Yousra Mansour

Yousra Mansour is a Moroccan singer-songwriter and instrumentalist whose artistic practice is motivated by a desire to highlight the importance of female representation in her society. Yousra is the co-founder of the Gnawa Psyche rock band Bab L’Bluz. Having been established a little over four years ago by a collective of French and Moroccan musicians, the band explores the roots of blues and rock n roll within Gnawa music, and has already received critical acclaim for the debut album Nayda! Released on Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records label. Yousra states a strong conviction to the representation of woman in the field of music, particularly in Moroccan society where she says, “I understood that women did not have the same place as men in this Moroccan patriarchal society, belonging to a family where we were five sisters after the death of my father, I realized that the woman did not have the freedom to express herself or make decisions on her own, and that she was always judged by those around her just because of the absence of male authority in the household. This unhealthy look of society made me very angry and made me revolt in different ways. I am happy to have chosen the path of music that helped me to use this anger to participate in changing mentalities.”