The EFG London Jazz Festival is back for its 32nd run until 24 November. More than 300 shows are taking place at dozens of venues across London, with a dizzying range of artists set to perform.
Several Middle Eastern women are among them, including Kurdish folk singer Suna Alan, Egyptian jazz singer Amena, Turkish pop singer Melike Sahin, and British-Bahraini trumpeter and flugelhornist Yazz Ahmed.
The New Arab spoke to them to find out more about their jazz journey and inspiration.
Amena: ‘A dream come true’
Ask anyone to name a jazz song off the top of their head, and it might well be Frank Sinatra’s version of Fly Me to the Moon.
For Amena, a singer and composer born and raised in Cairo, that ubiquitous American standard was what first piqued her interest in the genre. It sent her on a journey of jazz discovery, and she would come to fall in love with singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter, and Sarah Vaughan.
Most of her musical learning was by ear, and would perform in Egypt, including at the Cairo Jazz Festival. But she felt as though there was only so much she could learn about jazz and grow as an artist in Egypt. Accepted by the prestigious Guildhall School of Music & Drama, she moved to London in September 2021.
“To be here right now in London and studying jazz, I’ve had this dream since I was a kid,” Amena told The New Arab.
“I always thought it would stay a dream… I’m so thankful that I have this privilege to study what I love the most,” she said.
Being in London means she is not only getting a formal education in jazz music but also has access to the spaces and opportunities to practice with other jazz musicians that Cairo lacked.
“To be a jazz singer… you need to be able to practice with a band, at least a few times a week, and in Egypt, it wasn’t possible at all to do that. The musicians – they need to do function gigs, gigs that help them be able to afford things… corporate events, things like that. They don’t have the time to practice a few times a week just for the sake of practising,” she said.
“Here, people are practising all the time. You have people living together in a flat, all musicians, and they play music together, and they can spend the day practising together or at university. And if one person is not free, there are so many people to choose from, unlike in Egypt – I only know like three bassists in all of Egypt!”
Part of jazz’s appeal to Amena was its origins in the Black American struggle for self-expression after slavery. She has used jazz as a means to channel her distress as Israel’s genocide continues to unfurl in Gaza, providing vocals for the single Baad el Harb (After The War) released earlier this year; her Instagram profile is also replete with soulful renditions of songs sung in tribute to the people of Palestine and Lebanon.
Working with other composers and musicians, much of her current repertoire marries jazz with her other great sonic love: classical Arabic music.
“I don’t like the idea of genres, and there’s not really a simple way of explaining a genre – but if I were to give it a name, I’d say it’s jazz-inspired Arabic music,” Amena said of her work.
She performed at the Grand Junction in Paddington on 15 November, where she debuted her song Nass (People), which she composed and wrote the lyrics for herself.
Nass is about friendships made while living in the diaspora and their sometimes transitory nature.
“Living in the diaspora has been such an interesting experience… even within the diaspora, you meet new people, but then they go to other places – it’s a cycle, a never-ending cycle,” she said.
“I think everything coming out of me creatively is about how it feels to be in the diaspora, and that’s what I’m going to convey to the audience.”
Melike Sahin: ‘Stories of womanhood transcend borders’
Born and raised in Istanbul, Melike Sahin gained domestic and international acclaim as the lead singer of the Turkish psychedelic band Baba Zula.
Melike launched her solo career in 2017 and released her debut album Merhem in 2021.
She has long been politically outspoken, even riling up Turkey’s ruling party when she dedicated an award she won to women and queer people last year. Her lyrics have struck a chord with women in Turkey, adorning placards and banners at International Women’s Day marches.
“My music is deeply shaped by my experiences as a woman, both past and present,” Melike told The New Arab.
Her second album, AKKOR (Survival), was recorded at Eastcote Studios in West London and was released earlier this month.
She will perform at Earth in Hackney on the festival’s last night, 24 November.
“On stage, my band and I create a powerful female presence, and I hope this sense of solidarity reaches my audience in London, transcending language barriers.”
“Stories of womanhood, after all, cross cultures, languages, and borders.”
Suna Alan: ‘Kurdish songs are not just melodies’
To have a repertoire of Kurdish, Greek, Armenian, Sephardic Jewish, and Turkish songs might seem like an overreach for a musician, but for folk singer Suna Alan, it is a reflection of both the city and the family that raised her.
Born to a Kurdish Alevi family in Izmir, Turkey, Suna’s childhood was set to music of protest and resilience.
“In my family, music was a tradition passed down, and I was profoundly impacted by my aunts and uncles who played tembur (a Kurdish stringed instrument) and sang songs of resistance,” she told The New Arab.
Izmir’s multilingual, multiethnic makeup and the diverse sounds and stories the city is home to were deeply formative for Suna.
“I see music as a bridge, a way to tell stories of different identities, struggles, and shared experiences. Including Armenian, Greek, Arabic, and Sephardic songs alongside Kurdish music allows me to create a broader dialogue through my performances and reflect the multiculturalism that shaped me,” she said.
“Singing in various languages and exploring musical traditions beyond my own Kurdish heritage allow me to honour these communities and the histories they carry.”
Now based in London, Suna said she feels even more compelled to convey these stories.
She cites Kurdish musicians like Rencber Aziz (who was imprisoned in Turkey on charges of spreading propaganda) and Nudem Durak (jailed in Turkey on terror-related charges, ostensibly for singing in Kurdish and teaching children Kurdish folk songs) as sources of inspiration – as well as women musicians globally “who have used their art to fight oppression”.
Performing at Jamboree in King’s Cross on the last day of the festival, Suna said she looks forward to sharing Kurdish music on such a celebrated stage.
“I hope to bring the audience into the heart of Kurdish culture, to feel the depth of our history, resilience, and stories,” she said.
“Through my music, I want them to understand that Kurdish songs are not only melodies, but expressions of identity, resistance, and connection to the land and its people.”
Yazz Ahmed: ‘Jazz is music of the people’
When Yazz Ahmed moved from Bahrain to Morden, South London at the age of nine, her new school was offering musical instrument lessons.
Inspired by her maternal grandfather, a jazz musician and record producer, she chose the trumpet. Her grandfather gave her her first lesson, and she was hooked from the start.
Music had always been a big part of Yazz’s childhood; her English mother, a trained ballet dancer, would play all sorts of music – classical, reggae, hip-hop, and jazz. That exposure to different genres was a major influence on her work, in which electronic and ambient sounds meet the trumpet and the flugelhorn (an instrument not unlike the trumpet, but with a warmer sound).
“Jazz is a hybrid music, it is a music of the people. It brings in music from all sorts of areas, and all sorts of backgrounds. That openness I was introduced to has informed my own style,” Yazz told The New Arab.
Though music played such a big part in her early life, the possibility of becoming a professional musician felt distant. It was a struggle to convince the Bahraini side of her family that it was more than a hobby, and even if she was to clear that hurdle, where were the women jazz musicians she could look up to?
“When I was growing up, I never saw women of Middle Eastern heritage playing instruments – I saw plenty of singers, but not playing instruments, especially jazz or the trumpet,” Yazz said.
“As a young girl, I thought that maybe women don’t become musicians, maybe they’re not good enough. That really stuck in my psyche, and it took me a long time to find women musicians that I could look up to.”
It was when she learned of Ingrid Jensen, a Canadian jazz trumpeter, that Yazz’s outlook shifted.
“When I discovered her, I thought OK, maybe I can do this if I work hard enough,” she explained. “That visibility makes a huge difference to most people’s perspectives.”
Other influences include the legendary Miles Davis, especially his jazz-rock era (“It takes me on a dream,” she says), flugelhorn player Kenny Wheeler (“probably the only musician who has made me sob with joy and beauty”), and trumpet player Jon Hassell (“his music is quite ambient, with electronic effects… that’s influenced what I do”).
At her Grand Junction show on 16 November, Yazz previewed a few pieces from her forthcoming new album, A Paradise In The Hold.
There are jazz and electronic elements to the album, which is set for release in February, but it is “inspired in particular by traditional Bahraini music – the music of the pearl-divers, women drumming groups… it’s very personal music to me, rediscovering my roots.”
Shahla Omar is a freelance journalist based in London. She was previously a staff journalist and news editor at The New Arab
Follow her on X: @shahlasomar
