“Poetry doesn’t belong to those who write it; it belongs to those who need it.”
— Mario Ruoppolo, Il Postino

Released in 1994, Il Postino follows Mario Ruoppolo, a quiet postman whose encounters with exiled poet Pablo Neruda gradually bring colour to his otherwise monochromatic existence. Through Neruda, Mario acquires not only a new linguistic toolkit but also a profound way of seeing the world, revealing the kaleidoscopic splendour hidden in the shadows of his ordinary life. The film reminds us of the power of poetry, art, and music in connecting us to something beyond the narrow confines of the senses, to the divine, or at the very least, to one another.

It is within these artistic outpourings that we enshrine our essence into something passed down through generations and woven into the fabric of both personal and communal identity. On her most recent record, A Paradise in the Hold, British-Bahraini trumpet player Yazz Ahmed engages in precisely this act of distillation. Drawing on the work songs of Bahraini pearl divers and the celebratory rhythms of women’s drumming groups, she creates a musical tapestry that reimagines her Middle Eastern heritage through the lens of contemporary jazz. The result is one of the year’s most compelling releases and, for Ahmed, the culmination of a long and personal journey.

“I definitely feel whole as a person… I feel confident to embrace my mixed heritage,” she tells me during our recent conversation. Although it has taken time to arrive at this place of acceptance, her determination to explore and embrace the full spectrum of her personal history feels particularly poignant in Britain today.

While cheap flags flap from lampposts and the idea of patriotism and our national identity is literally put under the spotlight, we are increasingly asked to put our faith in the transient theatre of politics, the churn of 24-hour news cycles, and the empty static of social media, rather than in the cultural artefacts and shared values that have bound us together for generations. Ahmed’s music reminds us that identity is not a fixed emblem but an unfolding process shaped by ancestry, personal interrogation, and collective experience.

The journey towards this realisation, however, was neither immediate nor straightforward. “I was accepted but was also very aware of the racism and prejudice against people from the Middle East, so I did tone down my culture,” Ahmed recalls, looking back at her early years in the UK. In suppressing parts of herself to fit in, she created a gap that would only be bridged by music.

This reconnection with her heritage began when she encountered the music of Rabih Abou-Khalil, in particular his 1992 record Blue Camel, which deftly melds the sounds of East and West. Much like Mario Ruoppolo’s first meeting with Neruda in Il Postino, this moment opened up new worlds of possibility for Ahmed. “From that recording and that music, it really sparked my experimentation in fusing those types of music together for myself,” she says. “Once I discovered this combination, I felt I could express myself honestly and truthfully.”

If Blue Camel was the spark, A Paradise in the Hold represents the subsequent creative blaze, stoked slowly over the course of Ahmed’s career. The record opens with the track ‘She Stands On The Shore’ where her commanding flugelhorn sets the scene for the siren-like vocals of Natacha Atlas, who sings in Arabic:

She stands on the sands of an unknown sea
Her lands a garden on which the sun walks in the morning
The trees create jewels
Pearls and gold

These lines, inspired by Siduri, a wise alewife from the Epic of Gilgamesh who dwells on an island at the edge of the sea, ripple with a mythical resonance. For Ahmed, Siduri became a muse, a figure she imagined as Bahrain itself, extending an invitation “to grace the album with her wise nurturing presence.” It crystallises the project’s ambition to braid heritage, myth, and modernity into a soundworld that is at once rooted and borderless.

From this almost ethereal opening, the record plunges deeper into the waters of Bahraini tradition. The work songs of pearl divers surface not as museum relics but as rhythmic currents woven into the compositions. The title track, one of the record’s most striking moments, emerged from Ahmed’s research trip to Bahrain back in 2014. According to the album’s digital booklet, published on Substack, she “processed short fragments of ceremonial sounds and morphed them into an undulating beat which emulates the rise and fall, the breathing of the ocean and the creaking of the boat’s timbers.” The piece is beautifully layered, twisting with clarinet and the vintage tones of a Fender Rhodes, interlaced with polyrhythmic hand claps from the ensemble. “I wanted to paint a picture of the joyful celebrations and the collective efforts of the sailors to bring their riches home,” she explains.

Despite the distinctly Eastern textures and localised storytelling that inspired A Paradise in the Hold, the work song is not bound to this region alone. When Cornwall became the epicentre of tin mining in the late 18th and 19th centuries, the harsh conditions and relentless labour meant workers, like the Bahraini pearl divers, had to find ways to raise their spirits. They too turned to song. Even after the mines began to close in the early 1900s and entire communities were hollowed out, unemployed miners continued to perform together to raise money to feed their families. These parallels show that Ahmed’s reimagining of Bahraini traditions resonates across borders, underscoring a universal history of endurance and solidarity and in turn, demonstrating how music can preserve what work and hardship might otherwise consume.

During our conversation, Ahmed outlines that she has come to see this record as “her most personal to date.” Where previous releases took a wide lens to her Arabic roots, this project hones in on the Gulf specifically, utilising the “proper folk music” of the region to create its structure. “That music is quite unique, it has influences from India and East Africa and obviously the rest of the Middle East and North Africa, so it’s a really interesting blend of sound,” she says. A blend born from centuries of cultural exchange, one that shaped the region’s artistic exports as much as its daily rituals. For Ahmed, expressing the richness of her homeland and its people has become more than an artistic act, it is a political statement: “It is about changing stereotypes, changing people’s perceptions of people from the Middle East.”

With the ongoing conflict in Gaza and a wave of anti-migrant rhetoric growing across Britain, Ahmed continues to pour her emotions into her art. “I’ve been writing music at the moment in reaction to the wars in Gaza, in Palestine and Sudan, and all of the other injustices,” she says. In uncertain times, we all seek catharsis; for Yazz, this comes through the further development of her projects: “I always feel better once I’ve put that emotion into sound or on paper.”

On ‘Though My Eyes Go To Sleep My Heart Does Not Forget You’, her ability to capture a feeling is brought into sharp focus, as she portrays a universal longing shared by many today. The piece, once again, is an adaptation of a traditional pearl divers song, written from the perspective of someone awaiting the return of their beloved. Ahmed describes the recurring bass motif as “powering the tune forward, like the oars of the ship.” Yet it is the earnestness of the lyrics and the nakedness of Alba Nacinovich’s performance that give the track its deepest resonance.

My sighing and your absence wasted away my heart
Though my eyes go to sleep
My heart does not forget you

And then the lightning appeared, bringing the beauty
Beauty of its thunders
I wish you would come and reach the shore

In Il Postino, a newly enlightened Mario tells Neruda that “poetry doesn’t belong to those who write it; it belongs to those who need it.” The same might be said of Ahmed’s music. While rooted in the specifics of Bahraini traditions, her work reaches far beyond the geography of the region. It offers a vessel for those searching for belonging, for those negotiating the complexities of identity in a world that increasingly demands simplification. The record is not just a personal archive but also a communal one, proof that heritage can be simultaneously intimate and expansive, individual and universal.

At a time when borders are weaponised and cultures reduced to cruel, unjustified caricatures in the service of political agendas, A Paradise in the Hold insists on nuance. It acknowledges that identity is never static, that it is shaped by exchange as much as by origin. To listen to Ahmed’s compositions is to hear this vital truth in motion.

In the end, what Ahmed achieves with her new record feels less like an act of preservation than an act of renewal. Rather than museum pieces dusted off for posterity, these songs are living, breathing forms, transformed by her horn, her ensemble, and her imagination into something timeless and urgent. They remind us that culture is not simply static inheritance but instead, ongoing conversation, a dialogue across generations.

If Neruda gave Mario Ruoppolo a new way of seeing the world, then Ahmed’s music performs a similar function for her listeners. It illuminates the overlooked, reanimates the forgotten, and reframes heritage not as a weight to be carried but as a source of strength and possibility. In doing so, it gestures toward a truth that feels especially vital today, that identity, like music, is at its richest when it is open to transformation.

A Paradise In The Hold is out now via Night Time Stories. To find out more about her upcoming tour, please head over to https://www.yazzahmed.com/

Yazz Ahmed - A Paradise In The Hold

Nadav Schneerson - Sheva