Her enchanting voice, her passion for singing and her Moroccan roots all drove her to start a new music career. Samira Dainan, a Moroccan Dutch lawyer based in Amsterdam, decided to take up music and writing.
After studying law at the University of Amsterdam, Samira worked as a lawyer for a while. After she came in contact with jazz and blues, Samira told Morocco World News that she felt something was missing from her music.
Her attachment to her Moroccan and Amazigh (Berber) origins greatly affected her career change. Samira started digging for any link between what she explored as a musician and the Moroccan southern and ancestral music.
Strongly influenced by the power and authenticity of Gnaoua music, an ancient African music style consisting of spiritual and religious songs and dancing. She first explored Gnaoua music in Essaouira, one of her first stops in Morocco. Samira also owes much of her inspiration to the mystical and trance effect inherent in Sufi music embodied in aissaoua and hmadcha styles. Besides, North African music and blues have a lot in common. They both have African origins.
The spiritual and culturally-loaded music of renowned bands such as Nass Lghiwan and Larsad largely motivated Samira Dainan to further learn about the culture, so that she could guarantee future collaborations with traditional Moroccan artists.
After her stop in Essaouira, Samira decided to dive deep down in the south of Morocco. The southern and Saharan regions for her are more genuine and diverse culturally. The place offered her the pure and deep Moroccan folk music and African rhythms she had always cherished.
Samira told Morocco World News she was amazed to find out how diverse and rich the Moroccan southern music was, after a music concert she organized along with “Generation Taragalt” band from M’hamid El Ghizlane, Zagora. Using a combination of Tamazight (Berber) and Hassania varieties to perform the Saharan music made Samira Dainan reflect on what she knew about other blues bands coming out of the Sahara such as Tinariwen and Tamikrest.
Along with the members of her band “Samira’s Blues,” namely Bas Gaakeer, a Dutch guitarist; percussionists; and the bass player, Samira performed in Visa for Music (Rabat 2017), Taragalte Festival ( Zagora, 2016 and 2017) and Festival Joudour in (Essaouira 2017).
In addition to her musical career, Samira made her literary debut in 2016 with her non-fiction novel “Forty Days – My Quest For Consolation.” The book describes the twirl of events following the death of her father and how the mourning interfered with her music projects. The book was well recognized by the Dutch press and was nominated for the Spiritual Book title in Belgium in 2016.
