Ridina Ahmed (1974)
She ended her activities in the Floex project and by chance she appeared on a concert of American musician Winx, who used in his performance a sampler laying one vocal loop over another. Thus Ridina Ahmed discovered an open door to her independent work, in the Czech Republic still uncommon.
In 2003 she presented a premiere of her solo project Hlasokraj, which was awarded by Next Wave award 2004 in the category of the Discovery of the year. This project joint a video screening and a life concert. In connection with Hlasokraj in 2006 Ridina Ahmed released her solo album Hlasem - a purely vocal album, laying different positions of her voice on each other and creating an untraditional and individual form, which is ravenous for a while, then playful for a while, but always original and unique.
In March 2007 Ridina Ahmed performed as a guest of a Norwegian songstress Mari Boine, who belongs to the most respected and reputable personalities of the world music.
Furthermore Ridina Ahmed participated on soundtracks of films Dolls (Pusinky), Fimfárum or Vaterland. She composes scenic music for the theatre Alfréd ve dvoře.
Ridina Ahmed is a semi-Sudanese, she spent the most receptive age in Algerian port of Oran and at first hearing it can be seen that she is thinking in "greater entities", further then most of Czech musicians. She went through a jazz formation, cooperated with Floex and this time she reckoned solely on her self. A cappella album is called Hlasem (By voice) and it can not have more proper name. If the album was a car, voice would form its chassis, wheels, motor, steering wheel and lights. A breakthrough in Ridina's thinking of her own music syntax came in the moment when she discovered an instrument enabling to lay loops on life concerts and create multi-vocal songs. Good that it was her, who made this discovery. Her exceptional and rich voice may be both ravenous and playful, in all circumstances serving the growing vocal material in arrangement, which although it seems challenging is never purposeless or artistic. Do not expect another boring would-be-meditative album, where the author gropes in the dark after the first melodic figure and "sleeps on the synthesizer". The construction of Ridina's songs is natural and efficient as a fisherman's house. In this house also John Coltrane feels comfortable, whose song Afro Blue was included to the album by the Czech Bobby McFerrin as a diamond in her otherwise author collection. The whole album savours as Švankmajer's study of a black hair in a bonus video clip to the song Rain (Déšť). It is nonaggressive and delicate.
