To Catch a Wave
Listening Post 380. The ripples, shadows and peaks make the desert landscape look like waves on a red ocean—and that’s just the tip of the metaphor at the heart of Aziza Brahim’s latest album. Mawja—“wave” in Hassaniya Arabic—is a recurring theme of the Sahrawi singer-songwriter’s life: From streaming memory to flowing refugees, from the flag of a homeless people blowing in the wind to the radio waves that carried the world’s music into the adobe-and-tent camp where she grew up. Those broadcasts, plus later stops in Cuba and Spain, planted seeds for the artist’s hybrid sound—desert blues, Afro-Iberian percussion and bass, all in service to her undulating, breathtaking voice. Brahim rode in her mother’s womb from Western Sahara into neighboring Algeria after Moroccan troops occupied most of their homeland in 1975. But if life began on an inauspicious note, she has harnessed hardship, becoming the most acclaimed bearer of Saharan song. Mawja highlights the experience of one family and a displaced people. It opens with memories of childhood games in Bein trab u lihjar (Among Stones and Sand, video 1) and segues into Thajliba (Praise Poem, video 2), song of a mother’s love for her daughter and also a feminist anthem echoing the role of women in running the Sahrawi camps. In the title track, Brahim recalls the transistor radio that offered the freedom to let faraway cultures blend with her own story (video 3). Bubisher invokes a fabled bird, considered a good omen, that gave its name to a network of camp libraries (video 4). And Ljaima likbira (The Big Haima, video 5), pays homage to the artist’s grandmother, Al Khadra Mint Mabruk—renowned as the “Poet of the Desert” and also the greatest influence on Brahim’s work—who passed away in 2021. With Mawja, a child of exile is on a mythical quest to find the wave that will take her home. (Glitterbeat)

Aziza Brahim: Mawja / Wave
عزيزةإبراهيم –  موجة
Aziza Brahim: Vocals, tabal, Spanish guitar, esgarit (ululation), backing vocals
Guillem Aguilar: Electric bass, double string bass, mandola, electric guitar, acoustic guitar
Badra Abdallahe: Esgarit, backing vocals
Ignasi Cussó: Electric guitar, acoustic guitar
Aleix Tobias: Drums, tambourine, square tambourine, krin, tama, legüero, almirez, triangles, sabar, calabash, bendir, shells, bells, seourouba, var. percussion effects
Andreu Moreno: Drums, caxixis

Guest artists
Raúl Rodriguez: Tres flamenco
Xavi Lozano: Hulusi
Kalilou Sangare: Electric guitar
Christos Barbas: Ney

Related post. Aziza Brahim, Sahari, Listening Post 250, April 28, 2020. https://worldlisteningpost.com/2020/04/28/aziza-brahim-sahari/

Bein trab u lihjar / Among Stones and Sand
Lyrics & music: Aziza Brahim

(From the Arabic lyrics)
I remember my childhood
Playing among adobe and stones
Among sand and stones.

Thajliba / Praise Poem
Lyrics & music: Aziza Brahim

I love my daughter/With her uniqueness and her values
And everything else/Doesn’t matter to me

You are the fruit of your land/And strange lands
And whoever wants to contradict that/Take a step forward

Meanwhile you live/In my memory and my blood
You have my blessing/In everything you do

Mawja / Wave
Lyrics & music: Aziza Brahim

I listen to a song on the radio/About emotions and hope
And the conviction that is in the heart
I won’t let impatience take it away
The conviction that is in the heart/Is always in memory

I want this song/To talk about our love
And the forgotten feelings/Of people who are in my condition
I want this song/To talk about our love
And the hidden feelings/Of people around us

I sing with the intention/That you dance to our tune
And that freedom smiles/In our hearts
I feel dignity, confidence and freedom/Turn up the volume of the secret wave
And dance to the melody of joy and music/Because it is the source of our wishes, and of the truth

Bubisher / Desert Bird
Lyrics: Bachir Ali/Music: Aziza Brahim

We are grateful to God/the Bubisher is here
It came to sing/and bring us good news

Bubisher of the legend/of the image and of the thought
Come here if you want to see/how beautiful Bubisher is

Bubisher bring us fun/and knowledge, too
Experience and awareness/for adults and children
Among many meanings/its name Bubisher honours him

Ljaima likbira / The Big Haima
Lyrics & music: Aziza Brahim

I beg you to preserve the harmony/in the centre of the immense haima [home] of my grandparents
It is known for generosity, kindness and welcome/and always pure intention, to strangers and neighbours

If I say the big haima, it implies magnanimity, beginning, courage and full pride
And all the things already said by Mint Lmabruk, mother and poet

Witness to her was Tiris, land of poets, and the Sahara people’s history
In every detail, with wisdom, songs and words/of determined people.

Oh, God, amen.