Ikram Bouloum

Of Moroccan descent, Spanish artist Ikram Bouloum moved to Barcelona 10 years ago from a north-state town to nurture her creative side. She’s grown into a cultural agitator participating in the curatorship and research of numerous projects while DJing in many of the local clubs and parties at the same time. Her sessions are conceived as a narrative form, a kind of sonic literature, and her club utopia is a polyphonic space where many voices are represented at once.

In 2021 Ikram will be releasing her EP debut, Ha-bb5, which merges a birth and a tragedy over 5 tracks produced by Mans O. The project creates a dialogue between contemporary western electronic sounds and a personal reinterpretation of pop and dance music from Maghreb. Feminist, emancipated and innovative, the music in this project explores a radical sound that destroys the two establishments in the cultural clash in order to create an empowered and safe space of its own through Ikram’s cultural heritage. She sings in her mother tongue (Amazigh -Berber language-), English and Catalan. In its most literal sense, bb5 refers to the number 5 in Amazigh (aka Hamsa), variously known as the Hand of Fatima: symbol of protection and defence.