Aziza Brahim. Copyright Henrique Almeida for Tracker Magazine at Festival du Outono 2016.
The Song of the Week is ‘Hada Jil’ by Aziza Brahim, a Saharawi musician exiled in Barcelona. Born and raised in a Saharawi refugee camp in the borderlands between Algeria and Western Sahara, Brahim’s sound is similar to the incomparable combination of traditional and electronic styles found in the music of West-African bands like Bombino, Tartit, and Tinariwen.
I first heard ‘Hada Jil’ back in November, off of her 2019 album Sahari—the album cover stopped me in my tracks—and it’s been etched in my mind’s ear ever since. So I‘m very grateful that she joins Blue Riband this week to share what this album means to her, as well as to translate the lyrics of a song that nevertheless communicates a message of hope in the future so vividly.
The concept behind Sahari is that I wanted to express my view of my homeland while in exile. Part of my family still lives in the camps, so the album begins in a remote point in the past of the Saharawi tradition and progresses to the heart of the modern developed civilization. This progression is expressed not only in the lyrics butin the music, too. I wanted to update some traditional rhythms with a new element for the Saharawi music and electronic music.
The themes of the album are exile and memory. Obviously, we start from the situation of Sahrawi refugees, both those who are in refugee camps and those who are outside living in the diaspora or being emigrants. I know this situation from my own experience, but it is something that affects people from very different backgrounds, you just have to keep in mind that currently, there are 70.8 million people forcibly displaced in the world, of which 25.9 million are refugees. This matter worries me a lot. Naturally I always have hope for a better future, and that is of course reflected on the cover. But what I don't think is in the songs on this album is nostalgia for refugee camps: I miss my family living there, it's true that I have had good family moments in the camps, but my purpose is to denounce the extreme living conditions there and the great injustice that prevents Saharawi refugees from returning to their home, their land, Western Sahara. However, I did recover the feeling of longing that my elders expressed for their land taken away and for their past life in their country. Hence, the memory is also a thematic axis of the album not only in the personal aspect but also in the sense of the collective memory of Saharawi society.
All of this is connected with the album cover. The wonderful photograph by Ana Valiño inspired me to use it as the cover of Sahari from the first time I saw it. It is an image with plenty of hope, dignity and dreams. The dreams we all have—independent of the place we come from—makes its way in this cruel desert with the same strength and dignity of the little ballerina Aaiza. She is surrounded by sand and stifling heat in order to show an unsolved conflict. To show how struggle, illusions and dreams, which are common to Humanity, could help to bring us closer to the injustice that affects many people in the world. We should not forget that to exist in this or any desert is to resist, and to dream becomes a way of resistance.
Regarding ‘Hada Jil’, it is a song about the new generation, the youth that are called to create a new strategy for the resistance against the oppressing power. Its lyrics could be translated as:
Cover art for Sahari.
‘Hada Jil’ [This generation]
The youth has declared,
With conviction it’s pledged,
Not a shred of its dignity
Will be taken away.
The youth that takes over
The fight every day
Proclaims in its melodies
It’ll drive mad the authorities.
The youth of today
Is organising its entity
And facing every challenge
With integrity.
On the other hand, I am very sad these days. The COVID19 crisis is very hard and worrying. Fortunately, I'm well with my family at home, but the daily news is terrifying. I hope they find a vaccine soon.
—Aziza Brahim