Aziza Brahim will perform at the awards ceremony at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London on Wednesday 25 November 2009, when the winners for the Main, Youth and Imprisoned Artist Prize categories will be unveiled.

Support and sustain creativity
Freedom to Create is an initiative that seeks to improve lives by addressing society’s ability to support and sustain creativity. The initiative focuses on those societies in greatest need.

Now based in Spain, Aziza Brahim is nominated alongside Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the celebrated Iranian filmmaker, Sheenkai Alam Stanikzai, an Afghan artist, Karim Ben Khelifa, a Yemeni former war photographer, and The Kumjing Storytellers, a refugee touring women’s group from Burma.

Censored by Moroccan authorities
Aziza Brahim, whose songs evoke exile, the right to freedom and the abuse of the human rights of her people living in the occupied zones of Western Sahara, was in exile before she was even born, when her heavily pregnant mother fled to a refugee camp in 1976.

Nominated for her album, Mi Canto, Aziza Brahim mixes Saharawi music with rock, blues and African percussions, renovating the Saharawi rhythms to make Saharawi music accessible to the whole world.

Aziza’s music is censored by the authorities in Morocco and the Western Sahara zones because authorities believe it champions the Saharawi people that have been tortured, killed or have disappeared during the conflict. Aziza, considered an enemy of the Moroccan government, can no longer visit the occupied zones.


For all media enquiries, images, full artist biographies, please contact:
Lisa Baker and Will Paget
PagetBaker Associates
Email:  lisa@pagetbaker.com
           will@pagetbaker.com
telephone: +44 (0)207 323 6963