JAWHAR is the recording project of Tunisian singer-songwriter Jawhar Basti, now based between Tunis and Brussels. Basti draws on both anglophone folk traditions (citing Nick Drake as an influence) and North African chaâbi (from the Arabic الشعبي which translates literally as “folk”) to create a style that feels simultaneously contemporary and timeless. It’s not just a simple setup of guitar and vocals either. Basti is joined by Eric Bribosia (piano & keys), Yannick Dupont (bass, keys & percussion), and Louis Evrard (drums, guitar, percussion & wurlitzer), transforming JAWHAR into a full band that builds on basic folk templates and expands them into what they describe as Arabic dream pop.
Tasweerah, released last month via 62TV Records / PIAS, is the fourth JAWHAR record and their first since 2018’s Winrah Marah. Described as “a series of freeze-frames of more or less personal portraits,” the album explores what it means to be an artist and his or her value in our increasingly strained and strange modern world. “The songs are, each in their own way, attempts towards a universal portrait of the artist,” the band describe. “They question his place and that of imagination in society, placing ‘creation and the quest for beauty’ at the centre of the album.”
Opener ‘Malguit’ is characteristically rich and shadowy, built on patient percussion and winding guitar and Basti’s evocative vocals. Like many songs on the record, it is thick with a dark romanticism and has deep philosophical roots. Basti describes it as a song about “a traveller who crosses territories in search of an absolute that he calls Errouh (the soul),” perhaps the perfect starting point for an album that explores the search for more than the material. Follow-up ‘Foug Layyem’ tends toward the pop end of the JAWHAR sound, but again has a strong existential bent. “It’s the story of a man who lets himself hover above his life,” Basti explains. “Birds flying send him back to the feeling of having his heart in a cage. Shooting stars make him realize that he is not on the same timeline as the universe that surrounds him.”
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The rest of the album follows along similar lines, wrestling with creativity and purpose with admirable elegance and restraint. You don’t need to be able to speak Arabic to feel the pull of the songs, from the taut groove of ‘Sayyed Ezzin’ and gentle slow dawn of ‘Kif Errouh’ to the sparse and lonely ‘El Mooja’ and boldy defiant ‘Chsar’. Basti is able to aim personal experience and philosophical wandering through the prism of several “folk” cultures, resulting in patterns that are very much his own.
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Tasweerah is out now via 62TV Records / PIAS and available to purchase from the JAWHAR Bandcamp page.
