Ikram Bouloum: "Working cooperatively is the only way to get closer to utopia"

Over the years, and she is still young, she has become one of the key names in Barcelona's music scene. Cultural agitator and sound researcher, it seems that Ikram Bouloum has chosen 2021 as her breakout year. In addition to releasing a conceptual work in which she lends her voice for the first time, Ha-bb5, she has just been named artistic director of BAM, as a member of the l'Afluent cooperative. And this is just the beginning.

--- You have been actively involved in Barcelona's music scene for years. As a programmer, journalist, photographer, as a DJ or working with the people from l'Afluent. What was your relationship with music before becoming part of the scene?

--- I was interested in music as a historical and progressive engine. In the various facets I worked in, I saw the social changes that were generated through music and I captured them with different materializations: photos, reviews, essays, programming the artists who symbolized these changes... For me, it was important to portray them to collaborate and leave a record.

--- You say you are interested in the theoretical and aesthetic research of music and that this led you to DJ. What exactly do you mean?

--- At the moment when the so-called post-club appeared. It was a movement I experienced at Marabú —a former club of the Barcelona production company Canada— and it brought me closer to an imaginary with which I felt very identified. This energy led me to materialize all my musical knowledge in the form of a DJ set and to reclaim the ethical and political part.

--- What did you want to convey with your sessions?

--- The capacity of a body open to dancing new realities, new voices, to feel and perceive differently through listening. To expose oneself in a more radical way. It was my way of defending the artists I was playing. To defend the act of enjoying as a way of doing politics.

--- Now you take the step of putting your voice forward...

--- It's a new stage in which I explore new techniques and perspectives to explain what I intuitively want to convey. I have always had a more creative side: I come from humanities, but the incursions into the world of art and the performative space of the DJ set have organically led me to compose my own reality.

--- The anthropological perspective has always been my primary concern. Now I am researching the essence of sound at a more harmonic and aesthetic level.

--- The new EP, Ha-bb5, is born from the idea of representing a tragedy and a birth.

--- It is the conceptual narrative of Ha-bb5. It begins with a tragedy that initiates a sonic journey leading to the birth of a virtual creature, named bb5. This represents my alter ego, who has come to life to unravel an ancestral trauma: cultural shock.

--- There is an important part of your work that deals with the cultural heritage of your Berber roots (and the Amazigh language). How do you research this legacy?

--- This first approach has consisted of recovering all the musical memories that have permeated my intimate history: memories from when I was little, important moments, trips to Morocco, stories my family told me. Everything I have been finding. I believe it is a first contact that has opened up a new world for me to explore and experiment in.

--- You precisely use several languages throughout the EP. Sometimes it's complicated for it to come out organically...

--- Language is a tool, and being multilingual, the decision has been genuine. If, for example, I speak of emotions that evoke a specific intimacy, or my family, it is obvious that Amazigh will be the catalyst.

--- Ha-bb5 has this dreamlike quality that emanates from all the work. Was that the feeling you wanted to convey?

--- Absolutely! From the very first moment I started working on this project, the aura it presented was dreamlike. For me, it was important to refer to and contextualize the work in a secular and illuminated, magical locus amoenus. As if it were another dimension.

Language is a tool. If I speak of emotions that evoke a specific intimacy, or my family, it is obvious that Amazigh will be the catalyst

--- It has been welcome news that has made me very happy. Programming is a job that makes me feel complete when I combine it with my artistic vision.

--- It is the first time that the City Council chooses a collective (also cooperative) and where there are women. Do you think the future will go this way to the detriment of solo names?

For me, collectivity is a statement. I have always believed that it is important to work cooperatively, because it is the only way to get closer to the utopia of representing different perspectives, generating spaces for dialogue and change.