Lazywall, Morocco's trailblazing oriental alternative rock band, seamlessly fuses Arabic traditions with powerful rock energy. Their groundbreaking journey spans continents, languages, and themes, delivering a universal yet deeply rooted musical experience.
1. Your
music blends traditional Arabic instruments and time signatures with powerful
alternative rock. What inspired you to combine these seemingly contrasting
styles, and how has it shaped your identity as a band?
The band was formed in Reading, UK back in 2003. We were doing pure alternative
rock singing in English. In 2008, we relocated back to our hometown Tangier, in
Morocco. We started meeting many Moroccan musicians that play traditional
instruments, so we decided to jam with them to see if we could do something
together. We realised that the Oud for example perfectly suits the Drop D
tuning of our heavy guitar riffs, so we started playing those riffs with the
oud instead, and going heavy guitars on choruses. The same riff played
alternately with Oud and then Guitar shaped the origin of our Moroccan rock
sound. And the identity of the band with it. We became an Oriental alt Rock
hybrid band. The songwriting changed as well, Moroccan percussions make you
write riffs with different time signatures. Later we added the Arabic language,
and there we had the Lazywall we are today.
2. Lazywall initially released records in English but later transitioned to
writing and performing in Arabic. How did this decision come about, and how has
it impacted your connection with your audience?
Before forming Lazywall, we had a band in Spain, we released an album in
English and our record label back then wanted us to sing in Spanish to cover a
wider audience in the country. Instead of changing the language, we changed the
country. We moved to the UK thinking that Rock could only be sung in its native
language. 20 years later, we met Ville, from the Animal Farm Music label. He
told us that he was really interested in our music but only if we sing in
Arabic. So, we gave it a chance, we translated the first song to Moroccan
darija (which is the Arabic spoken in our country). We fell in love with the
new version. And in the next 30 days, we had already 15 songs translated to
Arabic. To our Moroccan hardcore fans, it was difficult at first, because they
couldn’t sing along with us during our gigs. But now, most of them keep telling
us that we made the right move.
3. You’ve tackled difficult social topics like underage marriage and
corruption in your lyrics. How do you approach such heavy themes while
maintaining the musical intensity your fans expect?
Songwriting comes naturally for us. Whatever idea challenges our mind will end
up in a song. It’s a way for us to say out loud what change we need to see
around us. Usually we write the music first, and then the words flow by
themselves. We just need to be honest with what we sing. And truly believe it.
We think it's more important to change what the individual thinks, then the
collective or the group. That is done through education. And education comes
from different ways. Family, school and also arts. That is where we come in. We
don’t send messages to our fans, we just say it out loud and then everyone can
understand our songs the way they feel them.
4. Can you talk about your experience recording your debut EP Primal Tapes with Steve Albini in Chicago? What did you learn from working with such a legendary producer?
Steve was a genius. Looking at him cutting the tapes to correct something we missed, was like looking as an artist retouching its creation. He was so passionate about music. When Gary, our manager, told us that he found the perfect producer for us, we thought he found someone local, around Reading and Berkshire. Then we realised we were going to fly to the other side of the globe, to Chicago and meet with a Legend. We were so excited that we even rehearsed during the flight, in the plane. I remember (Monz) as a drummer, I was playing with my hands and feet all the songs over and over in my seat during the 8 hours flight. We really wanted to be ready as much as possible before meeting Steve. Every discussion we had with him about music or life in general was an inspiration for us. The most important thing we learned though, was to play as a band and not each musician for himself. It doesn’t matter if you play your part perfectly if you are not synced with the rest of the band. The band becomes one whole entity and not the sum of the members.
5. Your performance at the Festival of Casablanca in front of 50,000 people seems like a pivotal moment in your career. Can you describe what that experience meant for the band?
It was a huge moment in our career, but what really struck us was the reaction of the audience. At the time, we used to live in Reading. Before going on stage, only a few people knew we were Moroccans, just the organisers, as we were announced as a British band. After the 2 first songs, our singer Nao introduced the band in English, and then spoke with the audience in Arabic, the crowd's surprise and loud cheering are just impossible to describe and really impacted us, and still impact us every time we remember it to this day.
6. As the first-ever rock band to perform on Moroccan TV, how did you navigate the challenges of introducing rock music to a wider Moroccan audience? What was the response like?
It was a challenge, but it was one we had to, needed to, and wanted to take. Every musician has to do everything to promote his music and get his music to be heard. In this case we were not only promoting our music but our genre of music. Our performance had the goal to get the Moroccan audience and public to know and get introduced to a musical genre they never heard before. And the response was very positive, we had the feedback from the tv show producers saying our show had the highest rate of audience that evening, and it was one of the performances that had the most views. Our followers numbers on our social media skyrocketed from one day to another, and we still have a lot of fans today that still remember that show, saying that show was the one that made them love the band, our music and the genre.
7. Your influences range from Led Zeppelin and System Of A Down to Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. How do these diverse inspirations find their way into your songwriting?
As a songwriter, you are the mix of every song you ever heard in your life. When you listen to an artist over and over, you instinctively pick up ideas. Like anything you learn in life, you have to define your own identity by keeping the good things and removing what you don’t like. Most of the bands we love are usually artists that are amazing songwriters. Bob Dylan is the best example.
Led Zeppelin in 1994 recorded “No Quarter”, a live concert with the oriental orchestra of Morocco and Egypt. That combination touched us because it was a mix of both Rock and Oriental music. Rock is what we love, and Orient is what we are. So, we felt identified with this music. But we also love Metal, so System of a Down mixing their oriental harmonies hit us really hard the first time we heard their crazy music.
9. You’ve performed at international festivals like SXSW and across Europe. How does the reception to your music differ between audiences in Morocco and abroad?
The shows away from Morocco are totally different. The crowd isn’t expecting what we do. The fact that most of the time they cannot understand our lyrics doesn’t mean they don’t get the same emotions our Moroccan audience feel. They come to us after the show and tell us that they have totally connected with us even without knowing the language. And that’s what really matters to us. We know that we have made connections with them through our music. I remember a show in Spain where we played our song “#AnaAmina”, where we talked about the underaged girl forced to marry her rapist. And someone came to us after the show with tears in his eyes and said: “I don’t know what you are talking about in this song but you made me cry”. Music speaks by itself. Just be open minded enough to let it in. Even if it comes from a country you are not directly connected with.
10. Climate change, integration, and social injustice are recurring topics in your songs. How do you balance addressing global issues while keeping your music rooted in your Moroccan heritage?
Most of the social issues and injustices we talk about in our songs are not specific to our country. They are everywhere. So, anyone anywhere can identify with these subjects, but with an oriental touch. Corruption is still corruption, it doesn’t matter what country you live in. Integration is not only a first world problem. We have in Morocco many immigrants that try to make a decent living here and they suffer the same as those who live in Spain or France. As we said earlier, if our song can help each person understand an issue we suffer as a society, it’s easier to make a change, but it’s slower because sometimes we need to wait a generation to see the change we are all hoping for. Our music is not dedicated to our fans in our country, but it’s for everyone that wants to listen to us.
11. The oud and the drop D guitar are an integral part of your sound. What challenges or surprises have you encountered in merging these instruments, and how do they complement each other?
Oud has a Rock attitude attached to it. The way you hold the instrument, the way you play it, and most importantly the way it sounds, it can be soft or can be rough. When we listen to a drop D tuned guitar, it reminds us a lot of the Oud. That’s the main reason we decided to merge them into the same song. And the same instrument. We actually merged them physically. In 2020, we asked French luthier Eric Stiegler to create a unique guitar. A double neck guitar with a guitar neck and an oud neck. We called it the Guitaroud.
We also made a unique bass. At first, when we tried using a Guembri on stage (Guembri is the African bass), we had many feedback problems. The Guembri having a big body, it couldn’t really coexist with our big heavy sound. So, we made the Bassentir. It has 2 bass strings and 3 Guembri strings.
To finish the merge, in our drumkit we have replaced a tom by a Darbuka and also introduced the bendir into the set.
12. With such a unique blend of sounds and themes, what message do you hope listeners take away from your music, whether they understand Arabic or not?
We believe the language is just another instrument, like a bass or a guitar. What is important is how your music reaches the listener, how you can transmit emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, joy. How your music is able to make people dance, jump, headbang or cry. The language doesn’t do that. As we said earlier, we had people in Europe cry to one of our songs without even understanding the lyrics, just because it's a sad song. We had fans singing with us without speaking Arabic. We don’t expect the listener to get any message from listening to our music, cos we aren’t sending any, but we do want people to open their senses and feel our music.
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