Album Review: Yasamin – Songs Over Baghdad

Yasamin – Songs Over Baghdad
(Independent)

Reviewed by Tim Gruar.

Tauranga-based singer/songwriter Yasamin calls herself an ‘artivist’, with her current focus on the atrocities unfolding in her former home country, Iraq. Her new ten track full album, ‘Songs Over Baghdad’ is a beautifully crafted collection that explores politics, war, identity and what it means to come from the Middle East at a time when her newly adopted country is coming to terms with our own recent events in Christchurch.

For Yasamin this album has a very personal direction. She is the daughter of Iraqi immigrants, raised in Auckland and originally had a career as a scientist. In 2017 she left to pursue music and released her first album, ‘L.O.N.D.O.N’. Recently, Bic Runga took her out on the road as part of her 2020 tour, which featured a wide range of known and lesser known female acts.

Generously, Runga included Yasamin’s song ‘October’ in her set and on the RNZ ‘Mixtape’ show, where she raved about the singer. The song was only part of a greater concept album inspired by the Iraqi governments cruel response to protests that occurred in late 2019. “Official government figures stated that 149 civilians died during the first wave of protests”, she says in her publicity material, ”mostly as a result of bullet wounds to the head. To date, around 550 people have been killed in the violence with 300,000 thought to be wounded.”

This occurred in October last year and at the time, Yasamin was working on her second album, which centred on themes of her identity as a New Zealander. Iraqi politics was never part of her plan. But she couldn’t let go of what she had seen. The impact had a profound effect and she started writing her own songs of protest.

Yasamin was also vocal online, too. “In October 2019”, she wrote on her facebook page, “peaceful protestors flooded the streets of Baghdad (my birth city) asking for an end to government corruption and for true democracy in Iraq. Their peacefulness was met with a lethal force which, to date, has left over 700 peaceful protestors dead.”

And so the song ‘October’ was penned in response, equally inspired by the hideous Christchurch mosque shootings on 15 March. The song is an outlet and an attempt to bring more attention to the “ongoing brutality being used against peaceful protestors in Iraq”. It was also a voice from another side. While we heard plenty of voices from politicians, religious leaders, and white, pakeha citizens, we most likely have not heard from the affected artists of that devasted community. Yasamin reaches out and tries to speak on their behalf.

The song itself has a similar construction to one of Bic’s ‘Drive’, a simple harmony, almost dropping off at the end of each bar, with expectation and anticipation, but with heart-breaking lyrics. It begins with a plodding guitar, breathy vocals: “wake me up when October ends, I can’t watch you murder these perfect men”. There’s a carefree, nonchalant tone in the performance, as if all these men are just throwaway pawns. Like the zombies we mow down in our computer games, unreal – we have no need to care for them, really. They are nameless images on the nightly news. She is worn down and jaded by all this evil. But stripped back and unadorned the messages are simple and effective. But it’s not just Iraq: “Wake me up at the end of March, I can’t watch what happened in Christchurch.” The song has an uneasy, unsettled feeling, like a mist rising after a catastrophic event.

She attacks the masculinity of the men who visit such violence on the protesters and ordinary citizens in Iraq: “no real man hides behind a gun”, she sings in a barren acapella as the song completes. The message – “peace will always win, if not now, then in the end”.

“They’re raining bombs in Babylon/They’re the only curse we’ve ever known” she declares in the opening track ‘Babylon’. This is considerably different to David Gray’s myopic self-indulgence. The lyrics are raw, like a transcript from an eyewitness. That juxtaposes against the oddly upbeat tempo of the song and piano chords that hold it together.

“Eight months on”, she says in social media, “the protests are continuing daily and the protestors remain peaceful despite the violence used against them. I found this to be so inspiring; especially since, in theory, this should be the most violent generation Iraq has ever produced having grown up under dictatorship, an American invasion and 3-year ISIS control of northern territories which ended in 2017.” That was the inspirational introduction to the 8th track on this album, ‘Baghdad Boy’. It’s a more optimistic, upbeat track, with layers of digital boogie and a smidgen of auto-cue (al la Jason Derulo). Almost a bonafide dance track and a potential love song, if only out of context: After acknowledging what this boy must have done to survive in such a war torn city she declares “You are the bravest boy, in the world…”

Along the way there are songs about standing out as an Iraqi in an Kiwi society (‘Scarf’) and blaming international politics for her home country’s endless conflicts instead of moving to resolve the conflict maturely ‘Maybe It’s America’.

’We’re All Gonna Be OK” is rousing anthem to counter the heavy subjects that have gone before. With the marching drums and brass punctuating this tune it sounds a little like something out of Zach Condon’s (Beirut) paintbox.

Then there is the long tale from 9/11, which she documents in the opening stanza’s of ‘’Terror comes in many different colours’’, referring to her own anxieties about going through airport security as a Middle Eastern woman. Even if her trip occurs without incident, there is always the unsaid fears that one day she’ll be accused of being a terrorist and arrested. “I’m over it” she sings defiantly – but unconvincingly, too.

“Politics in A Pop Song” is the prettiest sting in the tale. Like a refrain from music box, Yasamin’s vocals are light and airy. Hope and la-de-de-da’s. Finally, a soft focus layered over the harsh realities of the eternal warzone that is Baghdad. A dreamy, summer’s orchard skipping fade-out to a movie of devastation in a bombed-out metropolis of blood and concrete.

I love this artivist, Yasamin. She’s brave, bold and feisty. She is not afraid to question and challenge and to own her birth country’s problems as much as embrace the problems of ours, too. But more than that she’s honest and a damn fine song writer. This album opened my eyes and ears and will open yours too. And if we want to have a truly diverse and accepting culture, then this is a welcome addition to that journey’s soundtrack.

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