Outspoken musician Souad Massi is no stranger to ‘singing’ her mind
As the international media zeroes in on the 60th Annual Grammy Awards on Jan. 28, we pay tribute to a true musical icon of the Arab world
still calls Paris home, yet it was the initial culture shock of emigration which gave birth to her distinctive sound. raised on American rock and country, she never had much time for traditional Arabic music growing up, but arriving in the unfamiliar environment prompted a pivotal reassessment of her cultural lineage. “It took me a few years of being in europe to realize I needed to get back in touch with my origins, my roots,” says Massi.
For debut album “raoui” she brought in oud, gumbri and traditional North African percussion, subtly framing her strummed Spanish guitar and yearning vocals with exotic ornamentations and desert-worn rhythms. It was to prove a career-making resolution – sung in a mix of Arabic and French, raoui became a surprise international hit following its 2001 release, marketed in the then-emerging “world music” bracket. To this day, Massi’s best work remains a quixotic blur of eastern and Western sensibilities, seamlessly segueing folk-rock song-writing with regional traditions.
raoui – translated as Storyteller – was followed two years later by the more confessional “Deb” (heartbroken) and then 2005’s “Mesk elil” (honeysuckle). Paul Weller turned up as a surprise guest on 2010’s “Ô houria” – the result of a frantic session in which an entire song was written and recorded in a single day at the British rock icon’s London studio. “I thought it was just a (social) meeting and he said, ‘okay, we’re going to do a song now’ – really just like that,” she remembers. “I said, ‘I don’t know, I’m not ready, I don’t write.’ he gave me a pen and paper and said ‘take one hour’.” A translator was on hand to put Massi’s words into english for the off-the-cuff duet.
After time out for childrearing, Massi emerged reenergized with fifth album “el Mutakallimun” (Masters of the Word), in which she pointedly put to music Arabic poetry from across the ages – from sixth century poet Zuhayr Ibn Abî Sulmâ to contemporary politicized pieces by Iraqi poet Ahmed Matar. released in 2015, the album took more than two years to complete. “I took time, because I needed time to live,” she says. “Time to be sad, to be happy, to cry – to have a story to tell I’ve actually lived.”
The wait until Massi’s next release is likely to be substantially shorter, with work nearly complete on a followup. But writing her own lyrics again this time around, the songwriter was already anxious her newer work might be sharing too much with her audience and says her sonic approach echoes that of Deb.
“I share a lot of personal things (in the new songs) and I’m not very happy about it right now,” she says. “Your mentality, what you have to say in your twenties is different to your thirties, your forties. I feel I’ve matured over time in my thinking, and thus in my lyrics, what I’m trying to communicate to people.
“Now, sometimes when I listen to my old music, which I knew at the time wasn’t ready to go out yet, it bothers me. What I’m trying to teach myself now is to give everything as much time as humanly possible, so 20 years in the future when I hear it again, I won’t be angry that I didn’t give it enough time.
“The day I have nothing left to say to people is the day I stop singing – up until this point, I have a lot that I want to say, to share, so I will continue singing.”