Living a life straddling many worlds and resisting multiple expectations, Anoushka Shankar tells AZEEMA how she has led a musical life pushing against exoticisation and how she remains committed the global fight against gendered violence.
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Digital Editor Dalia Al-Dujaili sits down with playwright Jasmine Naziha Jones to discuss why she wrote an absurd tragic-comedic play for the Iraqi diaspora; at once a deeply personal experience, and a publicly political act of resistance to the narrative around the country’s history of conflict and colonialism.
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Melat Matusala shares her personal experiences of returning to her Motherland, Ethiopia. Coming to terms with returning, being not quite what she had expected.
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Larena Amin catches Deniz Pasha in between modes. The new mother shares her intellectualist justifications, and the ramifications of ahistorical society building in her realm of figurative portraiture.
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Musician and creative Lisa Conta tells AZEEMA about her experience growing up as an outsider in Sweden, inheriting her legendary Gambian family’s music-making genes, and why she is proud to be working with Converse on their latest shoe silhouette.
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Following the release of ‘The Swimmers’ on Netflix – a film about her and her sister’s refugee journey from Syria – the Olympic swimmer tells Digital Editor Dalia Al-Dujaili why she wants to shift the narrative towards real women’s refugee stories.
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Following on from her performance at Le Guess Who? Festival’s 15th Anniversary in Utrecht, Digital Editor Dalia Al-Dujaili sat down with Marissa Malik–who goes by the DJ & producer name Manuka Honey–to hear about the artist’s upbringing in rural America, her ‘nerdy’ sensibilities, and how much she enjoys messing with people’s perceptions of her identity and her music-making.
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Senior Editor Evar Hussayni sits with Jyoty, one of the most in-demand radio presenters, hosts and DJ’s in London to talk club culture, career, Homegrown, and why breaking rules was the best thing she ever did.
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Ana Maria Monjardino explores intersectional approaches to abortion rights through the experiences of Black and Brown women and non-binary people in Northern Ireland and Ireland. Moving chronologically from the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar in 2012, through the referendums of 2018 and 2019, to the present day, Monjardino considers how much has changed for women and non-binary people of colour seeking abortions since then and what still needs to be done.
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Nozhet El Nofous is the latest album by Alexandria-born multi-instrumentalist Nancy Mounir. Mounir will be gracing the upcoming festival Le Guess Who 2022 in Utrecht, alongside an exciting line-up of artists including Nia Archives, Oumou Sangaré, Manuka Honey, and more.
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Pakistani-Welsh writer and artist Durre Shahwar talks about her creative process and motivations behind her short poetry film, Gathering, which explores nature, landscape, belonging and identity.
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Digital Editor Dalia Al-Dujaili was lucky enough to sit down with renowned Algerian-American dancer Esraa Warda in her Brooklyn apartment. She tells AZEEMA about the origins of her subversive rai dancing, her long-standing musical partnership with icon Cheikha Rabia, and her excitement about a rare and special upcoming performance during this year’s Le Guess Who? Festival.
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Over tea in Brixton, Nepali-Caribbean & British artist Maya Gurung-Russel Campbell relays personal histories and the intricacies of her practice to Shams Hanieh, following the opening of her first solo show, Folklore Imaginary, in Hull.
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Amelia Fearon sits down with Berlin-born and London-based Sahra Gure to discuss her most recent EP, Stolen Moments, and her journey in exploring her identity, culture and personal experiences as a young jazz artist of colour.
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Spanning generations and relationships, Jana Amin lets us into her box of memories through a personal essay on what it means to love and what it means to heal from broken love, married with a poetic look into how love has shaped the West Asian built environment in which she grew up.
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Reminiscing on being labelled a nuisance throughout her school years and times when her ADHD was staring straight at her, Tola Coker shares a hilarious and touching account of what receiving a late diagnosis has meant to her, both as a woman and being Black.
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As we approach Notting Hill Carnival we welcome London based DJ and actress Dalila to AZEEMA FM. With a very special, spiritual celebration of Caribbean culture, Dalila pays homage to Reggae, its sub genres Dub and sound system culture which is reminiscent of her childhood.
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Complicated mother-daughter relationships are often heightened between immigrant mothers and their daughters, where cultural conflicts add fire to existing generational and familial disconnections. After watching the short film Shaymaa – an exploration of the complications of immigrant parenthood – Italian-Egyptian writer Aya Mohamed meditates on her own tenuous but joyful relationship with her mother.
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Water is a healer. It’s the element that not only most of our bodies are made up, but that most of Earth is also made up of. Swimming outdoors has, for many years, been hailed as medicine for the mind and body. For our open water swimming shoot with Nike, we wanted to explore the effects that swimming can have on our friendships, our interdependent relationship with nature, and the gratitude we feel for our bodies.
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We sit down with Saudi-born & LA-based singer Tamtam following the release of her single Insak, where she tells us how she wants to demonstrate the power of singing in multiple languages, her experiences of viewing time as a healer, and about her visions for how her sonic blueprint will evolve.
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