Global Music Column – February

Yazz Ahmed – A Paradise in the Hold

Since the release of her 2011 debut album, Finding My Way Home, British Bahraini trumpeter Yazz Ahmed has been exploring her heritage through jazz improvisation. Using Arabic quarter-tone scales with guitar, horns and traditional percussion such as the darbuka drum, Ahmed’s music is a fiery blend of instinctive soloing with melodic lyricism. While 2019’s Polyhymnia took inspiration from formidable women such as Saudi Arabian film-maker Haifaa al-Mansour, Ahmed’s fourth album turns towards folk traditions to produce 10 tracks of atmospheric intensity.

Drawing on the polyrhythmic Arab sea-music fijiri and wedding poetry, the album marks the first time Ahmed has collaborated with other singers. On opener She Stands on the Shore, vocalist Natacha Atlas’s warm tenor interweaves seamlessly with Ahmed’s plaintive trumpet melody, swelling over bowed bass to evoke the undulating waves, while Randolph Matthews’ lower register on To the Lonely Sea artfully embodies an eerie sense of hard winds and crashing waves.

Read the review in the Guardian.

[This piece was published on 14/02/25]