(via ▶ BBC World Service - The Strand, Ibrahim Maalouf)
“Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf’s latest album is a tribute to Miles Davis’ classic A Lift to the Scaffold, engaging the spirit and giving it an Arabic twist.”
(via New Release: Ibrahim Maalouf :: harmonia mundi usa)
Harmonia mundi distributed artist Ibrahim Maalouf releases a new album Wind on Jan 8th (Mi’ster Productions), and plays three U.S. shows:
Jan 10 - Theatre Raymond Kabbaz - Los Angeles, CA
Jan 11 - Winter JazzFest: Le Poisson Rouge - New York, NY
Jan 14 - Lycee Francais de New York - New York, NY
Click image for more info and to sample the record!
World Village & Jazz Village on Best of 2012 lists
Emel Mathlouthi - Kelmti Horra:
“simply one of 2012’s best” - New York Music Daily
Best Albums of 2012 - Songlines Magazine
Best World Music Albums of 2012 - About.com
Best Albums of 2012 - Chris Nickson
Top 20 Albums of 2012 - Mark Cole’s The Shed
Kayhan Kalhor - I Will Not Stand Alone:
Best World Music Albums of 2012 - About.com
Global Beat Fusion’s Top 10 Albums of 2012 - Huffington Post
Catherine Russell - Strictly Romancin’:
Best Jazz Albums of 2012 - iTunes
Top Songs of 2012 (“Romance In The Dark”) - NPR Jazz24
No. 1 Album of 2012 - Jazz90.1 WGMC
Best Albums of 2012: DJ Picks - Radio Colorado’s Dick Fairley
Top 10 CDs of 2012 - WBGO’s Bob Porter
Top 10 CDs of 2012 - KCRW’s Bo Leibowitz
Best Albums of 2012 - Downbeat Magazine
Best Vocal Album of 2012 - Jazz Journalists Association’s Francis Davis
Best Albums of 2012 - Jazz Journalists Association’s Andrew Gilbert
Best Albums of 2012 - Jazz Journalists Association’s Nancy Barell
Favorite Jazz Albums of 2012 - Politics & Prose Bookstore
Top 20 Jazz Albums of 2012 - Lucid Culture
Top 12 CDs of 2012 - WKCC’s Friends of the Blues
5 Favorite International Recordings of 2012 - Chicago Reader
Global Hit Picks of 2012 - PRI’s The World
Honorable Mention Top Ten of 2012 - WRIR
Global Village’s Best World Music of 2012 - KMUW
Rabih Abou-Khalil - Hungry People:
Global Village’s Best World Music of 2012 - KMUW
Best Jazz Albums of 2012 - iTunes
Half-Year Best of 2012 - Something Else!
Best 20 Jazz Albums of 2012 - San Jose Mercury News
2nd Best Jazz Album of the Year - Downbeat Magazine
100 Best Albums of 2012 (No. 9) - Ted Gioia
Top 7 Jazz CDs of 2012 - Whole Music Experience
Highlights of 2012 - International Review of Music
Night Train’s Best Jazz of 2012 - KMUW
Coming to World Village in January 2013!
Crooner Lili Boniche (1921-2008) was the heir to an erudite tradition of Algerian song and a pillar of “Franco-Arab” music. Born into a Sephardic family in the Casbah in Algiers, Boniche was a child prodigy who taught himself to play his father’s mandola at the age of seven. He was an in-demand singer throughout France in the 1940s and during wartime. Boniche incorporated the tango, paso doble and mambo into his repertoire, especially while entertaining the troops. He retired in the 50s, only to launch a second career in 1990 and release the album Boniche Dub in 1998, produced by Bill Laswell and fashion doyen Jean Touitou. The album earned him new fans across Europe. His new retrospective, Anthologie, which combines his greatest hits and previously unreleased works, not only fills a gap with regard to available recordings, but it pays tribute to an important pioneer of cultural fusion.
(via Rabih Abou-Khalil: the interview « The Global Dispatches)
I wanted to ask you what you are working on at the moment?
We have a new CD coming out, it is called “Hungry People”. I have moved to a new record company called Harmonia Mundi. This is a studio album and very different from my last CD. I’m still playing with my band:, Gavino Murgia, Luciano Biondini, Michel Godard and Jarrod Cagwin. We’ve been playing together for nearly 16 years now. We know each other very well so, as you will hear, the band is very tight indeed. It is an intense album. This is completely different from “Trouble in Jerusalem” the last CD which was a very different kind of project…
You also played the flute at that point is that right?
I started playing the oud in Lebanon and later studied the flute. I think that studying classical music gave me an understanding not just of Western music, but of how music itself has developed over the centuries. Western music has been categorised and catalogued, divided into eras and styles. The awareness of what has been done in the past makes artists in the West wary of repeating what has been done before. The concept of “sticking to tradition” in art is non-existent. Composers search for their own language of expression, always avoiding becoming copyists of a past era. It would be ridiculous to ask a Western composer to write like Beethoven! However, different criteria get applied when talking about non-Western music. The term “traditional” does not really mean much, as what is called traditional today was very revolutionary yesterday. Take the big innovators in Arabic music, Sayyed Darwish, Mohammad Abdul Wahab, Riad el Sonbati, Oum Kalsoum. If they had restricted themselves to merely “guarding” traditional music, they would never have had the chance to become great musicians. If art does not evolve, it is destined to die…
There is a strong element of humour in your titles a bit Zappa-esque, are you making sure people do not take you too seriously?
It is not about seriousness. Music is all about enjoyment and that comes easiest when you laugh and not when you take things too seriously. I know that the music I write is technically quite complex, I work a lot with rhythm changes, I make sure that I can go wherever I want with the music. I have never seen music as being a stylistic expression as much as an expression of emotion. I never cared much about putting a label on what I was doing – was it jazz? Was it rock? I realised that I was playing music that was particular to me. Everyone is very concerned about what sort of music it is, or what style it is. This does not worry me…
Do you receive criticism from purists of Arabian music who don’t like you diluting it with Western music?
Yes, quite a lot but I don’t really care because they are right! I let myself be influenced by anything I hear. I don’t play like they do but why should I? As I mentioned before if music does not develop and change it becomes a museum piece. But that is what is happening in the Arab world: you either have traditional music or you have pop music, nobody is bothering to develop the music that had reached a very high level. In the 60s and 70s there was some incredible innovation going on in Arab music. But it never really developed further as everyone became concerned with just preserving the excellent music from the past…
(via Jakarta Hosts the Tunisian Uprising’s Songstress | The Jakarta Globe)
Tunisian-born Emel Mathlouthi credits growing up with an activist father for her own rebellious streak, which in turn inspired her to pen lyrics and sing about the revolution in her country.
On Tuesday night, the singer performed at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta, at a concert presented by the French cultural center Institut Francais Indonesia.
The singer-songwriter enchanted the crowd with her captivating voice, singing 12 songs in Arabic from her first album “Kelmti Horra” (“My Word Is Free”).
The Paris-based artist, who appeared on stage barefoot, flawlessly hit all the notes while occasionally playing an acoustic guitar. Tuesday’s audience could feel her anger and dissatisfaction, despite the language barrier…
Mathlouthi was supported by three musicians on stage: a percussionist, violinist and keyboardist-DJ. The minimalist ensemble surprisingly produced a strong Middle Eastern vibe. The DJ aggressively scratched and tapped, exploring all the possibilities of a funk creation. Special effects often included a flurry of distinct voices while dynamic drum beats never escaped a song unnoticed. Everyone on stage knew their part and played it well.
(via Le Trio Joubran take oud music to the world | Culture | DW.DE | 18.05.2012)
“Le Trio Joubran are three brothers born in Israel with Palestinian roots. They come from a family of oud makers. Now they have turned their passion into a career, but are often asked to talk politics in interviews.
“AsFar” is the name of the latest album from Le Trio Joubran from Nazareth. AsFar means “to travel” in Arabic and is also a word play on the English words “as far.” Le Trio Joubran has certainly come a long way.
“The album combines all the colors, sounds and impressions that we have been exposed to,” says Wissam. The three brothers see themselves as privileged, due to their ability to travel around the world freely. Their Palestinian countrymen from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip do not have that freedom…”
By any standard, Mathlouthi is an extraordinary singer, highly nuanced, evoking an intense tenderness yet often direct to the point of being confrontational. She cites both Dylan and Cheikh Imam as influences, and draws as much from American soul music and new wave rock like Siouxsie & the Banshees as she does from Arabic pop and classical styles, often layering her vocals into a mighty, ornate wall of harmonies. Behind her, violin and piano stand out stark and plaintive against murky low-register keyboard drones and the ominous boom or thud of a drum machine or percussion loop. This is haunted, exhausted, angry, bitter, wounded wartime music, with the inescapable message that if we continue to let the world be run by dictators and speculators, that choice is suicidal…
The single most gripping track here might be Dfina (Burial), a bitter Tunisian-flavored art-rock anthem that shifts between distant disillusion and raw, unhinged rage. The most pop-oriented one is Hinama (When), with its ominous post-new wave production and watery guitars. The album ends with another multi-part epic, Yezzi (Enough), shifting from a pensive folk rock-tinged intro as it reaches for freedom once and for all, resolute and indomitable. The album is best enjoyed as a whole – it’s hard to turn away once Mathlouthi hits her stride. There aren’t many albums that pack this kind of impact: simply one of 2012′s best, and probably destined for iconic status as both historical artifact and artistic achievement.
“
| — | Emel Mathlouthi Captures the Horrors of Fascism and the Thrill of Revolution « New York Music Daily |
NEW EMEL MATHLOUTHI MA LKIT (NOT FOUND) ©kelmti horra// World village (by zembelhbel)
Low volume but very good performance.
