other titles...
- Name of God
- What Happened, Mohamed?
- Imaan
- What good is a heart?
- SNL
- I’ll Go Anywhere
- Beauty, end
- Old Life
- Gaza is Calling
- Leaving Toronto
- Hope is a knife
- Nouri
Mustafa
Dunya
jagjaguwar
'Dunya', the title of Mustafa’s masterfully crafted and breathtakingly tender full-length debut, roughly translates from Arabic to “the world in all its flaws.
” It’s a lofty subject for a young songwriter, but as with every theme at the heart of the Sudanese-Canadian artist’s work—from religious devotion to childhood trauma, gang violence to romantic intimacy—he approaches it through a personal lens. Blending genres and moods, weaving novelistic details into instantly memorable folk songs, he has crafted a record that feels like a series of personal breakthroughs, arriving one after the other. The first thing that strikes you about Mustafa’s music has always been his writing: a simple, piercing tone that can make any story feel as raw and earnest as the words to a love song.
With a hushed delivery that can silence his surroundings, Mustafa evolved swiftly from a child prodigy reciting poems throughout his native Toronto to a behind-the-songs pop songwriting force. On 'Dunya', he becomes a full-on auteur in his own right.