EVERY GENRE PROJECT - June 12 - Sahrawi Music

Genre of the Day - Sahrawi Music

Album of the Day - Soutak by Aziza Brahim (2014)

June 12, 2024

The plight of peoples without a state is a running theme in our postcolonial world, though international awareness of the issue usually only percolates when Palestine, Kurdistan, or Scotland are in the news. It’s a phenomenon that deserves a more constant flow of attention, because entire nations and cultures go under the radar and suffer when denied the sovereign rights afforded to fully independent countries. Today’s artist Aziza Brahim sums up music’s power to counteract invisibility, declaring that if she “can give publicity to my conflict, it's a duty and a satisfaction.”

Western Sahara is a little-known area to many Americans, but a battleground of autonomy in post-colonial Africa with an unusual colonial history and uncertain future. It’s a sparsely-populated (around 600,000 today) swath of desert south of Morocco that was a rare Spanish African colonial holding until 1975, when—you guessed it—Spain pulled out with zero well-thought out plan for the Sahrawi Berber peoples, leaving them to fend for themselves under Moroccan and Mauritanian joint administration. The Algeria-backed socialist Polisario Front emerged to attempt to fend off their neighbors, and a sixteen year war ending with a reluctant ceasefire ensued. The United Nations and African Union hold that the Polisario Front is the true representative of Western Sahara: Morocco vehemently denies this. 

The ramifications on the people of Western Sahara are just as important to discuss than the political frameworks, and the history should instill a deep shame in the involved governments to this day given its recency and lingering consequences. Aziza Brahim’s mother was forced to flee the territory while carrying her as a baby into Algeria with tens of thousands of other Sahrawis. Brahim’s family, like millions of others in the last century and to this day, became unwitting casualties of soulless resource battles. Western Sahara holds sizable phosphate and oil reserves. These embattled early memories instilled a deep sense of purpose within Brahim as she has fought to advance the Sahrawi goal of achieving peace and independence. Sahrawi music is a suspension of influences, uniquely defined by the tbal drum played by women, the tidinit lute, and the modern influences of Spanish music and Tuareg electric guitar. I never thought I’d stoop to using YouTube Shorts as a means of conveying info, but here’s a lovely Short showing us the tbal drum.

 

Brahim’s life reflects both the displacement experienced by many stateless people and the strange, singular history of the Sahrawi people. As a demonstration of unity with the socialist Polisario Front, Cuba offered scholarships to thousands of Sahrawi students during the war. While her education in Cuba put her towards a promising legal or political path, she could not shake the feeling that her role in the Sahrawi future was to advocate for it through music, influenced by her grandmother who was an influential poet. We find her today on her sophomore album, having stayed the path and taken influence from her grandmother as well as many other strong Sahrawi women who had maintained order and life through displacement of turmoil. The music stands tall on its own, from the driven bass line and vocal ululation on “Gdeim Izik” that sonically depict an impassioned call against injustice while the lyrics decry the violent attacks on a Western Saharan protest camp by Moroccan security forces in 2010. “Aradana” features only the tbal, gravely accompanying her like pallbearers as she memorializes the men lost to the violence with a misty vignette. Across these poetic protest songs, her voice is grounded but simultaneously bright, a hopeful zeal underlining her mission to raise her people’s voice musically. “Ya Watani” ends the album with a somber waltz as she plainspokenly details what she wants for her people. 

“For life, liberty and dignity

look at those innocent eyes watching the sky

wishing to reach the ocean's horizon,

all the tears of joy and emotion

the nature with the green acacia trees dancing.”

It’s an all too-pertinent message. Musical figures like Aziza Brahim are integral in the international political landscape, as they remind us that no group of people in this world should be left voiceless—if the potency of her lyrics is any indication, music is the best artistic way this message can resonate.