Genres today seem to gain and lose meaning with the seasons, contested by music makers and consumers alike. Terms like underground, alternative, indie, and pop now serve more as useful shorthands rather than bounded categories – words which gesture to a point in the lifecycle of success rather than a distinct style.
The North African music landscape remains fairly uncharted and in constant evolution, as one wave of trailblazers breaks through while another begins to take shape. In a tentative attempt to glance into its future, I spoke to three voices from North Africa’s new wave, their approaches are equally native to their lived context – but their results are novel.
From West to East: Morocco’s Rita L’Oujdia is fusing languages and musical traditions from across the worldwide Latina belt, Koast is experimenting with hybridity in a yet nascent Tunisian indie landscape, while Zad is withholding explanation for the sombre sounds and colors of her Egyptian ballads.
Third Culture as First Culture
Rita L’Oujdia, born in Morocco but raised in France, found her authentic sound through distance and difference. Her music fuses the rhythms of Morocco, Spain and Brazil, overlaid with lyrics in Darija, Spanish, French and English.
In spite of competing influences from France, Spain, and English media throughout her upbringing, Rita’s relationship with Morocco, and with her hometown Oujda specifically, has remained foundational to her work. Though she grew up in the diaspora, her parents were strict about maintaining a link between herself and her home country: “When I was a kid, my parents would force us to speak Darija. I would reply to my dad in French and he would pretend he didn’t understand until I spoke Darija. Now, I’m so grateful because even though my Darija is weird sometimes, there was never a language barrier between me and my family in Morocco.”
This commitment made by her parents to Morocco spared Rita the awkward feeling of diasporic insufficiency, which might have made someone else reticent about producing Moroccan music. “I never had a crisis of identity about whether I was Moroccan enough or not – I just infused it into my music out of love, because I love my culture.”
Despite her parents’ best efforts, however, it was further distance from them and from Morocco – Rita moved to London to study Sound Engineering in 2019 – that inadvertently strengthened her resolve to make music in Darija. She left France exasperated with the political climate, angered and saddened by the rapid rise of the far-right, but being away from home was isolating.
“I think being away from my parents made me really cling to my culture, and dig into it, because when you’re alone, you’re questioning yourself more.” She clarifies with a laugh, “I wasn’t running around literally asking “Who am I?”, but I was pushed to do more research and try out some new things to figure it out.”
The alterity of London begot self-recognition for Rita beyond just a renewed sense of Moroccanness; in the English capital, she also found a genuine appreciation for the length of Umm Kulthum’s songs – a canon event – and she integrated into the Brazilian migrant community with such zeal that she picked up Portuguese. Now with five linguistic tools in her arsenal, multilingualism is a key facet of Rita’s music, one that is not only representative of the hybridity of Morocco itself, but also of the way that we speak today.
“Sometimes I overthink the multilingualism in my songs, but at the end of the day, language is just a tool, and actually I think it’s representative of our generation” – able to switch from one language to another having grown up consuming such diverse media – “as well as our country.”
A Oujdia girl, Rita comes from a city that is set apart even from the rest of Morocco, so it is fitting that she distinguish herself nominally. Oujda sits at the nexus of Moroccan and Algerian culture, shaped by the forces of both nations, and boasting a special musical and cultural singularity because of that. “Even though it’s far away – culturally and spatially – from the rest of Morocco, being from there, near the sea and Algeria, encapsulates everything I truly love about my country.”
Where Rita spoke about Morocco with barely-contained excitement, Koast spoke of Tunisia with calculated reverence. She rarely stumbled over her words, and she seemed genuinely intrigued by my questions almost as much as I by her answers. That enviable inner serenity, she later explained, is the result of a year-long hiatus that she took, which ended last month with the release of her EP, 1609.
Koast was born in the capital of Tunisia, before moving to the small coastal city of Monastir, which she describes as “Blue. I see a lot of blue. That’s the color and the feeling that comes to mind when I think about Monastir.” Adding in reflection: “It’s too small for me to stay there forever, but I also could never stay away forever.” Her stage name is inspired by the little city, as Monastir is surrounded by the sea; she was raised there, and started creating there.
“I don’t mean to be disruptive, but I am definitely sending a message by being the way I am, and acting the way I act, and talking the way I talk.” – Koast
“My relationship with Tunisia changed after I migrated to Paris for almost 7 years and came back again. Now I know exactly what I love about Tunisia and exactly what I appreciate about living there, but I also know exactly what’s wrong with it.” Mirroring the lived experience of many young Arabs who found clarity in distance, she adds: “Distance gave me perspective. I realized how special and unique we – Tunisians – are, so I returned with purpose. I want to be able to make things better here, even in small ways. I feel like I have a mission, and I want to do more for my country than I used to.”
This mission is no small undertaking, but the first step for Koast is a linguistic change that she never initially considered. “I couldn’t have fathomed singing in a language other than English originally. But when I came back to Tunis from Paris, I realized that something had been missing from my music. I wanted to sing in my dialect, to feel the impact of Tunisians being able to actually understand my music.”
Singing in Tunisian Arabic has also unlocked a precious audience of two for Koast, her parents: “If I drop a song in Arabic, she (my mother) will sing it from morning to night. She still likes the songs of mine in English, but it makes me happy when my parents can actively participate in the music I make.”
Koast intends to make music in both languages in the future, but for now she is taking some care in crafting a Tunisian musical identity. “There is a challenge in trying to be exactly the same person in English and Tunisian, without losing any sass or mystique or grit.” But hybridity is a condition of North African music and identity, especially in relation to language and lyrics. “It’s so normal for a North African artist to use French, English and Arabic in the same sentence. So I find us to be coded differently from other artists in the West, and in the Middle East.”
Like a tasting menu at an uptown restaurant, 1609 blends 90s NYC ballroom, 80s synth-pop, elements of a Cheb Khaled track, and classic R&B rhythms – for Koast, “this album was an exercise in learning new things.” I posed the same question of genre to her as I did to Rita and Zad, and each answer communicated a distaste for labelling their music. “I don’t know what to call it. We don’t really have a big enough industry in Tunisia to be discussing categories. It’s very DIY, and the underground scene thrives on limited infrastructure.”
Zad, purveyor of profoundly introspective Egyptian ballads, is not a third culture kid, but her music speaks to the universal rather than the local. Instead of setting out to convey the nuances of Egyptian life through song, she paints a sonic picture of her heart, and translates her feelings into keening, tragic lyrics. With her yet small discography, she has managed to produce an uncomfortably relatable picture of feelings of inadequacy, with very little commotion.
An Education to Acquire and Overcome
The three singers diverge stylistically, but are bound by a lived investment in the arts through their formal education – an education acquired, but also, to a certain extent, overcome.
Rita’s musical upbringing was constructed on the foundations of Baroque and recorder studies at a conservatory, but nourished by a whimsical household that cherished the tradition of “music Sundays,” when they would dance around the kitchen to chaabi and tarab once a week. Her education was complemented by input from Tracy Chapman, Adele, Amy Winehouse, and Souad Massi, who bridged the gap between her favourite Western balladists and 10-minute Arabic odes to love and loss by Abdelhadi Belkhayat, Raï music and Reggada.
In tandem, a French adolescence exposed her to a multicultural R&B scene, as well as the Raï n B Fever era, and regular holidays to Spain encouraged passive absorption of Reggaeton, Flamenco and Salsa music until she was old enough to participate more actively.
Koast also spent her early years at a music conservatory, which she hated at first. “I used to hide in the theatre just so I wouldn’t have to go to class.” She grew up listening to Fairuz and Umm Kulthum in the house, but she had an alternative rock era, complete with heavy eye makeup and a well-worn Nirvana t-shirt, before getting really into hiphop and R&B. “At 15, I started discovering what I preferred, beyond what I was exposed to.”
She now has a Master’s in Musicology, but she admits “I always hated school. I always preferred to do rather than study.” Her first taste of musical freedom, beyond the bounds of her formal education, came when she started playing in bars with bands all over Tunisia, before moving to Paris for her Master’s.
Zad has benefited from a background in Fine Art, which she nods to when describing her music with color as well as sound. The veiled artist maintains an understated social media presence, which compounds her mystique, but her visual artwork gives us small additional glimpses into her mind.
“I want to make people think and reflect, make them think of a certain emotion, time of day or time of uncertainty.” – Zad
After the release of her debut single, “Ana Meen,” which collected 33 million streams across multiple platforms, Zad took a year-long hiatus to experiment with other art mediums like painting, sculpture and photography, before deciding to commit to music full-time. Despite making her commitment to music, she still flaunts her degree by producing most of her own visuals, which form another element of her introspective archive.
Beyond Disruption
Zad’s work, then, is indivisible. Her public persona, her visual art, her sounds and her lyrics – they all interlock to form the outline of a whole, the silhouette of the anonymous artist. When we spoke, I couldn’t see her face, but the tone of her voice communicated an exasperation with every question I posed, one that didn’t feel personal, but systemic. There was no false sense of grandeur, no grandiose artistry, and no attempts to give significance to arbitrary facets of her brand where there was none, even when I pushed her to ascribe some, for my sake.
The Egyptian singer opted not to share too much with me, defending her hard-won anonymity. I had initially named her veil as a unique mode of disruption on the North African scene, looking for some political messaging or branding strategy behind it, but she is very assertive about her look: “I just want to continue my studies and my personal life with no interference from my musical career. I want people to stop asking women why they choose to wear what they do and how they present. Just focus on the music I put out.”
Just as she resists arbitrary metaphors, she also is equally as disinclined towards stagnant musical classifications. She prefers not to subscribe to any one genre, “continuing to try out different sounds and colors,” and while inspiration is drawn from personal experience, her songs are “aimed at encapsulating universal feelings more than the experiences themselves.”
“Ana Meen” is a profound ballad of self-interrogation, and her second single, “Khesert Nafsy,” a lament of losing one’s self: testaments to generational confusion and the fatigue of emotional labour. “I want to make people think and reflect, make them think of a certain emotion, time of day or time of uncertainty.” With her confident, non-personal approach, she, in fact, achieves this with more force than the average artist, by removing her context from her music in a very Roland Barthesque manner.
A few times during our earlier conversation, Rita had caught herself speeding up and sheepishly asked me if she was rambling, or if she had even answered my question, to which I could only apologize for not interrupting her to better steer the conversation. She is an incredibly animated and engaging speaker, jumping from one anecdote to another, but as we approach the topic of womanhood in the music industry, her pace slows, and she appears fatigued.
“It’s tough because I have to be wary. I love people and I’m very extroverted, always yapping, but I’ve learned that that can be very badly interpreted, so I have to diminish my personality a bit, in industry settings. But then, that makes me anxious that I’m coming across as mean, so I’m always walking on eggshells.”
Her music is independent, indie, the marriage of Latin music and Raï, a romance between languages and a personal tool for cultural closeness. Yet, she sighs, “I think whatever I do as a woman in music will be disruptive to someone, to some extent.” Her recently released EP, h.u.b, explores themes of love, and her goal is to provoke emotions in people, but all too often she is painted as provocative instead.
“I wasn’t running around literally asking “Who am I?”, but I was pushed to do more research and try out some new things to figure it out.” – Rita L’Oujdia
“I’m not trying to be a disruptive character.” Rita is sure of this, but she concedes that it takes a level of disturbance to break out of the box that is constantly being built around her. Though she graciously shared her thoughts with me, ultimately, and ironically, she is weary of explaining herself.
Koast approaches disruption with an equal dose of both Rita’s defiance and Zad’s embodiment: “I would like to come up with a whole genre of my own.” She stands as a pillar of an indie pop scene under construction, as they demolish commonly-held ideas of genre itself.
A playful marketing campaign with May Cadi Soussi saw pre-hiatus “Missing” posters from NYC to Tunis, and post-hiatus weather (album) forecasts on Instagram. It was a game in storytelling, but there is no subterfuge in Koast’s branding. She echoed the others when she told me: “I don’t sit and think about it, but it happens naturally, just by being present in traditionally male-dominated genres like rap or electronic music. I don’t mean to be disruptive, but I am definitely sending a message by being the way I am, and acting the way I act, and talking the way I talk.”
