Jawhar has created his own signature style of world-folk music that one could probably describe as midway between Arab chaâbi and Nick Drake’s dreamy folk lullabies. After « When Rainbows call, My Rainbows fly », hailed by the press as a « mind blowing debut album by a song-writing prodigy » (Les Inrockuptibles, FR), the Tunisian singer-songwriter re-explores his roots and mother tongue to let them sing once again, either on the both sensual and religious critically acclaimed album “Qibla Wa Qobla” (TheKiss and The Prayer Orientation - Octave de la Musique award winner2014), or on the even more delicately forged upcoming follow-up “Winrah Marah” and the voluntarily raw "Tasweerah" (2022) that takes us back into the folk / pop “clair-obscur” of Jawhar, proclaimed in the category Arabic Dream Pop.

Jawhar - Khyoot (feat. AZA) - 2025

Khyoot خيوط is the Arabic plural of “kheet”, meaning thread, fine rope, filament, string...

In the (more poetic) context of the songs on the album, the word “khyoot” often comes back to designate the links that lie behind the visible, filaments that cross space and connect us to a powerful, magical source. These are the threads we try to hold on to and keep hold of day after day, like a key to ourselves, to the transcendence of reality, to creation. They point the way to a faith in what is beyond us, in the invisible that is nonetheless buried within us...

With “Khyoot”, the Tunisian-born songwriter returns to his first love: a very folk album, a collection of luminous songs written for two voices. Jawhar's ethereal, earthy voice is joined by AZA's delicate, graceful one. He is also joined by his two faithful acolytes, pianist Eric Bribosia and multi-instrumentalist Yannick Dupont.

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Jawhar grew up in the southern suburbs of Tunis. At the age of 20 he leaves for France to study English literature andtheatre. Subsequently he writes his first songs and plays his first concerts. For the last couple of years he has been travelling between Belgium and the Tunisian capital, where he is committed not only as a musician, actor and playwright, but also as a citizen artist. A first rather controversial play about love and sex in the Arab world (Hobb Story by Lotfi Achour) found him tackling his mother tongue to reinvent the Tunisian love song. Ever since, he’s kept on digging the grooves that lead to his roots.

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