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Release Date: 23 January 2026
Label: Enja
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 767522785425
Genres: World Music European
Description
HASRA is more than just an album - it is a sonic space between worlds, a multilayered journey connecting Africa, Asia, and Europe. The band JISR, a Munich-based collective led by the charismatic linguist, singer, percussionist, and gembri player Mohcine Ramdan, bring together musical traditions from North and West Africa with Indian rhythmic structures, Arabic modes, Andalusian colors, and the openness of jazz.
Created after an extended journey through the Sahara, the album carries the imprint of the desert - its vastness, stillness, and texture - just as much as the pulse of urban rhythms and echoes of earlier material. These contrasts converge in the music: the sparse and the dense, the archaic and the highly refined. The title HASRA refers to a state of transition - a moment where home and exile, past and future intersect. The six musicians, all border-crossers in their own right, channel this in their playing: using Ghatam, Gembri, distorted desert blues guitar, Gnawa grooves, Oud, and violin. What emerges is a musical language that may sound unfamiliar, yet feels deeply human - raw and subtle, trance-like, narrative, and often danceable.
The compositions move fluidly between improvisation and structure. They speak of diaspora, displacement, and the search for sonic forms of belonging - beyond genre or tradition. Each track is a process of listening, friction, and connection. The band's approach doesn't aim to smooth out difference, but to let it resonate productively.
HASRA marks the next step in JISR's artistic journey - not as a conclusion, but as an opening. What takes shape is not fusion and not dialogue, but a musical geography: composed of lines, memories, ruptures, and transitions.
Tracklisting
Johannes Enders
JISR
Rebecca Trescher
Amir Bresler & Nitai Hershkovits
Jens Duppe
Petros Klampanis
Makiko Hirabayashi
Eva Klesse Quartet
JISR
JISR
JISR
JISR
