Aziza Brahim

Aziza Brahim

Aziza Brahim is a Sahrawi singer and actress from Tindouf, Western Sahara, born in 1976. She grows up in a refugee camp in Algeria and, at the age of 11, receives a scholarship to study in Cuba. She spends seven years there before leaving her studies to focus on music.

Early career

She wins first prize in a national song competition at a cultural festival of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic. She makes her first recordings for Saharawi National Radio in the refugee camps, and her first tour outside the camps takes her to Mauritania and Algeria with the National Saharawi Music Group.

Recordings and performances

In 1998, the Spanish label Nubenegra issues the trilogy Saharauis, which includes two songs by her. She then tours in Europe with the National Saharawi Music Group Leyuad from 1998 to 2004.

Style and collaborations

In 2005, she begins combining traditional music from Western Sahara with other styles through work with the Latin jazz group Yayabo. She later works with her own group, Gulili Mankoo, which mixes Western Saharan music, rhythms from Senegal and blues. Her music is associated with African blues and traditional pop.

Background

Her family comes from El Aaiun, the capital of the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara. Her mother flees the Moroccan invasion in 1975 and survives the 1976 bombardments of napalm against Saharawi civilians in the eastern desert. Her father remains in occupied Western Sahara, and she never meets him or the half-siblings he later has there.