On his new album Dunya, Mustafa blends genres and looks inwards

The multidisciplinary artist Mustafa, formerly known as Mustafa the Poet, has released his debut album, Dunya. 

Following up his 2021 EP When Smoke Rises, the new record is a deeply personal exploration of home and faith, touching on everything from his roots in Toronto's Regent Park neighbourhood to his relationship with Islam. The collaborators on his debut full-length include Aaron Dessner, Rosalía, Clairo, and his friend Ramy Yousef.

Today on Commotion, culture critics Matt Amha, Huda Hassan and Rania El Mugammar join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to discuss the album, and the tensions that continue to underpin Mustafa's work.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Huda, as you listened to Dunya, what came to mind for you?

Huda: For me, I hear the title of the album, Dunya, meaning "world," and I think we get an exposure to Mustafa's own world or the inner makings of his world. We hear instruments — at least for me, I'm hearing instruments central to Sudan, but also the Black Muslim diaspora, the oud, and citations of burial songs as well too. 

Some of my favourite parts have to do with even hearing folks from his upbringing and neighbourhood…. But I think what mostly is happening for me is also this recognition of the way in which Mustafa is playing with folk music or utilizing folk music, which if we want to really unpack it, arrived to this continent through the forced migration of Black diasporas, right? But I think Mustafa is kind of compelling us to think about the African indigeneity of folk music in his own particular and unique way.

Elamin: I think that's a really good point to bring up because, Matt, as we talk about this album, there's a temptation, particularly the instrumentation, to try to figure out where to classify this in terms of a genre. This album plays with a bunch of different genre conventions, so it doesn't quite fit into folk, but it doesn't also quite fit into hip-hop, even though it uses some hip-hop conventions. What do you make of the conversation we've been having about where to classify this album?

Matt: I think these kinds of classifications have always been fraught with politics. It's Mustafa's responsibility to self-identify his sound however he chooses, and I think that he's been able to do exactly that. But I think the response of the public is kind of interesting. And, you know, these are market trends that are much bigger than Mustafa in really every way. But I think there is a way in which labels and some of these industries will try to present certain kinds of Black art as, like, a safer alternative to other artists that may otherwise look like them and come from similar conditions. And I think that sometimes, when we're talking about is it folk, is it rap, is it hip-hop, we're kind of talking around this bigger sociological conversation that's going on.

I think to his credit, Mustafa clearly sees himself as somebody that is part of the folk tradition, and he's said as much before. But I think that he also comes from a traditionally hip-hop environment, and I think that this is something that his team clearly plays with a lot. The juxtaposition in a lot of his music videos, for example, often features images of life in Regent [Park] or in Toronto community housing set against, like, a Joni Mitchell or Leonard Cohen instrumental, you know? And I think the visual language of that juxtaposition is something that different kinds of audiences will respond to in different ways.

Elamin: I should even say, Rania, the image of Mustafa himself, when you see him in public, he is a folk singer who's wearing a bulletproof vest, and he's trying to do both things. He's sort of trying to embody all of the visual signifiers of all of those worlds. What do you make of how we try to sort of pigeonhole him into a genre, even though he seems to resist that in interesting ways?

Rania: I think it's really important to remember that there's a particular sound that is associated with Toronto hoods, that is such a small sliver of the sonic landscapes of these places, right? Particularly for an artist that began as young as Mustafa did, I think you have to figure out your sound, your identity, how you relate to your neighbourhood, all the tensions that you hold in that, in front of a lot of people, right? And in a really often ungenerous and unkind environment, while you're also simultaneously navigating so much of life's grief.

We see this with a lot of artists who are white or from the dominant culture in whatever way, who get to reinvent their sound throughout the arc of their career in so many different ways and are not sequestered into some definition that feels like it's suffocating or not allowing them their full artistic expression. I think it's important to remember that sometimes on Oak Street in Regent Park, there are Black girls like me who love country music…. And particularly for someone like Mustafa, it's not so far removed from, likely, the musical traditions that he was steeped in growing up, right? So I think it's important for us to create space for young artists to be able to figure out what that sound is, and to be open to the ways that people change their artistic practice.

Elamin: I love that we are all the types of people who could never hear a country song without reminding people that, like, "Hey, just by the way, real quick before you go, country music is Black music. Have a great day."

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender.