Jawhar returns with this new project, which takes a completely different direction from the folk/pop/chaâbi sound we have come to expect from him. Following his fifth album, released in 2025, he set about finalising Offo Vrae, a project in French that he had conceived and written before the first lockdown, during a period of major transition in his life. The project is named after a character through whom he seeks to transcend the anguish of a break-up. The French language – which is his children’s mother tongue and the language of his ‘second life’ – thus becomes a tool for forging a new bond with them as he sings songs to make this period of transition easier for them.

‘The project has gone through several incarnations to reach this stage. Its first drafts and demos date back a few years, before his momentum was interrupted by the lockdown. Then there were waves of other tracks and new ideas that led to other albums by Jawhar, but the project continued to find its way alongside them. I felt that its timeline was different and that it needed to be left to find its own way within that constraint. Meetings with Marc, with whom we undertook a long-term music production collaboration, and Guillemette, who breathed new energy and a fresh artistic vision into the project, meant that everything finally fell into place. Théo and Arthur joined us, bringing their own touch of magic to complete the team. »

“Offo Vrae is a character who dwells within me on bitterly cold days, who leaves the shores behind, sheds all identities for indescribable refuges, and then tells his story – that of a bird who sees everything yet flies over nothing.”

Born to a mother who taught Arabic literature and was passionate about music and poetry, and a father who devoted himself first to the theatre and then to cultural policy, Jawhar Ben Abderraouf El Basti grew up in Radès, in the northern suburbs of Tunis. The walk to school, in this small, working-class suburb, was for him his first journey of discovery, to be explored in every nook and cranny. From a very early age, he was fascinated by a certain form of popular culture, by the power of its imagery and its verbal, musical and gestural expressions.

However, when he left at the age of twenty to study English in Lille, it was abstract poetry that drew him in – the poetry of William Blake and Emily Dickinson… Added to this was a growing love for a certain Nick Drake, who would bind him irrevocably to his impressionistic folk music.

Alongside his studies, he took to the stage and began acting through the English-speaking university theatre (where he played roles such as Othello, Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Proctor in The Crucible), then the Lille Conservatoire of Dramatic Art, which he left after the first year, his ‘postman’s accent’ proving a bone of contention with his principal tutor. He then met Daniel Fatous (author, storyteller and director), who introduced him to a completely different kind of theatre, based on our ability to bring humanity to the stage rather than artifice. Pas tout à fait l’enfer, an adaptation of James Mellon’s Paroles d’esclaves, was a play they staged in Avignon during the summer of 2001.

Meanwhile, Jawhar taught himself to make music and recorded his first album, which he initially self-produced and which was later released by a Brussels-based label. When Rainbows Call My Rainbows Fly was hailed by the press as ‘a breathtaking debut album from a songwriting prodigy’ (Les Inrockuptibles).

Belgium and he took to each other. Settling first in Brussels, then in the countryside, he found fertile ground there to experiment with new musical projects and develop collaborations. He also worked in theatre with the collective La Fabrique du Vent, notably on a play by Eugène Savitzkaya, Célébration d’un mariage improbable et illimité, for a production directed by Leslie Maerschalk.

Upon the birth of his first child, he felt a pressing need to return to Tunisia and develop projects there. Following a film project with Fadhel Jaziri, he met Anissa Daoud and Lotfi Achour whilst working on a documentary theatre project within a new organisation (APA). Their first production, Hobb Story, which explores love and sex in the Arab world and in which he acted and wrote the songs performed live, met with some success. A second production, Leila & Ben – a free adaptation of Macbeth in Tunisian Arabic, for which he was co-author and composer and in which he played the title role – premiered in the summer of 2012 as part of the London Cultural Olympiad.

He also teamed up with the choreographer Nawel Skandrani, with whom he first collaborated on a duet, Arscé/seu/lement, in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution, and for whom he subsequently composed the music — performed live — for two successive productions, 100 % Water and Ré-existence.

Qibla Wa Qobla (The Kiss and the Direction of Prayer), Jawhar’s second album, was released in 2014 (Naff Rekordz) and won an Octave de la musique award (best world music album of the year) in Belgium. The press described it as a ‘shimmering mosaic where pop and Sufi music have learnt to speak the same language: that of universal and timeless music’ (Musiczine), as well as an album where ‘pop-tinged folk songs blend with echoes of Tunisian mezoued, allowing the Arabic language to reveal its intrinsically musical, nostalgic and erotic nature’ ” (Les Inrockuptibles).

Shortly after his second album, he collaborated once again with Lotfi Achour on a short film in which he played a made-up role (a crooked cop) and for which he also composed the soundtrack. La laine sur le dos was selected for the official competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016.

Whilst writing his third album, he took a detour into electro with the Yallah Bye project, which began as a creation for Balkan Trafik with the Hungarian singer Monika Miczura and eventually led to a festival tour around the world.

His third album, Winrah Marah (62TV Records/PIAS), sees him writing for a band that is growing in harmony and cohesion. “Influenced by the charms of dark, refined rock, Jawhar’s music gains in intensity without losing its authenticity” (Larsen). Conceived as a concept album, Winrah Marah brings together ten songs that “tell the stories of characters living on the margins of society, misunderstood, fighting for their individuality; stories that implicitly offer a critical view of society and evoke a certain disillusionment” (Le Monde). The album, marked in particular by the band’s acclaimed performance at the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes in 2019, received a warm critical reception and brought them to the attention of a wider audience.

His fourth album, Tasweerah (image, snapshot, projection of the mind), was conceived and recorded during the various lockdowns. Indeed, it bears the mark of a certain confinement and the uncertain future that this period presented us with.

He also collaborated with Françoiz Breut on ‘La Fissure’, a duet they co-wrote which appears on Françoiz’s penultimate album, released in 2024.

That same year saw the release of the soundtrack to Lotfi Achour’s feature film Les Enfants rouges, which Jawhar co-wrote with Venceslas Catz.

Khyoot (2025), his fifth album, is the result of a period of renewal and a desire to reconnect with a certain light-heartedness and with that ‘complex simplicity’ – the desire to retain, in both performance and recording, the same thrill one feels at the moment a song is born. A return to folk, in short.

In 2026, he revived the Offo Vrae project, which he had conceived and written before the first lockdown, during a period of major transition in his life. The project’s name comes from a character through whom he attempts to transcend the anguish of a break-up. The French language – which is his children’s mother tongue and the language of his ‘second life’ – then became a tool for forging a new bond with them as he sang songs to make this period of transition a little easier for them.

The project made its debut, in a very intimate setting, at the Nuits Botanique festival in 2020, before being allowed to mature at its own pace, alongside the progress of the main project, to finally take on its current form.