Shouka

There hasn’t been much news from the Western Sahara recently. But all is not quiet on the Western front. Shouka (The Thorn), is a defiantly honest and eloquent hymn to the pride and strength of the Sahraoui people, and to their pain and suffering ever since the Moroccan invasion of 1975. With its lacerating starkness, molten intensity and gripping power, Mariem Hassan’s voice is the metaphorical thorn plunged deep into the soft soul of the Moroccan conscience, or the rest of the world’s careless amnesia. But where there are thorns, there is usually some beautiful flower or luscious fruit near at hand. Shouka is not just a kick for self-flagellants. Its palette of emotions ranges from defiance and melancholy to sinuous coquettishness, conveying a love of home and the joy of the hot, clean desert wind. All these colours are painted with stark handclaps, booming tebal drums, fulsome airborne backing vocals, warm breathy nay flutes, ghostly clarinets and the scuttling guitar work of Lamgaifri Brahim and Malick Diaw, which, at its best, combines the raw sexual grime of classic Chess-label blues with the nano-intricacies that have made the Sahraoui guitar style so famous. The experienced Nubenegra production team of Manuel Domínguez and engineer Hugo Westerdahl give this complex and nuanced mixture a fitting uncluttered and honest setting.

The album reaches its apotheosis in the title-track, modestly tucked away in penultimate position. It’s a 12-minute epic in which Hassan’s whiplash wail spars with the ghostly recording of a speech made by Spanish politician and erstwhile prime minister, Felipe González, in the then newly founded Sahraoui refugee camps in western Algeria back in 1976. Hassan gives the politician’s broken promises the slicing they deserve.