Name: Adja Fassa
Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Nationality: Belgian
Current release: Adja's debut album Golden Retrieve Her is out April 25th 2025 via Sdban Ultra.
Current event: To support Golden Retrieve Her, Adja will perform a string of concerts, mostly in her native Belgium. Catch her live here:

1 May 2025 – Hnita, Heist-op-den-Berg (BE)
2 May 2025 – Les Aralunaires, Arlon (BE)
9 May 2025 – Ancienne Belgique, Brussels (BE)
11 May 2025 – Jazz à Liège, Liège (BE)
23 May 2025 – Brussels Jazz Weekend, Brussels (BE)
8 June 2025 – Jazz Middelheim, Antwerp (BE)
24 June 2025 – Nica Jazz Club, Hamburg (DE)
4 July 2025 – Jazz à Semur, Semur-en-Auxois (FR)
19 July 2025 – Gent Jazz, Gent (BE)
23 August 2025 – Jazz op de Hei, Kalmthout (BE) 
21 November 2025 – Ha Concerts, Gent (BE)

Topic that I am passionate about but rarely get to talk about: I am super interested in the human body (I am taking a 16 week-course online class on anatomy, planes of motion, etc. to understand hypermobility).  
Moreso, I am fascinated with how our subconscious and cultivated identity intertwine (or not) and how our sense of self interacts with our physical body. For example, I wrote my master's thesis in Drama on the idea of creating a ‘methodology’ or a ‘practice’ to stimulate a creation-process, where the subconscious is compartmentalised into sensory tools that are then latched onto vocal exercises, meditative exercises (breath work and visualizations) and yoga.
The thesis was made up out of two parts that ran parallel from each other: the backwards piecing-together of an intuitive practice (on the floor) next to reading and finding links between this practice and Dr. Gabor Mate’s book ‘The Myth of Normal’, which speaks on the scientific theory of how certain trauma (with small ‘t’ or big ‘T’, depending on the severity) opens up a biological pathway for certain diseases.  

If you enjoyed this Adja interview and would like to know more about her music, visit her on Instagram, and Facebook.



Entering new worlds and escapism through music and literature have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to writing?

I’m mostly drawn to stimulating flow in my emotional processes, to help myself ‘digest’ life. On a larger scale, I’m drawn to the idea of having some kind of bird's eye view on my inner experience of the world.

I don’t want to become stagnant in my self-awareness. Yet, if I had to continuously question myself and find new perspectives without the humour that music and theatre/poetry bring to the table, I would quickly grow stagnant again as I’d take myself too seriously.

It’s like, when you had an awful day and then you tell a friend and all of the sudden repeating out loud the misery of every event stacked on top of each other makes it so absurd that it becomes funny. That which made you feel sorry for yourself a few moments ago suddenly has you and your friend crying with laughter.

Music, theatre, poetry is that friend to me too.

What were some of the artists and albums which inspired you early on purely on the strength of their lyrics? What moves you in the lyrics of other artists?

Joni Mitchells’ album ‘Hejira’ had a big impact on me the first year I studied jazz.

I came from a theatre-background and was very new to any type of musical education (and very scared of any artistic education, as the theatre word had confused me so much on what;s “good” and “in poor taste”).



Every day after school, I’d come home and cook while listening to that album. This album soothed me and kept me company during a lonely period in my life, and reassured me for some reason that it was safe for me to learn about another form of art without having to adhere to all its traditions and rules.

Joni Mitchell did whatever she liked. She (and Erykah Badu) remind me a bit of my mom: not always right, but flamboyant, with attitude and very human. They didn’t just believe in themselves, they believed themselves.

Their experiences, their inner word, musical and/or emotional. That was the kind of grounding I was looking for at the time.

I have always considered many forms of music to be a form of poetry as well. Where do you personally see similarities? What can music express which may be out of reach for poetry?

Both poetry and music speak a rhythm or cadence into the world that translates to the sensory body. Directions/planes of motion, temperaments, the texture of an atmosphere, all those sensory elements that we internally translate to ‘an intention’ I feel are part of music as well as poetry.

I think, to be a bit simplistic about it, that music adds to that much more the element of colour, which is an easy sensory tool to enlarge emotion. Of course poetry inhabits colours too, but I feel it’s more subtle and relies more heavily on profoundness - outside of the context of the story.

With music, often used words can be celebrated depending on how we re-use or surpass them, almost used as a container or jumping board to dive into an emotion that is brought home by the colour of the music.



In my latest work ‘Golden Retrieve Her’, I leaned on this “principle” a bit more when writing lyrics for songs that needed a certain lightness. (‘Package Delivered By Tomorrow’ and ‘A Moment’). That was a real challenge, as I like to be elaborate with my lyrics and don’t mind a certain heaviness and straightforwardness.

But when the music asks to be light (even if the theme is not), the words need to mean a lot behind the surface. That was a funny juxtaposition to explore.   

What are areas/themes/topics that you keep returning to in your lyrics?

Unspoken emotional patterns within friendships, the need to rest that is in opposition with the fear of falling behind in this fast-paced world, frustration with my society’s hypocrisy and my own.

On the basis of a piece off Golden Retrieve Her, tell me about how the lyrics grew into their final form and what points of consideration were.

Often at the beginning of a creation-process, words and melody either come together instantaneously (in chunks) or they follow each other's footsteps very closely: either a melody comes to mind/heart and its atmosphere (and often within it, the theme of the song) is very clear from the start. Also, the vowels and cadence that make the most sense or are even necessary to get the melodic intention across, come with it.

Nevertheless, this time around, with the release of Golden Retrieve Her, there were some songs of which the concrete words stayed behind for quite some time despite the initial clarity around emotional intention, atmosphere, vowels and theme.

This, maybe because some of those songs were further away from the “day to day” personality I think I exude: I didn’t see them as concentrated forms of my emotional patterns, but rather as observations of an external situation (of course that external situation was dreamt up by my brain. But I guess I recognize myself more in the emotional feedback-loop of my intimate relationships, then of my daydream-fantasies).

For example, ‘Package Delivered By Tomorrow’ talks about a guy who works for a delivery-service and drives around all day, thinking about how he is going to make his ambitions and dreams happen once he finally gets some time for himself on the weekend.

Meanwhile, he is being slightly harassed by a telemarketer who is trying to sell him prescription-based happiness and hope (literally) … The telemarketer works on commission and is also trying to make her dreams happen, she just needs to make a sale.

The words of this song needed to feel like the listener is standing on a plateau that turns around. No internal movement, just the word that turns around you. Or it needed to emulate the sensation of being a driver and the outside world gliding by as you drive around all day.

Once the real ‘fitting the word into the shape’-part of the process came along, I was trying to find words that conveyed the story but didn’t sound loaded, I was looking for a sort of ‘flatness’ that grew with a sort of “impersonal” intensity.

Do you tend to start writing with what will be the first line of the finished lyrics? The chorus? At a random point? What are the words that set the process in motion?

I do not!

Nevertheless, I feel instantaneously when words/melodies come,  if they are the chorus or not. There's this feeling of “yes, this is the essence of the song” when that’s the case.  

When you're writing song lyrics, do you sense or see a connection between your voice and the text? Does it need to feel and sound “good” or “right” to sing certain words? What's your perspective in this regard of singing someone else's songs versus your own?

I am more focused on the connection between melody and text, and then like to see how far my voice can take me in articulating that idea.

I consider myself an athlete in R&B and want to see how far I can go ~ it’s really fun!