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| Dhafer Youssef |
Tell me it isn’t only me. I was just thinking what a strange new millennium it’s been so far, with so many things of great importance we used to take for granted shrinking away and under threat. The birds and the bees are two examples. Already the world’s humanly fashioned mess literally outweighs earth’s biomass.(1) Privacy, quiet, room to breathe, the sense of personal freedom and music are several more. But let’s get off this doomsday trip, shall we?
We can turn in a different direction, take a small detour. Instead of going on to fret some more we’ll highlight what is well, high enough to highlight. In the field of music only this time. I’d like to share something about a couple of musicians that have most captured my spirit and soul during these two-plus decades, their music can bring your mind to complete focus, that then leads quickly and with evident effortlessness to elevation, to soaring above it all.
But, and this is an important but, without the least denial or dishonor to the sufferings and disappointments that give a life its depths — These are grownup tastes, I’m afraid. So send the children off to bed.
I won’t talk about my own musical past, these musicians are all young according to me. And they are not for narrow nationalists or strict traditionalists. Not that they lack traditions. They’re filled with them.
What I think can be safely said about all these artists is that they fit more comfortably in the category of jazz than anything else, but even that can be a problem. They have all undergone rigorous training in their instruments and in music in general, including strong influences from European classical and folk music. But they also all share, in unequal measures and in parts of their repertoires, strong foundations in a Middle East that includes North Africa and al-Andalus.
I’ve sometimes encountered strong prejudices against Middle Eastern music, in North America in particular. If you live in the Mideast you don’t really need to justify anything to yourself, you just absorb the sense of it, it feels you. Still, I might put out the argument that jazz in particular, the classics of Miles Davis and David Brubeck (think “Unsquare Dance”), experimented with tempos and timbres entirely untypical of earlier Euro-American music genres. I like to point out that adventurous openness of theirs to people who believe they are into jazz even while looking down their noses at the oudh or kanum music that I have come to favor.
There is really no such thing as “ethnic jazz,” unless you believe those arbiters of culture we hear from far too much. And there is a danger of dismissing these geniuses as a part of “world music’ — such a flat, flattening and uninspiring term — when what they are is trans-worldly music, music that extends out into the larger universe at the very least, if not some universe next door to it. No, please, not music that can be cranked out of some small box with a thin glue of ethnic authenticity stuck on. If you hear it and it moves you, just forget the rest. Turn off the noise.
The three featured instrumentalists excel in different instruments: oudh, double-bass, trumpet, piano and human voice. In the case of the voices that means lyrical voices without the lyrics. As Dhafer Youssef explained in an interview (linked below), he started performing as a musician in coffee houses while he was studying musicology in Vienna. He didn’t want lyrics, text in a language that might not be shared, to get in the way of communication. I get that.
I like to imagine what could happen if Dhafer Youssef, Renaud Garcia-Fons and Ibrahim Maalouf were forming a real trio, or a quartet with an added percussionist... I think it would work, even work wonders. I think RG-F has already played bass on a piece by DY, so there is a precedent.
Looking around to better inform this blog I learned for the first time that Renaud Garcia-Fons studied with a famous Syrian teacher named François Rabbath. I plan to look into this more. I had imagined Garcia-Fons as a lonely Spaniard in exile in Paris, I had no idea, just name-based assumptions. When I am listening to his music swirling about and then relentlessly pressing on, I think sometimes of western classical or folk music, sometimes late Ottoman, or flamenco, or even Celtic revival. One thing Garcia-Fons shares with the other two is this: They can be pure old-school jazz when they want to be, that and a lot besides.
I do have an odd personal tale to tell about Garcia-Fons. It was a few years after I first heard him when, living as I do in Jerusalem, I found out he had a webpage devoted to his music. So I went there for the very first time and quickly noticed he was giving a concert that very same night in Jerusalem. (I know, What are the chances?) I called and ordered a ticket right away, fearing it would be too late to get one. But when I got there a few hours later the hall was less than half full, so I could move up to the 4th row close to center when the show began. It was a night of duets with Garcia-Fons on his huge bass and the Turkish musician Derya Türkan playing a tiny upright fiddle that at first seemed absurdly small, but with immensely rich tones. It’s called a kemenche. Chosen for being well recorded, even if not the same concert, this video will give you a good idea how it was.*
(*In case the link goes stale, “Silk Moon” is the name of their collaborative album. It may be possible to hear the entire album with an internet connection, just search for it.)
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Renaud Garcia-Fons |
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Entremundo. I think it’s the best of his best, but I do love some of the more recent collaborations, also. |
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Ibrahim Maalouf |
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Remember the Bataclan performance with Sting in 2016? You must! |
I think real live adherents of traditions, and even people who just like to think they are, will find music to appreciate here. After all, if we think about it traditions are not passed on to us as part of an effort to pull us down with their drag and make everything ho-hum and predictable. Not really. Fresh creations have been cropping up all along since time began. And these artists do often dare to rise above the solemnified stability of past categories into new and engaging aesthetic forms that don’t require a label. They don’t even ask for one. And they are skilled enough at their craft to innovate on the fly in ways that hardly ever let us down.
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| Do a Youtube search for his concerts, his “music videos” I don’t care for. |
(1) Stephanie Pappas, “Human-Made Stuff Now Outweighs All Life on Earth,” Scientific American (Dec. 2020).
PS: I was told that, given my taste in these three particular musicians I might like Tigran Hamasyan. I’ll get back with you on that.
Web resources
TRT made an interview with Dhafer Youssef that I recommend. Just that they shouldn’t have ended on that note of complacency.
https://www.songlines.co.uk/features/a-beginner-s-guide/renaud-garcia-fons-a-beginner-s-guide
Renaud Garcia-Fons Official Youtube Channel, where you can hear a lot of high-quality recordings.
And there’s a whole lot more if you surf for it.
A disclaimer: Written with not the least bit of financial incentive or commercial motive. My intention is that, even when there are music and book recommendations there ought to be a way for you to enjoy them without payment... A visit to your local library might be a very good way to do it... I won’t ever display or embed links devoted to taking your money, definitely not. That’s what I intend when I say (see the sidebar) this is a non-commercial blog.
