Alewya – Zero

Alewya’s intriguing and ambitious debut, Zero, is an exploration of the lived diaspora experience. She draws on her Ethiopian-Egyptian roots throughout, bridging afro-electronic and club sounds with tradition. The album is anchored around the mathematical concept of “zero” as a concrete nothingness. This self-contradictory definition facilitates Alewya’s examination of identity, freedom and expression through confident introspection. Executive produced by Shy FX, Alewya self-produced much of the project and collaborated with Craigie Dodds, Dean Barrett and Busy Twist. The result is an immersive universe that narrates movement and selfhood.

Containing 15 songs, we begin in the Simian Mountains. Singing angelically in Amharic, Alewya grounds Zero in Ethiopia from the outset, ensuring the entire album remains rooted in heritage from start to finish. City of Symbols, featuring eejebee, asserts the necessity of establishing her presence with “excuse me while I touch the sky”. Her lyrics call to mind poet Warsan Shire, similarly investigating the reconciliation of migration and the articulation of personhood. Likewise, Maktoub and Selah invoke a sense of spirituality. Maktoub translates to “certain destiny”, and she contemplates both the impact of generational decisions and fate. Selah expands on this further, with an experimental sonic explosion of feeling captured by reflective lyrics on self-belief.

Guttah fuses rap and hip-hop with traditional sound. The refrain of “speaking from my guttah” and the use of zaghrouta suggest a celebration of reclamation, something Alewya expresses “gratitude” for. Reminiscent of Habibi Funk, 70s disco-inspired Cairo FM calls back to her Egyptian heritage. Its dreamy sound reflects her aspiration, “if the world was mine.” In Lingo, she plays around with language, “looking for the lingo pure.” This is a meditation on how the ability to voice experience shapes memory. If a border is an arbitrary line, then she remains unbounded – “free by design can’t hold me across the line”. However, “what’s the cost to the lingo?” considers this double consciousness. Here, the rejection of boundaries means acknowledging the control of subjectivity through the limitations of borders and language.

Zero is incredibly impressive. Broadly, Alewya deliberates on how ways of thinking can be remade from a “zero point”. Her cyclical structure rejects both physical and philosophical restraints by blending Ethiopian, Egyptian, and club sounds to create an absorbing and emotional narrative. It’s as much a thematic and sonic experiment as it is a depiction of the diaspora experience – a bridge between past and future through selfhood.