About

Yazz Ahmed, hailed as one of the most influential trumpet players of her generation. An Ivor Novello award winning composer who makes sweeping epics that are rich with storytelling, depicting evocative ancient worlds and mythological muses. With her fourth studio album, A Paradise in the Hold, the British-Bahrani musician dives even deeper into her dual heritage and has come up with a treasure trove that draws on traditional music and stories from her childhood home. Ahmed writes for the voice for the first time, with lyrics inspired by Bahraini wedding poems and the yearning songs of the pearl divers. Deeply textural, expansive and full of potent performances, the album charts the heroic voyages of the jewel-hunters of yore, who sailed home through rough seas with precious cargo, and Ahmed’s own voyage of self-discovery over the past decade.

Ahmed began A Paradise in the Hold’s journey back in 2014, on a research trip in Bahrain, during her Jazzlines Fellowship. She’d trawl local bookshops looking for poems and lyrical inspiration. Many came from wedding songs, which were “a lot about beauty and connecting beauty with nature,” she says. Deepening her connection to the tradition, her grandfather even sang her some songs from his own wedding day. At the same time, she became fascinated by the celebratory music of women’s drumming circles and how they contrasted the work songs of the pearl divers. The latter dangerous pursuit has since ceased, though the divers’ sorrowful music – sung and clapped in a polyrhythmic style known as fijiri – lives on. She has reworked the suite’s main theme into album opener "She Stands On The Shore", which sets the tone for an inky odyssey through mermaids, goddesses, sirens and, on ‘Dancing Barefoot’, a runaway bride; and love, loss, new beginnings and a newfound freedom.

Notably, Ahmed hadn’t written for the voice until now. For A Paradise In The Hold, she penned lyrics in English, which she then translated to Arabic, or, on "Though My Eyes Go To Sleep My Heart Does Not Forget You", adapted the words from a pearl divers’ standard. She worked with a range of impressive singers to bring her vision to life: Brigitte Beraha, Natacha Atlas, Randolph Matthews and Alba Nacinovich. The voice of her father, meanwhile, can be heard on standout track "Into The Night", which lands you in the centre of a percussive hubbub and which Ahmed intended as a celebration of female independence. “He was trying to conduct the recording session in the family house,” she says of her dad. “Everyone was gathered in the sitting room and I recorded some of the ululations and clapping that you can hear in the track. I’m so glad I got to have my family on the album.” The collaborators on the album in particular, percussionist Corrina Silvester and the greatly missed giant of the jazz world and Yazz’s dear friend, drummer, Martin France, helped Ahmed to strengthen the connection between the two worlds; A Paradise In The Hold is a bold fusion that reveals its riches more with each rewarding listen. “It’s another step in my evolution of making music,” says Ahmed. “There’s so much beauty in Bahraini music. I hope this album gives people a flavour of how vibrant its culture is.” — via Label

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Label: Night Time Stories
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album
Released: 2025
Genre: Jazz, Folk
Style: Experimental, Fusion, Contemporary Jazz

File under: Global Sounds
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