root salad Aziza Brahim
From the Western Sahara to Cuba, Spain and back to her Sahrawi roots. Jamie Renton gets a masterclass.
E
veryone in the audience is on their feet. There are only two people on stage, a swarthy-headed guitarist firing out blues licks and a
beautiful West African woman clad in blue and green patterned robes, her head covered by a scarf, her hands pounding the drums in front of her and her voice… well, her voice is something else altogether – a bluesy wail that conjures up a desert gathering and the Mississippi Delta all at once. We’re at St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation for one of their regular world music gigs and those two musicians, Gonzalo Tascon and Aziza Brahim, are providing a masterclass in pure, raw desert blues.
The concert is the finale of a week of events highlighting the struggle and artis- tic endeavour of the Sahrawi people of Western Sahara, the tiny, disputed territo- ry bordered by Algeria, Morocco and Mau- ritania. The festival is organised by Sand- blast, a campaigning UK-based charity set up to support the Sahrawi. Before the con- cert I grab a few minutes with Aziza and Sandblast’s Danielle Smith (on translation duty) in St Eths tent space.
I first encountered Aziza Brahim last year when a copy of her album Mabruk (Reaction) plopped through my letterbox. At the time, I signed off a review in this very mag by saying “This album suggests she’s certainly one to keep an eye on and from what I’ve seen and heard on YouTube, even better live.” Well, far be it from me to say “I told you so” but…
Aziza grew up in a refugee camp in southwest Algeria, her mother having fled the Moroccan invaders of her homeland (her father stayed on and sadly passed away before Aziza could return and get to know him). “When I was growing up, I thought the refugee camp was my home,” she tells me. “It was only as I got older that I realised that we were refugees far away from our homeland.” Music was always a big part of her life. “I come from a musical family. We’d get together once a week on Fridays to sing spiritual religious songs. This was music strongly associated with my cul- tural roots. But as I evolved, I also became very interested in embracing other music forms. From an early age I listened to a lot of African music, people such as Ali Farka Touré. I also got exposed to rai music.”
“What makes our society so distinctive
is that it’s an ancient, tribal culture, charac- terised by a rich oral tradition,” explains Aziza. “This identity and culture was trans- mitted from generation to generation orally. Music is very important in giving us a distinct identity and on a political level, has the power to transmit the message of
19 f
Aziza Brahim & Gonzalo Tascon A
our struggle much more effectively than our politicians. Our music shares a lot with Mauritanian music. It has a certain level of continuity and build up, which intoxicates you over time and evolves in a subtle and complex way.”
ged eleven, Aziza received a scholarship to study over in Cuba. “My country had a convention with the Cuban state from very early days, providing educational opportunities to Sahrawi refugees. And so through this agreement, many, many Sahrawi students ended up going to Cuba to get their higher education. I was selected in 1988 to go out there and it was really a very beautiful, very special experience. It’s where I learnt my Spanish!”
Back from Cuba, Aziza returned to the refugee camp. Via the Ministry of Culture, she toured the liberated zones of Western Sahara, where she performed to her peo- ple. In 1998 she joined the group Leyoad, with whom she toured Europe. “I realised that the situation in the camps was very limited. I really wanted to continue to transmit the message of the struggle through my music and so I found a way to get back to Europe.” Moving to Spain, she mixed things up with local musicians,
singing for some years with a Latin jazz group (not too much of a leap, given her time in Cuba).
“In 2007 I had this need to reconnect to my own culture and my own continent in my music,” she recalls. “Which took me to creating the group Gulili Mankoo, made up of musicians from Senegal, plus Colombians and Sahrawis, bringing me closer to getting back to my roots.”
This was the start of a process which ultimately resulted in her album. “The music of Mabruk reflects everything I’ve learned being a musician over the years. It encompasses my life. But at the same time it’s underpinned by a strong poetic tradi- tion rooted within my culture. So that in spite of the other musical influences on the album, this tradition is a strength that runs through it. All the songs on the album I’ve known by heart since I was about six years old. It’s a joint project with my grandmother, who provided a lot of the lyrics through her poems.”
Right now Aziza’s heading in an acoustic direction. “I want to get to the real essence of my music, strip it back in order to allow the natural inner beauty to come out.”
myspace.com/azizabrahim F
Photo: Angel Martinez
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