Mustafa can't help but be affectionate

Mustafa released his debut album, Dunyalast month, a candid record of a life intersected with gang violence, racial violence and displacement. His writing tears apart the cobwebs of the folk idiom, with tenderness for family, estranged friends, and even enemies.

But Mustafa admits he worries about how his work is received, as some might mistake the tenderness of his songs for an attempt respectable to a particular audience; that is, perpetuating an idea of ​​political respectability. “I worry sometimes that I might distract people from the harshness of where I come from,” he said. “I don't want to be held up as some kind of apology, or bridge, or any kind of consolation for a community that has perpetuated or allowed the kind of violence that happens in a community like mine.”

However, he can't help but create popular music, despite the anguish its expression may bring him. He says the music just comes out that way, no matter what he tries.

“There is nothing I can do to avoid the venerable industrial complex. I just made sure those songs affected the people I grew up with,” Mustafa said. “I wasn't thinking about any community other than my own when I made this record. And so what happens as a result of that I have no control over.”

From his hands, his lyrics and his music Dunyaespecially songs like 'Gaza Is Calling' and 'Leaving Toronto', have taken on new meaning. In two phone interviews, Mustafa talked about how he feels about the album now that more people are coming into his world.

Pitchfork: I understand that a lot of this material dates back a few years, mostly to 2022. At the time, when you were writing, what were you trying to express?

Mustafa: I really wanted to write about my relationship with Islam. I underestimated how much it involved. Faith has touched almost everything in my life. I found myself in the grip of grief again, but I tried to focus on the living. I have spent so much of my life praising, and trying to protect the dead, and I realized that I had a community, and a life, full of people on the brink of collapse. And I wanted to see what I could do to exemplify their lives, given that they are still here. So a lot of it is about my mother and father and my family. it's about a lot of my niggas that's here.

Where did you write the album?

I went everywhere to write. A lot of the writing was done in Sudan and Egypt because I wanted to use the oud and I wanted to use the masenqo, I wanted to use all these East African instruments and, of course, the best of them would be in the area where they're mainly used. It was nice. I would go to a Cairo jazz bar and listen to these Bedouin folk singers. I used to travel to Cairo city once a week. And I would listen, and try to take in as much as possible. And I would develop song sketches that I could later develop when I had more resources in the West. I made a point of doing a song in Toronto. “Leaving Toronto” was the only song I wrote from the embrace of the city.

Something that has always struck me about your work is your tenderness. Is it something you choose to communicate on purpose or is it just a way it comes out?

It's just the way it comes out. Sometimes I want to choose disappointment. I want an attack. Whatever I do, it's like, when it's translated into my process, all the light comes out. In many ways, I don't really feel much of that tenderness. I only feel it in the process itself.