Mustafa Attempts To Strike A Balance Between Love And Faith On 'Imaan'

Signalling the start of new beginnings, the deeply feeling ‘Imaan’ is not only the first release of the year for Mustafa but also the first since he signed to his new label Jagjaguwar.

Like all moving love stories, it’s tragic, personal and full of longing. Mustafa’s deliverance is tenderly beautiful and melancholic.

With care, he crafts images from lyrics such as “you left me on a tight rope between God and your father & there’s not enough air / I know that you can’t hold me but just hold me, in someway, like you want me, like you lost me, I know.

‘Imman’ exists in the half-space between Sudanese purity and American folk culture acting as a meeting point and celebrating the duality of children from the diasporas.

The lines are blurred as you hear the traditional eastern instrumentation give way to guitar chords and the sampled vocals of Snoh Aalegra, Mustafa explores how culture and religion can act as a barrier against love, whilst conflictingly looking towards God for the strength to overcome.

The accompanying video is self-directed by the Sudanese-Canadian artist and features Imaan Hammam, where we watch her and Mustafa experience the inner turmoil felt by anyone who has to balance Western culture and Islam at some point in their lives.

The song is taken from his unnamed debut album scheduled for release later this year and follows up the well-received and striking When The Smoke Rises.

Speaking on the track, Mustafa shares, ‘"Imaan’ is a love song between two people in search of God and purpose. It’s about longing for all that we don’t have evidence of. Two Muslims journeying through their love of borderless Western ideology and how it contradicts with the modesty & devotion in which they were raised. ‘Imaan’ sonically represents this tussle too - the Sudanese strings and Egyptian oud woven into the bed American folk chords and drums.

This tapestry, this collision is the song, is the romance, is the person Mustafa is. How it’s never enough, or too much. The song sits in the grey that people of faith are afraid to live in, but identify with. It’s about the way faith swings beneath Mustafa and Imaan like a rope. How cultural tension and bias and racism can inform and dismember romance.”

Listen here