KahraMusiqa

Singer-songwriter Badiâa Bouhrizi should really be a household name in global music circles. In Tunisia, her birthplace, she is beloved of a diverse underground scene in which electronic beats and vocals are vehicles for activism as well as hands-in-the-air partying, while her Paris conservatoire-trained chops are evident on songs such as the guitar-led, achingly beautiful ‘Labess’. This long-awaited debut is a collection of songs recorded in Tunis, Paris, London and Montréal between 2004 and 2011. These are songs that have long had a life on online platforms such as YouTube and Soundcloud, but now finally have a line drawn under them. They also serve as a primer to her forthcoming second album Love Revolt, which was piqued by her receipt of the Aga Khan Foundation's Award for ‘promoting social justice’ (and indeed, by a tricky break-up).

The 12 mainly fushá (standard Arabic) tracks on KahruMusiqa, then, are representative of a journey that began in El-Kabaria, a town close to Tunis, where aged seven she began singing in the choirs, performing classical styles of Arabic music such as muwashshah and ma’luf; as a teenager she was the head-banging frontwoman of local underground rock outfit Black Angels. Much of Tunisia's progressive music scene was clandestine; Bouhrizi performed out of mainstream public sight, incensed by oppression and censorship, keen to leap boundaries and explore possibilities. A 2001 encounter with Beirut-based producer Zeid Hamdan of indie electro-pop outfit Soapkills introduced her to the power of computer software, after which she forged a cult reputation as one of Tunisia's first female electronic music producers, saving her compositions on USBs which were duplicated and passed around like contraband.

The raw, lo-fi nature of many of the tracks serves to heighten their sense of urgency, the feeling they were crafted in the presence of danger. Opener ‘Bledi’, a paean to her anxious homeland, has a lurching electro-creep given levity by Bouhrizi's sweet melisma; original lyrics decrying injustice and encouraging democracy sit alongside texts by female poets including Tunisia's Noureddine Werghi and Palestinian resistance scribe Fadwa Tuqan (the gorgeous ‘Il Salma’, which won Bouhrizi the 2011 Arab alternative song award), variously sung over a musical palette of everything from traditional Maghreb rhythms and melodies to funk, reggae, neo-soul and warping, pinging electronics.

Written 20 years ago, the English-language tune ‘Capitalist Chant’ – which she recorded and mixed herself – makes her politics plain, while ‘Fil Madinati Al Harima’ (In the Old City) tells of the displacement of millions of Palestinians in 1948. What with all this, and her identification as a queer woman, it is easy to understand why, at least for a while, Bouhrizi changed her name to Neysatu to try and keep her real identity under the radar. Her more recent residency at Paris’ prestigious Cité des Arts, working with grassroots organisations to fight the power with music, has given her visible agency. Love Revolt will be more polished but arguably no less fiery; in the meantime, KahruMusiqa serves as a testament to resilience, ingenuity and feminist might.