Jama Narenji
From the Songs of Our Mothers chapter
Watch on YouTube ↗The story behind the music
INHERITED SONGS.
NEW FREEDOMS.
What a song carries.
What a new generation makes of it.
01 · Elaha Soroor
A voice that
refused silence.
Born in Iran to Hazara parents, Elaha Soroor grew up with the experience of exile and the music of a community whose stories are too often unheard.
After moving to Afghanistan as a teenager, she became known through Afghan Star. Public recognition came alongside opposition to her independence and outspoken commitment to women’s rights. Threats eventually led her to leave Afghanistan; she continued her artistic work in London.
Her practice brings together singing, composition and activism. Hazara heritage and the experiences of Afghan women remain central, expressed through a voice that moves between vulnerability, defiance and celebration.
02 · Kefaya
Music made
through encounter.
Kefaya brings together Giuliano Modarelli, Al MacSween and Joost Hendrickx. Their work grows from close musical exchange and a shared interest in internationalism, social justice and songs of resistance.
Their debut, Radio International, explored immigration and the crossing of borders. It earned the group the Songlines Best Newcomer award in 2017.
With Elaha, that approach found a new focus: Afghan musical traditions and a singer whose own experience gave questions of exile and freedom an immediate, personal weight.
03 · Songs of Our Mothers · 2019
Passed from
mother to daughter.
Heard anew.
Songs composed and sung by Afghan women became the starting point for their first album together.
These songs hold joy and grief, desire and endurance. Reimagining them gave their stories new settings: the intimacy of a voice could meet jazz, electronics and the rhythmic imagination of the band.
Songs of Our Mothers won the Songlines Fusion award in 2020. Its lasting importance lies in the women’s voices it brings into the foreground — and in the possibility of carrying inherited material forward through change.
A listening point
Tradition
in the present tense.
Listen for the dialogue between Elaha’s phrasing and the arrangement around it. A song with its own history becomes a meeting place for the musicians performing it now.
More music & live video ↗04 · Our Freedoms Must Be Won · 2026
A different sound.
A continuing
commitment.
The new record carries the collaboration into a more electric, synth-driven world.
Live improvisation and collective experimentation shaped its arrangements. Post-punk energy, interlocking rhythms and psychedelic textures surround Farsi poetry concerned with exile, separation, resistance and survival.
For the band, freedom is collective: something fragile that depends on shared responsibility. The record gives that conviction both words and a physical pulse.
Listen to Our Freedoms Must Be Won ↗Inside the album · A Bright Gaze
From hostility
to solidarity.
The band’s release notes trace “A Bright Gaze” to a 2024 celebration of Hazara culture in Austria. After event posters were torn down, the song took shape around the solidarity and unexpected friendships that followed.
A traditional Afghan rhythm in 7/8 meets a synth-rock arrangement. Guitar melodies and answering synthesiser lines turn the experience into one of the record’s most hopeful moments.
The music, live
Four musicians.
A shared presence.
Voice, keyboards, guitar and drums bring this ongoing conversation to the stage. Our Freedoms Must Be Won is both the new album and the title of the live programme.
Meet the band & watch the videos ↗European booking
Our Freedoms Must Be Won
Kefaya & Elaha Soroor
Ask about dates, routing and production.
Sources & further listening
Based on the band’s 2026 biography and album release notes, with background supplied by GRIOT.