YA TOSIBA

A collaboration between Azerbaijani musician and vocalist Zuzu Zakaria and Finnish producer Tatu Metsätähti, Ya Tosiba absorbs electronics, live instrumentation and folkloric poetry of Caucasus into a spirited, groovy sound.
Their latest album ASAP Inşallah (Huge Bass, 2023) plays with tension of living in a world of contradictions and takes the listener on a global trek. 
Four of the tracks draw on the meykhana genre, a style of Azerbaijani improvisational wedding music, with “poetry battles” soundtracked by microtonal electric guitar-playing. Banned during the Communist period, meykhana saw a resurgence after the fall of the Soviet Union on televised talent shows, though it was still considered a form of low culture. Zakaria presents a highly personal take on the genre, subverting both its gendered and musical traditions. 
As Zakari sings in Azerbaijani, the storytelling of ASAP Inşallah comes alive. All of the album’s lyrics are taken directly from poetry and texts: with tales of romance and war, sex and gender, nature and machine, politics and society. Though the stories are varied, and some are historical, they all tap into that tension; it’s the weight of history versus the promise of tomorrow.