Anouar Brahem is a Tunisian oud player and composer from Tunis, born in 1957. He works in jazz and world fusion, and his music brings together Arabic classical music, folk music and jazz. He begins studying the oud at the age of 10 at the National Conservatory of Music in Tunis, where he studies with Ali Sitri.

He becomes prominent in Tunisia in the late 1980s. After six years in Paris, he spends two years as director of the Ensemble Musical de la Ville de Tunis in 1987. He records from at least 1991, when ECM releases his first album, Barzakh; before that, he has also made a self-released cassette in his youth.

Brahem often performs with small groups of three or four musicians. His playing is often compared with Rabih Abou-Khalil, although his compositions are described as more mellow and spare. He collaborates with a wide range of musicians, including Tunisian percussionist Lassad Hosni, violinist Bechir Selmi and Turkish clarinetist Barbaros Erkose, and he also gives live concerts with these line-ups.

He works with several jazz musicians, including Jan Garbarek, Dave Holland and John Surman, and appears with Paola Damiani’s Orchestre National de Jazz. He also records with pianist François Couturier and accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier on Le Voyage de Sahar and had previously worked with them on Le Pas du Chat Noir.