Yazz Ahmed interview: “I’ve always wanted to write about the rich tradition of Bahrain”

Over the past 15 years, trumpeter and composer Yazz Ahmed has been using her music to connect with her Bahraini heritage. Finding her melodies in quarter-tone Arabic scales and her grooves in complex polyrhythms, Ahmed’s three albums (2011’s Finding My Way Home, 2017’s La Saboteuse and 2019’s Polyhymnia) have produced a distinct blend of jazz improvisation with the echoes of music from her homeland, providing a sonic trace of her ongoing relationship with a cross-cultural identity.

Yet, throughout the span of this recording career, Ahmed has also been working on another project that delves further into her personal history than ever before. Featuring recordings of her family, reinterpreted Bahraini folk music and high-energy ensemble compositions, her latest album, A Paradise in the Hold, has been more than a decade in the making, with versions reworked and honed during live performances across the globe. Now finally ready for release, it shines a new light on Ahmed’s British-Bahraini jazz fusion to produce some of her most expansive and exciting music to date.

“I left Bahrain in 1992 when I was nine years old to move to London and once I did, I left my culture behind so I could fit into Britain,” Ahmed says over a Zoom call from her Bedfordshire home. “I would keep my identity hidden because having an Arabic Muslim father, I didn’t feel accepted – there were so many negative perspectives of Middle Eastern people and Muslims at the time. It was only when I was older that I started to rediscover my mixed heritage and I felt a deep homesickness and hunger to learn about that culture I abandoned. Ever since, my music has been my way of bridging that gap.”

In 2014, following the acclaimed release of her independent debut Finding My Way Home, Ahmed travelled to Bahrain on a research trip to reconnect with these roots.

“I’ve always wanted to write about the rich tradition of Bahrain, which includes the music sung by the pearl divers, as well as women’s drumming groups that would sing at festivals and celebrations,” she says. “People from other parts of the world often assume that Bahraini women are oppressed but I wanted to shine a light on the strong, incredible women who are forging new creative paths in the country.”

During her trip, Ahmed discovered traditional poems and lyrics used by female drumming groups in local bookshops, as well as listening to her grandfather singing the songs performed at his own wedding and attending a concert of pearl diving music from the pearl divers of Muharraq, her family’s hometown.

“It was a beautiful, entrancing experience,” she says with a smile. “The singers silenced the whole room with their melodies and I found it so inspiring. I recorded the performance on my phone and when I came back home, I began separating sections of their songs into loops that would eventually form the ideas on A Paradise in the Hold.”

It would be another five years at least before any of those ideas made it to the studio, though. Instead, Ahmed electronically processed those loops and melodies with the help of vocal sculptor and producer Jason Singh to produce a 90-minute instrumental suite of inspired music for a 2015 performance at the Birmingham CBSO Centre. Titled ‘Alhaan Al Siduri’, the suite was named for the goddess Siduri, who is mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh and whose homeland could be Bahrain. The following year, Ahmed performed the suite back in Bahrain and then began incorporating evolving versions of the compositions into her touring setlists.

“I had other projects to prioritise over the years, like La Saboteuse and Polyhymnia, so this music was at the back of my mind for a long time,” she says. “I’m always working on lots of ideas at the same time, to keep my inspiration flowing and fresh, and these songs were in the mix for many years.”

Indeed, as Ahmed’s star ascended thanks to the release of second album La Saboteuse, which was dedicated to her ‘inner saboteur’ and fused cinematic melody with atmospheric electronic effects, as well as 2019’s Polyhymnia, which paid homage to powerful women from Malala Yousafzai to American Civil Rights activist Ruby Bridges, she kept returning to the pearl diving and wedding music of Bahrain, tweaking compositions to reflect her own evolution as a composer.

“Over a decade of performing this music, I realised there initially wasn’t enough of me in the compositions because I used to think of myself as a director of the band, rather than having a central performing role,” she says. “I started to write new melodies and parts for me to play, as well as realising that I needed voices in the music, since vocals are so important to Bahraini music. I gave myself the challenge to write lyrics for the first time, which would be performed by a group of singers I had grown to love: Randolph Matthews, Natacha Atlas, Brigitte Beraha and Alba Nacinovich.”

Armed with these ideas, in January 2020 Ahmed finally made it to the studio.

“I always start with the band in the studio, laying down as much as possible that I can then go away and edit,” she says. “Once I have those live tracks, I might process or overdub and then get other musicians to send in new parts. That’s how the process continues.”

Yet, only two months after the studio session, the Covid lockdowns hit and the project was once again put on hold, sidelined by livestreams and new commissions inspired by the chaotic solitude so many of us found ourselves in. A year later, Ahmed was ready to reopen the files and start again, tweaking further, taking new versions on the road and finally putting the finishing touches together following a formative family trip to Bahrain in 2023.

“I always wanted to involve my family on the album, especially since my grandad singing to me on the 2014 trip was such an inspiration, but I was unsure how to include them,” Ahmed says. “I decided to get my aunties involved and so I went to the apartment block where much of my family lives to record in their shared courtyard. It was a very fun session as people were constantly passing through and there was a lot of chatter going on, from my dad trying to conduct the traditional ululations and clapping rhythms to one of my aunties asking for a whisky before we started! It was so joyful and the perfect note to round out the record on.”

The resulting song, ‘Into the Night’, features Ahmed’s keening trumpet lines cutting through a multi-layered percussion ensemble that forms the foundation for her family’s euphoric ululations and snatches of laughter. Pairing bluesy trumpet improvisations with traditional Gulf rhythms and vocal form, it is a perfect encapsulation of the Bahraini-jazz blend that features on the finished 10-track album. The following number, ‘Though My Eyes Go To Sleep My Heart Does Not Forget You’, for instance, follows the melody of a traditional Bahraini sea shanty sung in an emotive vibrato by Alba Nacovich, while Dudley Philips’ electric bass drives the motif forward with its droning notes, adding an ominous, metallic edge to the song’s sense of longing for a loved one’s return.

Other tracks such as ‘Mermaids’ Tears’ recount the myth that pearls are produced from the tears of mermaids, interweaving Randolph Matthews and Brigitte Beraha’s yearning vocal duet with Ahmed’s dextrous trumpet lines, while ‘She Stands On The Shore’ sees Ahmed exploring quarter tone runs against the keening Arabic vocals of Natacha Atlas, producing a deeply textured and atmospheric sonic palette.

It is, however, the album’s title track that best encapsulates Ahmed’s long journey of bringing the project to fruition. The 10-minute instrumental odyssey opens with eerie, rhythmic snatches of electronically processed vocals that are in fact one of the loops Ahmed made from the initial 2014 pearl divers’ performance in Bahrain, before echoing those singers’ rhythms in her trumpet refrain. As the tune progresses, George Crowley breaks out into a solo on bass clarinet, followed by Naadia Sheriff on Fender Rhodes, who were both informed by playing ever-expanding versions of the tune on the road. Finally, the track reaches its peak with a darbuka solo from percussionist Corrina Silvester, which is played over polyrhythmic clapping from the ensemble that echoes the traditional rhythms displayed on ‘Into the Night’ by Ahmed’s family.

Weaving together such a complex tapestry, Ahmed commands her ensemble with confidence, punctuating explosive rhythms with bright lines of trumpet melody or soloing with expressive and commanding force. Throughout, her rhythm section equally ground the album’s 10 compositions with layered grooves and a driving power governed by the dual playing of percussionist Silvester and Ahmed’s longtime drummer Martin France, who sadly passed away in 2024 at the age of 60.

“I first played with Martin in 2013 when I needed an urgent drum dep at a festival and I was drawn to his playing from the first note,” Yazz says. “He was such an inspiration and taught me a lot about bandleading over the many years we continued to collaborate together. It’s really sad that we’ve lost him, but he’ll be remembered forever through the music – especially his fantastic playing on this album where he pairs so well with Corrina, who is an expert in Middle Eastern drumming and who built layers of drums to get these empowering grooves out of the ensemble. It’s really something to listen to.”

That empowering groove not only serves to give the record its vital energy but it equally bolsters Ahmed’s message of making the album one of empowerment for Arab women, firing with most ferocity on the ecstatic dance of ‘Her Light’, which was derived from the Bahraini women’s drumming group songs.

“Being a female bandleader and instrumentalist, inclusivity and equality is an issue that has always been close to my heart,” Ahmed explains. “When I was starting out, I had no one to look up to who looked like me and it instantly made me assume that maybe women weren’t good enough to play this music. Now, organisations such as Tomorrow’s Warriors, PRS Foundation and Women in Jazz are making a real difference, working with communities of women to develop their voices, but we still have a way to go. It will always be an issue I will champion in all of my work.”

Ultimately, with her decade-long passion project finally released, Ahmed is carving out a distinct path not only as a woman in jazz, but also as a British-Bahraini musician aiming to express the many facets of her heritage.

“I feel more whole now with my identity, like I can embrace both sides of my culture, since the music has been a healing process,” she says. “It brings me a lot of joy and when I go back to Bahrain the feedback is wonderful too. It’s a real privilege to keep shining a light on this music and to do it through my own lens. All that’s left is for people to listen and to lose themselves in the songs.”

A Paradise in the Hold is out on 28 February via Night Time Stories; Yazz Ahmed launches the album at the ICA in London on 29 March