AÏTA MON AMOUR - Abda

Sometimes a band's name already says it all, or almost. In the case of Aïta Mon Amour there's certainly very little left to add. It's worth explaining, though, what aïta actually is: the Moroccan genre of the chikhates, the female singers who for centuries have preserved, through folk tales, age-old rituals still alive among Bedouin communities, particularly in the Moroccan region along the Atlantic coast. Aïta is a hybrid of blues-like vocal swoops and laments giving voice to poetry, but above all to the struggles of these various communities. Aïta literally means "scream", though it can also be understood as "call" — specifically, the call of 12th-century warriors.

The duo's declaration of love, made up of Moroccan rapper Widad Mjama — essentially the first woman to make hip-hop in her country — and Tunisian electronic composer Khalil EPI, also implies a break from the genre's origins: a kind of tribute to the past with the explicit intent of immediately abandoning it and reshaping it in their own image.

The songs on "Abda" are full of obsessive, synchronized rhythms, created digitally or in the manner of aïta musicians, who used real percussion instruments such as the loutar (a type of lute), alongside violin, of course. And it would take just one Widad Mjama and Khalil EPI show to grasp the sheer, all-out drive of this more-than-well-matched duo.

“Abda” was born to celebrate a genre that has at times been buried, raising a generational bridge time and again. To do so, Widad relies on lyrics that repeatedly champion women's emancipation, without ever betraying the universal message of love once spread by the chikhates, while Khalil repeatedly stages tribal rhythms and assault riffs, starting with the opening “Radouni”, which in old Moroccan Arabic means “wait for me”, a song with which the two musicians also invite listeners to gather and sing in a circle, or all together in a jumble, no matter which: the imperative is to come together, and to invoke one's own spirit in chorus to unite it with that of one's ancestors.

Fortunately, Khalil's electronics are never excessive, and properly support Widad's full-blooded vocals across the nine songs of an album that also features choral inserts, mostly male voices (“Ammela”), tragic ballads like “L'Hdawiyet”, which tells of young Fatma's flight from social pressures, and tracks with a mournful pace and noir atmospheres (“Kebet El Kheyl”).

Then there's “Sidi Hmed”, which tells the story of a woman who lived in the 18th century, when men went off to the battlefields to protect their land. And there's also the uncompromising electrification of the aïta in the shaky “Dami”, yet another example of how certain traditions can be “reinvented” in new guise without losing their nature or giving up their essence.

All that's left, then, is to wait for Aïta Mon Amour to arrive on our shores too, to admire them live and invoke together with them angels, demons and everything that stirs both soul and body.

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21/01/2026