Artist Profile: Malika Zarra

Malika Zarra was born in Southern Morocco, in a little village called Ouled Teima. Her father’s family was originally from Tata, a city on the Sahara plain, while her mother was a Berber from the High Atlas. During her early childhood, there was always music and dancing in the house. After her family emigrated to a suburb of Paris, she found herself straddling two very different societies. I had to be French at school yet retain my Moroccan cultural heritage at home, she recalls, Like many immigrant children, I learned to switch quickly between the two. It was hard but brought me a lot of good things too.

Malika’s interest in music led her to take up the clarinet in grade school. Meanwhile, she was being exposed to a wide variety of musical styles, she cites fellow Moroccan Hajja Hamdaouia, Rais Mohand, the Lebanese-born, Egyptian-based ud virtuoso/ composer Farid el Atrache, Um Kalthoum and Algerian singer Warda (Al-Jazairia) as major influences. She also absorbed albums by Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby McFerrin, Thelonious Monk, Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin. When I decided to learn singing, I started with jazz because I was attracted by the improvisation, which is also important in Arabic music, she says. Although her family was not in favor of her pursuing a musical career, Malika nonetheless attended classes at conservatories and jazz academies at Tours and Marseille.

In the beginning, she interpreted classic material strictly in the original languages, then a breakthrough occurred. When I started to sing in Arabic, writing new lyrics for jazz standards, I found that people reacted really strongly. There is always more emotion when you sing in your own language because your feelings are more intense. As a composer, the process was similar; asked why and when she began writing her own songs, she says impishly, “After getting tired of forgetting English lyrics!”

An early visit to New York made a strong impression on her, I came the first time in 1996. It was an amazing experience. I felt that I could be more myself and learn a lot of things, musically and as a human being. In 2004, Malika decided to relocate to New York City. She moved back to France in 2019. Having crafted a repertoire that incorporated her native Berber, Gnawa (a percussive form of religious trance music) and Chaabi (Arabic working class blues) heritages, the intellectual elegance of French pop, plus freewheeling jazz rhythms and techniques, her reputation as a solo act began to grow.

With the release of Berber Taxi on April 12th, 2011 by Motéma Music (home to legendary innovators Randy Weston and Geri Allen), Zarra takes her rightful place as an important world-jazz artist on New York’s multicultural music scene. Berber Taxi takes up its journey following Zarra’s self-released 2006 debut, On the Ebony Road, which has sold largely from her gigs and by word of mouth reputation.

Hailed by CNN International for “redefining the term fusion and adding her unique sound to the world,” singer, composer, and bandleader Malika Zarra has woven together the complex and varied strands of her musical journey on her third release, RWA [The Essence]. Pronounced “Er-WAH,” RWA is a term from the Amazigh (Berber) language meaning “essence.” “It originates in the act of people from a tribe gathering together to help somebody by extracting oil collected from that person’s land,” Zarra explains. “It’s about bringing people together to extract an essence.” Zarra does just that on RWA on her own D. Zel imprint, teaming with a stellar group of musicians, as she puts it, “to pay tribute not only to where I was born but also to all the people I met in the places where I lived and grew.”

Malika eventually recorded and/or performed with Makoto Ozone, John Zorn, Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Aruán Ortíz, Tommy Campbell (Dizzy Gillespie), Will Calhoun (Living Color), Lonnie Plaxico (Cassandra Wilson), Michael Cain (Jack Dejohnette), Brad Jones (Ornette Coleman), Jacques Schwarz-Bart (Roy Hargrove), Gretchen Parlato and many others.

• Album Review – Malika Zarra: RWA [The Essence]

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