Zaki Ibrahim

Toronto

There’s a standard narrative that an artist releases an album, but for Zaki Ibrahim it seems the reverse is true. From one angle, Ibrahim’s career is punctuated by extended absences from the Toronto scene where she built her name, launched a label and found success. From another vantage, for an artist who is known for her multiplicity of influences and identities, absence from one scene is in fact presence in another. The difference between departure and arrival is simply a matter of perspective. Ibrahim’s process, very much about immersion, connection and being there, wherever there may be, is a fundamental attribute of self and sound.

Throughout her career, from Vancouver to South Africa to Toronto and many points in between, Ibrahim has worked against the encroaching systems and machinery that would limit or dilute her vision. It’s impossible to imagine the future if you can’t escape the present. There, in the hypercurious process of transposing atomic-level details into big ideas and back again, songs emerge. Ibrahim’s work pushes back against binaries, against reductiveness, against the clenching muscles of expectation.