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Thursday, November 8, 2012

Arabic-Mediterranean New Wave - Kamylia Jubran & Werner Hasler - Wanabni and more...





I love the crossroads, musical transversalities and stylistically and culturally multi-layered, "open" and undefined musical expressions...

... yesterday I began to listen to some music, like following an idea... first it was a disk I bough while in Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia... Sonia M'Barek's "Tawchih", nice, NICE music from Tunisian master musicians with Sonia's beautiful voice, recorded live at the Centre de Musique Mediterranee, always in Sidi Bou Said, in those beautiful large rooms so full of life, history and class where once lived "Le Baron".





Arabic classic music, oud, violin, voice, doumbek or tar, nay flute... I sort-of prepared my soul and spirit.

Then, felt more confident and adventurous and handled Kamilya Jubran & Werner Hasler's "Wanabni" on Pure... recorded in Bern, Switzerland by Dave Muther on 10-15/8/2009 at Influx Studios... quoting this facts as the recording is very nice, indeed... serving so well the music, oud and oud electronic sampling, voice, trumpet and electronics...



On track 2 "Wana Rif" on a beautiful text by Aicha Arnaut music is both old and new as it can be... it's not jazz, or ethnic/world or classical... a New Arabic Wave, sung in Arab (texts are translated in liner notes in German and English, as well).

On track 3 "Lam" a growling oud and a superb, TRULY loooow bass are so well presented... really house and soul shaking stuff, folks... a  trumpet someway reminding Markus Stockhausen and, of course, Jon Hassell - who's also very, very deep into Eastern and Indian music idioms - is also well here, but all the disk flows slightly dark and sad in mood, BUT very happily as a musical/listening experience.

Cool.

I love this disk.

... and to end the evening, I shot myself with a weird vinyl, still more for the true daredevil:-)

"Bachir Attar with Elliott Sharp in New York" on Enemy Records from Munchen... it's Morocco and Manhattan... kif and speed, Guimbri and distorted electric guitar, bendir and voice... electronic and earth sounds...



Moroccan musician Bachir Attar is the leader of the phenomenal Master Musicians of Jajouka, a performing ensemble whose history extends back centuries, but which late Brian Jones made it known to the Western world, back in the late '60s.

It's - sometimes - a nightmare-hinting, claustrophobic disc... yet a deeply moving and seldom heard mix... it's like country mouse goes in town to meet city mouse...



No winners or loosers... their breathing and squitting is the same, yet the vocabulary is different, like the speed (a different breed from above mentioned one:-))

I recently listened to more interesting and promising contaminations... serpent (a rare, exotic dinosaur-like wind instrument from Middle Age and early Renaissance) and double bass (thanking Serge Schmidlin and Dirk Sommer for this) and solo theorbo playing (some kind of) jazz!

A pastiche?

No, not really... it's like music eats and digests itself and re-born brand new, unafraid of (human) labels and definitions... time and music... music and time... the most mysterious elements in our life.






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