-end critics lists. An appearance on the legendary BBC television program Later with Jools Holland further cemented her growing reputation. Buoyed by this success, Aziza and her band toured extensively in Europe and beyond.

Soutak not only confirmed Brahim as the most important Saharawi musician of her generation, but it also gave evidence that she had become one of Africa’s most respected young musical voices.

On Soutak the musical nuances of Barcelona, her adopted home, were clearly audible. While these influences certainly have not vanished, on Abbar el Hamada, Aziza has consciously extended her reach deeper into the sounds of contemporary West Africa. This move has been reinforced by the introduction of Senegalese percussionist Sengane Ngomand drummer Aleix Tobias (who has studied drumming in Gambia and Senegal) into her band, and the return of Malian guitarist Kalilou Sangarefrom the Soutak sessions. Bassist/arranger Guillem Aguilarand guitarist Ignasi Cussó,also return from the previous band.

Recorded in Barcelona in the summer of 2015 with Soutak producer Chris Eckman (Bassekou Kouyate, Tamikrest), Abbar el Hamada, is a wholly persuasive example of Brahim’s pan-musical vision and is her most compelling and varied album to date. “It is meant to be a diverse, powerful album,” she says, “where Saharawi traditional rhythms (such as Asarbat and Sharaa) are mixed with drums and rhythms from West Africa (particularly Senegal) and of course Mediterranean sounds and rhythms also.

From the pulsing desert rock of Calles De Dajla, to the Afro-Cuban inflections of La Cordillera Negra (evoking 70’s recordings by the Super Rail Band) through the dusky elegance of El Canto Del La Arena and the raw balladry of Mani (featuring Malian blues-master Samba Toure on guitar), the music and lyrics on Abbar el Hamada masterfully reflect the restless, imaginative search for home, explicit in the album’s title.

Hamada is the word used by the Saharawi people to describe the rocky desert landscape along the Algerian/Western Saharan frontier where tens of thousands of their people are stranded in purgatorial refugee camps. “For me, Abbar el Hamada (Across the Hamada) is a title that synthesizes our destiny as a country over the last 40 years”, Aziza explains. “We are suffering an injustice that condemns us to try and survive in an environment as inhospitable as the Hamada.”

When recently asked how she would best describe her musical mission and methods, Aziza’s reply was like her music; revealing and beautifully stated: “I’m not able to separate politics, cultural and personal concerns. So, the focus of my music is all of these areas at the same time. Political, because of its commitment to the denunciation of social injustice. Cultural, because it searches for new musical ideas. Personal, because it expresses the worries of a person that aspires to live with dignity in a better world.”

Innovation, naked truth, humility and political outcry: these are the raw materials of Aziza Brahim’s ever expanding musical vision. On her new album, Abbar el Hamada she fuses and fashions these elements into an unforgettable work that is both deeply inspired and deeply inspiring.

                                              Abbar el Hamada (Across the Hamada):

A look around me after forty years of occupation, of exile, of diaspora. A conversation. A discussion between emigrants, refugees and stationaries; between patriots, expatriates and the stateless; between placed, postponed and displaced; between nomads and the sedentary; between Saharan, sub-Saharan, north Saharan and Saharawis. A conversation between countries, between cultures, between generations, between tribes, between beliefs, between people. People with no other resources than the word, their voices and the skin of their hands and drums. With no other intention than to change the situation by means of music, by means of the imagination, even if it is barely for a moment. Through the fences, the barriers, the camps, the iron bars, the walls, the barbed wire, the seas, the mountain ranges, the rivers, the borders. Across the Hamada.

—Aziza Brahim

01 Gdeim Izik
02 Julud
03 Espejismos
04 Lagi
05 Aradana
06 Soutak
07 La Palabra
08 Manos Enemigas
09 Ya Watani

Voiced with deep passion and grace, Aziza Brahim’s music adeptly travels the expanse between her Western Saharan roots and Barcelona, the European cosmopolis where she now lives. Aziza is both a contemporary sonic poet and a prominent and eloquent spokesperson for the Saharawi people and their ongoing struggle for recognition and justice.

Born and raised in the Saharawi refugee camps lining the frontier between Algeria and Western Sahara, Aziza’s life has been marked by both daunting hardship and inspired will. Fleeing from these camps and the regime of political oppression that followed Morocco’s 1975 invasion of Western Sahara, as a young teenager Aziza travelled to Cuba for her secondary school studies. There she experienced first hand the deep Cuban economic crisis of the 1990’s and the subsequent denial of her request to pursue a university degree in music.

Music had been Aziza’s passion since she was a small girl and despite this setback she returned to the Saharawi camps in Algeria and began singing and playing in different musical ensembles, a process that continued when she moved to Spain in the year 2000. There she founded the eclectic Saharawi/Spanish band Gulili Mankoo with whom she released two acclaimed self-produced recordings: the EP “Mi Canto” (2008) and an album “Mabruk” (2012) both on Reaktion, a French label specializing in Saharan music. In the last years Aziza has performed extensively appearing at major festivals and venues including WOMAD Cáceres (2012) and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London (2009).

Aziza’s new album Soutak (“Your Voice”), her debut for the Glitterbeat label, is her first recording to predominantly focus on the cadence of her majestic voice and the soulful critique of her lyrics. The album was produced by Chris Eckman (Tamikrest, Ben Zabo, Dirtmusic) and was recorded live and direct in Barcelona in June of 2013.

In the liner notes to the album Aziza describes her vision for Soutak:

“Feeling the need to make an acoustic record, I imagined a somewhat modest musical outline, which would not involve too many instruments and in which the voices would take the expressive emotional lead. I wanted to further explore the range of possibilities found in the Haul, the Saharawi’s traditional rhythmic sources, played on the tabal and a source of inspiration for the Desert Blues.”

The hand picked band she assembled for the album consists of Spaniards Nico Roca (percussion) & Guillem Aguilar (bass), Malian Kalilou Sangare (acoustic lead guitar), Aziza’s sister Badra Abdallahe (backing voice) and in addition to singing, Aziza contributes acoustic rhythm guitar and the tabal, the traditional Saharawi hand-drum.

The music on Soutak is a powerful and nuanced mixture of musical cultures and features Malian, Spanish, Cuban and contemporary Anglo-European motifs all held together by Aziza’s deeply rooted knowledge of traditional Saharawi song and sound.

Throughout Soutak, the band frames Aziza’s voice with dignified restraint and leaves unvarnished space for her lyrics, lyrics which range from the sharply political “Gdeim Izik” (named after the “Camp of Dignity” crushed by the Moroccan-backed authorities) to the whispered enigmas of “La Palabra/The Word” (“Cradled by the wind it left/ it went around the world and returned/ and there beyond the word was heard”)

The song “Julud,” dedicated to Aziza’s mother, is possibly the most emblematic song on the album combining intimate and stark desert poetry with an unyielding faith in the Saharawi political struggle:

You are like the night and the stars/ Your voice goes beyond the top of the clouds/

You are the smiling breeze of today/ You are an example of humanity and of fight.

Resist, immortal, resist.

Though the songs on Soutak can be unsparing in their details of oppression, there is more often than not a “smiling breeze” to be found. Aziza’s essential voice, headstrong commitment and subtly inventive music are that breeze.

With Soutak Aziza Brahim has delivered an empowered flight to freedom; an alternative world where hope is imminent and dancing is justified.