Moroccan-born French singer-songwriter and self-taught multi-instrumentalist Hindi Zahra will perform a rare London date in November at The Royal Albert Hall’s Elgar Room as part of this year’s Nour Festival.
Each year Nour Festival shines a light on the very best in contemporary Middle Eastern and North African arts and culture in venues across the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Hailing from Khouribga, Morocco Zahra drew her musical influences from Berber music, soul, jazz, blues and world music and her music has been compared to a broad range of artists and bands including the likes of Portishead, Manu Chao, Billie Holiday and Patti Smith.
Zahra spent the first fifteen years of her life in Khouribga, Morocco before moving to Paris to be with her father. Whilst working in the Louvre, Zahra began penning her first songs and accompanying them with simple melodies, until releasing a debut EP in 2005. Featuring the songs Beautiful Tango, Oursoul, Try, and Stand-Up, which would subsequently become popular singles for the singer, Zahra issued her debut, self-titled EP in 2009.
In June this year, Zahra released her second studio album Homeland, the follow-up to her 2010 debut album, the internationally acclaimed, best-selling Handmade. Then, Zahra was declared a "North African Patti Smith" (The Guardian), compared with Billie Holiday and Handmade described as "mesmerising elemental folk, a desert blues with an African-American twist." (WIRE Magazine). After its release, she toured, performing over 400 live shows on five continents, before returning to the country where she was born - Morocco. Homeland is the story of what happened next – as Zahra declares, “it is my story."
