Mawja

The Sahrawi refugee camps are situated out in the deserts of southern Algeria, and are home to the victims of one of the tragedies that the world has largely forgotten. They are exiles from the coastal region that they call ‘Occupied Western Sahara’, a former Spanish colony which was annexed by Morocco in 1975, and has remained under Moroccan control. A UN-brokered ceasefire ended 16 years of guerrilla warfare back in 1991, but there has been no sign of the agreed referendum on independence and in the past four years the fighting has continued.

Life can be bleak in the camps, as those who have visited them will know, but there is pride, defiance and a great musical tradition. Artists have played a major role in publicising the plight of the Sahrawis, and since the death of the great Mariem Hassan in 2015, Aziza Brahim has become the best-known singer keeping the musical fight, and the culture, alive. Born in the camps, she left to study in Cuba and then to live in Spain, but the story and struggle of her people still dominate her work.

This is Brahim’s fourth album for Glitterbeat, and it’s up there with Soutak (2014) as one of her best to date. It’s a brave and emotional set in which she wisely ignores fancy production work and chooses to match her soulful vocals against percussion and the guitar and bass work of long-time collaborator Guillem Aguilar, who co-produced the set with Brahim. There’s a live feel to many of the tracks on Mawja, along with a welcome blend of energy and subtlety. After all, the percussion involves not just Brahim’s tabal hand drum, but folk instruments that she’s heard during her time in Spain, including tambourines and mortar and pestle used in cooking.

The album starts with Brahim singing unaccompanied, before first percussion and then acoustic guitar move in, bringing an attacking edge to the set. Aguilar switches to electric guitar for the second track ‘Thajliba’, introducing a more raw, bluesy feel, before switching to a slower, laid-back blues style on ‘Duaa’, which again matches guitar work against sturdy percussion. This is the first of two songs in which Brahim pays tribute to her late grandmother, a poet who played an important role in the refugee camps.

Elsewhere, the album includes the upbeat and tuneful blues ‘Metal, Madera’, with electric guitar responding to her vocals, and percussion that was apparently inspired by The Clash. And there are further reminders of Sahrawi culture and history on the title-track (meaning ‘wave’ in Hassaniya Arabic), which is a reminder of the hours the young Brahim would spend listening to music on the radio, while ‘Bubisher’ matches breathy, thoughtful vocals against gently driving percussion for a song about a bird that is said to bring good news.

The mood changes again with the urgent and powerful ‘Haiyu Ya Zuwar’, in which she revives a popular song of Sahrawi resistance, now treated to clattering percussion and added guitar work from Raúl Rodríguez, the Spanish musician who won awards with Son de la Frontera. An impressive return.