Qwalia - Abbreviations (2024)

Qwalia is the experimental, improvisational home for a quartet of some of London’s most prolific and inspiring musicians.

Led by drummer Yusuf Ahmed (Joy Crookes, Unknown to Known), much of the band’s music to date surfaced in a single two-day session at the Fish Factory in Willesden, West London.

Although improvisational at its core, the band’s fluency and innate musicality makes it hard at times to believe these pieces weren’t written and developed over weeks, rather than conjured in the moment, with no prior rehearsal. Qwalia’s music is an instinctive aural expression of how things seemed in the moment of creation.

Featuring Ben Reed on bass (Frank Ocean, David Byrne, Richard Russell’s Everything Is Recorded), Tal Janes on Guitar (Jordan Rakei, Cherise, Waaju) and Joseph Costi on keys and synths (Cat Stevens, Tom Herbert, Heidi Vogel), the band’s debut album ‘Sound And Reason’ was released by Alberts Favourites in March 2023.