An amazing talent, Aziza Brahim is considered by many to be the “voice of the Sahrawi diaspora”. Like many Sahrawis, her family were exiled by Morocco in its’ military pursuit of invading and colonizing Western Sahara to commercially exploit its’ mineral wealth in phosphate deposits and rich coastal fishing grounds.
Resisting the Spanish occupation, the Polisario Front (a Marxist anti-colonial revolutionary group and Morocco’s opposition) controls a percentage of the territory of Western Sahara, which it calls the SADR (Sahrawi Autonomous Democratic Republic). It’s main base are the refugee camps it administers in Tinduf, Algeria, where Aziza Brahim was born.
Like many Sahrawi children, Brahim was offered a scholarship and education in Cuba, which supports the Polisario Front. There, she studied music, before returning to the Tinduf camps, and eventually moving to Spain, as many Sahrawi exiles tend to do.
As an artist, Brahim celebrates her family history of resistance, using the poetry of her grandmother as song lyrics. She sings in Spanish, Hassaniya Arabic and Tamasheq (language of the Touareg people) about life as a displaced, stateless person, her dreams, and her goals, among many other subjects.
One of my current favourite singers, Aziza Brahim includes elements of Spanish flamenco, Cuban traditional music, West African “highlife” and American blues to provide a beautifully emotional introduction to the Sahrawi people, their nomadic life, and their brave resistance against a brutal occupation.