KHONNAR

Description

Repress of Deena Abdelwahed’s debut album Khonnar (2018) on InFiné. Pronounced “Ronnar” (an essential detail to avoid misinterpretation for us French speakers), it is a term that makes the most of Tunisia’s cultural and linguistic spectrum. It evokes the dark, shameful, and disturbing side of things, the side we usually try to hide, but which Deena, on the contrary, puts right under our noses. It bears witness to Deena’s flourishing as a global citizen and as an artist. A process of self-construction made up of frustrations and constraints, born of retrograde mindsets, which are neither the preserve of the East nor the West, and which she tirelessly strives to expose and break. Throughout the 45 minutes of Khonnar, Deena breaks the codes of bass, techno, and experimental music, and writes the manifesto of a generation that does not seek to please or conform, that takes back control of its identity - with all the losses and chaos that entails. A new creative world order takes shape, a new tipping point between north and south, the response of a connected and liberated youth taking control of the new decolonization.