Laïla Amezian

Laïla has been performing on stage for more than twenty years. With her warm personality, she has conquered many concert halls and festivals at home and abroad.

Laïla has been performing on stage for more than twenty years. With her warm personality, she has conquered many concert halls and festivals at home and abroad.

Both Brussels and Moroccan

Her career path is surprisingly eclectic. From the beginning, she has been active in both jazz and French chanson circles and has also experimented with soul and funk rhythms. The confrontation between her Maghreb origins and the musical world around her in Brussels is one of the recurring themes in her career. Whether in music, theater, or dance, she always tries to evoke an atmosphere and feelings that can be both very Brussels and very Moroccan.

While she also began working in theater (La Chute, La Fiancée de l’Eau) and dance (Les Ballets du Grand Maghreb), she accompanied various music groups such as Studio Pagol, Ys, Oblomow, Jaune Toujours, and Qayna. She is also regularly asked to participate in specific projects, such as ‘Uit de Bol’ at the KVS, ‘Shouting Fence’ at the Kaaitheater, DJ Grazzhoppa's DJ Bigband, Askanyi, and D-Radicalize with the BOHO Strings.

From 2003 to 2006, she led the Arabanda project together with Piet Maris, a musical ensemble based on the classical and traditional Arab-Andalusian repertoire with a fanfare-like orchestration.

First musical creations

In 2008, she launched her first musical creation with the Bast project, in co-production with the Kaaitheater in Brussels. This is her first solo project, in which she adapts excerpts from Khalil Gibran's book The Prophet in English and Arabic. She composes melodies steeped in jazz, Arabic music, and post-rock, assisted by Michaël Grébil for the arrangements and Erwin Vann for the musical direction.

From 2010 to 2014, she created TriOde, an acoustic trio. As an ode to vocal happiness, she brings together Anja Naucler on cello and Stephan Pougin on drums for a ‘best of’ collection of songs about love and devotion.

Together with Espace Senghor in Etterbeek, Laïla Amezian launched and conducted Les Fatmas de Belgica from 2015 to 2019. This choir project translates folk songs from northern Morocco into the European polyphonic tradition. In 2019, Laïla surrounded herself with vocalists and musicians from the jazz and world music scene to create Les Sheikhs Shikhats. Together, they reinterpreted fragments from the popular Moroccan repertoire, turning them into polyphonic arrangements with a festive chaabi groove and daring jazz arrangements by Laurent Blondiau.

Nomadic musical encounters

In 2019, the two ensembles will also take part in the Al-Karavan nomadic musical encounters. This event, organized by HalfmOon vzw & Laïla Amezian in collaboration with De Centrale, Le Senghor, Amarant vzw, UPA, and MetX, pays tribute to the first generation of immigrants of Moroccan origin in Belgium.

After a successful first edition of these musical encounters, Laïla will resume the Chaabi Habibi festival in March 2020 in collaboration with UPA and MetX. This event aims to help break existing taboos surrounding femininity through popular Moroccan dance and music. In the following years, new editions of Chaabi Habibi will follow in collaboration with MetX, De Centrale, and Muziekpublique, among others.

At the end of 2020, Didier Mélon (Le Monde est un Village – RTBF La Première) invites Laïla to create new work as part of Première Esquisse. For this project, ‘In The Name Of’, she presents original compositions based on poetry by the Brussels-Arabic poet Taha Adnan.

In early 2021, Laïla joined the music makers of MetX. She immediately took part in major projects such as Musikaa – Klarafestival and Singing Brussels 2022 with her women's choir Fatmas de Belgica. She also continues to expand Les Sheikhs Shikhats with new repertoires and new artists. Think of the unsurpassed horn section of Mâäk or some members of the Sultanats B'net Chaabi, singers known for their performances at private events within the Moroccan community. Under the name Sheikhs Shikhats & B'net Chaabi, the group released its first album and video clip in March 2023, followed by a release tour in Brussels, Flanders, and the Netherlands. That same year, she also joined the artistic coordination team at MetX.