Miriam Elhajli

Miriam Elhajli is an astounding singer-songwriter, with the link between her dynamic voice and intricate guitar lines suggesting Joni Mitchell in the mid-’70s and her lyrical aplomb recalling the early glories of Devendra Banhart. But Elhajli is not content with being just a singer-songwriter. Based in Flatbush, she also works as a researcher at Alan Lomax’s Association for Cultural Equity, with the recordings there serving as lodestars of guidance and reminding her that candor in music cuts across cultural and linguistic lines. Partly inspired by Lomax’s work, she released Brand New Mexican in 2023, its 22 tracks documenting field recordings from all 50 states and Morocco. “It doesn’t matter the idiom of music,” Elhajli once said. “It just matters how alive it feels to me.”

Elhajli is also a record label owner, with her Numina imprint (that is, Latin plural for “divinity”) focused not only on releasing her own music but also capturing the sounds of North Africa’s Maghreb. She is an active improviser and band member, too, playing in Raven Chacon’s Lazyhorse at Big Ears. Still, Elhajli’s albums suggest new additions to the folk songbook, her impressionistic words and graceful melodies speaking to the summers she spent singing with family in Venezuela and the transoceanic folk songs she learned in pubs around Cambridge, Mass., as a kid. Released in 2025, her stunning self-made single, “r(evolving) door avenida méxico,” plunders existential dualities and complexities, or what we want from the world versus what it’s actually able to give. Elhajli will release a new album on Numina in 2026.