Hindi Zahra, an independent spirit

Debut album, Hand made

Paris 

18/01/2010 - 

It’s been over a year now that Hindi  Zahra has been tipped as the next big thing in world music. Her impressive debut album, Hand made, is out now.

Courted by a number of different labels, Hindi Zahra took her time before finally going with  Blue Note France. With the crisis in the record industry still ongoing, Hindi wanted to be sure before committing herself. "I want complete control. After all, it’s my music, isn’t it?" Her first name may well mean “flower” and “chance” in Arabic, but that hardly makes her a soft touch, ready to bend to anyone’s will. And “pop star” is not really her style, either.

Of Berber origin, Hindi Zahra was born in 1979 in Khouribga, a mining town in southern Morocco, and left for Paris in 1993 to rejoin family members there. Hindi Zahra has a tenacious, free-spirited character which has allowed her to create her own world through the sheer force of her convictions and intuitions.  "Music has always spurred my imagination.” She passed her baccalaureat and worked in a series of small-time jobs with the sole ambition of developing her song writing, owing nothing to anyone.

Eclectic influences

"When it comes to music, I can work very hard and for a long time,” Hindi explains, although her preference is to work late at night. Influenced by the great Maghreb singers and the Egyptian divas, Hindi was brought up on traditional Berber music and also the local rock’n’roll her musician uncles played. Other early influences were Ali Farka Touré’s Sahara blues and the folk sounds of Ismaël Lô. The young Hindi also listened to African-American music (“anything with a groove”), as well as Bob Marley.

She started out doing hip hop backing vocals before getting into Paris’s alternative scene, where she found her exceptionally original voice, which has a touch of soul about it but with a different twist. It’s no coincidence that she first found her feet with a song ambiguously entitled Oursoul (which can read as “our soul” or as the Berber word meaning “never again”). Written in 2005, the song is about arranged marriages. It was “the trigger”, she says. “Suddenly everything fell into place.”

From that point on the words and music flowed and very soon she had dozens of songs up her sleeve. Many ended up in the bin but one stood out from the others: Beautiful Tango. "I was proud of it and knew it was good.” With this song she’d found her unique style. Her MySpace site created a buzz, and highbrow UK music monthly The Wire was writing about her as the next Billy Holiday. Even better, the song featured in an ad campaign in the UK, giving her breathing space to put a collection of songs together without too much pressure.

Craft work

The result of all that work is Hand Made, with its handful of themes, one of which is herself as a "self-made-workin’-woman.” Hence the album title, which she justifies with a touch of humour: “handcrafted, made in Morocco!” Before adding on a more serious note: “The musicians play with their hands, and I play percussion and mess about on bass.” She demonstrates a fine-tuned sense of melody, with a touch of melancholy, but with some swing to it as well. The music serves as a perfect foil for her lyrics.

There’s no doubt that the album reflects her personality: eminently seductive on first listen, and yet subtly fragile under the surface. This born wanderer has an imagination that is solidly anchored in real world, blending a variety of styles: there are jazzy tracks, dashes of Middle Eastern blues, tips of the hat to trip hop, tango, gnaoua rhythms, gypsy guitars… "Like couscous or paella, there’s everything in me !", she laughs. And there are also "some funny things,” miniature portraits of colourful eccentric characters, part-surreal, part-naïve.

In fact one of her self-portraits adorns the cover of her first EP, a photo taken at an Islamic saint’s shrine in Marrakech by London-based Hassan Hajjaj, "one of those artists who likes to recycle African elements in his work.”  The promotional video, set in the twisting alleys of Imperial Fez, was made by veteran Algerian director Tony Gatlif. "I didn’t want to work with the usual video directors, the types with the big car and the phone glued to the ear.” It’s clear that Hindi Zahra has no intention of being just another product to be marketed.

Indeed, it won’t be easy to get her to agree to any conventional marketing campaign. No question of "doing the usual Moroccan-in-Paris type promo. I won’t be anything that I’m not, a Berber. I don’t have to justify my nationality. My identity is my music.” No question either of limiting herself to her recording career. "The record is just a means of supporting my live act. And what I want is an international career. Look at Youssou N'Dour; just because he’s French-speaking never meant that he had to stick to France."

Hindi Zahra Hand Made (Blue Note/EMI) 2010

Jacques  Denis

Translation : Hugo  Wilcken