Aziza Brahim, "Mawja"
Desert-born blues delivered with the restless confidence of an opened horizon
One of the most enjoyable discoveries of our culturally globalized century is the realization that North African artists are very good at the blues. Two months ago, Sahrawi singer-songwriter Aziza Brahim dropped yet another piece of evidence in the form of her latest album, Mawja. Although she’s currently based in Spain, Brahim hails from Western Sahara, a homeland from which her family was displaced following Morocco’s occupation in the mid-70s. She subsequently came up in Algeria and Cuba, and she has spent the last decade re-contextualizing these influences across a series of recordings that have showcased a formidable range of modern musical fluency. While Brahim’s work consistently foregrounds her Saharan heritage, her scope is broader than most of her contemporaries, regularly featuring forays into Spanish guitar styles or the occasional dip into Caribbean patterns.
Brahim uses these influences to push the boundaries of desert blues, a sub-genre that was already stretching popular imaginations around what the blues could be. Despite the West’s eagerness to christen musicians like Bombino or Mdou Moctar in terms it understood, these artists never truly conformed to the blues’ central legacy as a music for the downtrodden or depressed. Brahim, similarly, has no truck with tonal restraints. There is too much celebration in the sun-baked chords on “Thajiba,” too much strength coiled in the muscular twang of “Metal, madera.” Although there are moments of sorrow on Mawja, its core is not defeatist. This is blues as battle hymn and victory lap, the sound of a veteran artist reminding us that the desert, for all its severity, is ultimately beautiful, particularly at dusk when the setting sun dyes its waves red.
