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| Badra Abdallahe y Aziza Brahim (Foto: Guillem Moreno) |
Reaktion Aziza Brahim & Gulili Mankoo : Mabruk (SP/MO,2012)***°
Often
in history you see that zones and people are overwhelmed, conquered or
occupied by stronger and in a sense more primitive powers. Because in
general, today’s society considers economy more important than culture
occupation of land and minor cultures always will remain possible.
Because of the economic and political dependencies of outsiders who are
also partly “occupied” by their own problems to maintain especially
economic and political stability, it is even likely that information on
some occupations gets trough in media only sporadically. In Africa many
colonial borders often did not match the reality of the people living
there and how they hang together, and now when economy means power
things didn’t evolve easily in the right direction for everyone
involved. In Africa we also have racial, tribal and religious domination
that play part in the occupied teritories. The Western Sahara (the West
of Mauritania) is now occupied and heavily controlled by Morocco even
tough this evolution still is an incomplete process, nothing really
happens that could possibly improve the situation. Like in the
surrounding countries already in the first steps of this process they
(deliberately or not)have overlooked the desert tribe people who now are
trapped within certain borders and restrictions ruled by countries with
different perspectives and interests, and by racial oppression and even
aggression. Aziza had already left her homeland just before the
domination of occupation to study in Cuba (age 7-11), a study which she
abandoned to pursue a career in music. In 1995 she joined the National
Sahraoui Group, which made her able to tour in Mauritania and Algeria.
After a Spanish label released two of her songs on a trilogy, she
migrated to Spain in further exile, where she further developed her own
style while opening herself up to multi-cultural musical understanding
and creative growth. She never forgot her African and tribal roots and
family and tried to maintain in contact.
The
booklet mentions the first Sahrawi music group called “Martir Luali” in
1976, who pioneered the introduction of the electric bass guitar,
drums, organ, flute, saxophone and trumpet.
Aziza
joined different ensembles like Yayabo Latinjazz in 2005. Then she
formed a Sagrawi group, Gulili Mankoo. There were also other projects
like with the Basque musical group Oreka TX, taking part in the ‘Nomadak
TX’ project, mixing Sahrawi roots with rap and folk. But her main
interest now is to deliver a voice to the situation her family is
trapped for now already three generation while things only seems to get
worse.
Therefore
she incorporates some Mauritanian & Sahwari traditions. These
traditions are more African rooted compared to the Arab associations of
the rulers. Therefore they use for instance ‘ezamzam’ a sort of drum
pierced by a stick, played by women; the ‘tidinit’, a small guitar; the
‘neifara’, a traditional flute, played by men, and the “tabal” a type of
drum shared by men and women. Still we can say the music is pretty
rock-like featuring electric guitars and drums alongside the acoustic
instruments.
For
Aziza’s first CD album (the label released a digital EP before), Aziza
referred several times to lyrics of her grandmother, the Sahrawi poet,
Ljadra Mint Mabroc (Tiris, 1934). Her village once nicknamed her “the
poet with a gun”.
As
I said, for a part the music is more like rock music with ethnic
associations. The foundations of drums, (conga-like) acoustic
percussion, electric bass and guitars are kept simple, almost primitive,
-nevertheless effective in its core. It is especially Aziza’s voice
which lead everything : a convincing, perhaps powerful voice and
expression with attractive melody lines, sometimes a bit sad, sometimes
up-tempo or more celebrative with power to be heard. Some guitars add to
the rhythm, then repeats the melody line in an African way of response,
sometimes with some improvised variation. A few times electric guitar
takes the time to express some emotion to, in a rock sense, which is
very effective too. Compared to the other nomadic tribe guitar music
(Touareg-based), Aziza’s voice still is pretty different, perhaps
because she adapted elements from other countries where she lived (Cuba,
Spain), musically she might not be able to adapt each traditional
aspect of her people, her voice means power to reunite with a renewed
hope that she was able to infuse elsewhere. Let us hope this message
also comes through.
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