By Kevin Le Gendre - The Guardian - U.K.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
World music is a vague, pliable, record-industry term and its ambiguity is perfectly exhibited tonight.
While Tunisian singer and oud player Dhafer Youssef and Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel create music that sounds deeply rooted in ancestral Sufi laments that would send Womad punters into raptures, they constantly pull apart, embroider and restitch the form of each piece. In other words, it is jazz.
Giving further credence to this sleight of genre is the fact that the repertoire, drawn largely from the duo's fine new album Glow, suffers in no way from the absence of the trumpet, bass, keys and drums featured on the studio recording.
As well as extensively improvising, both musicians - whose former collaborators include Miles Davis's percussionist Mino Cinelu and Wayne Shorter's drummer Brian Blade - sample, slice, loop and distort phrases to fashion off-the-cuff beats and swooning textures. In other words, it is ambient electronica.
Yet in the midst of their most technophile moments, both musicians retain an organic, sensual musicality.
Muthspiel, armed with electric and nylon string guitars, unfurls fleet, flickering arpeggios and tightly coiled, intricate solos that often segue into muscular, primal bass lines.
Youssef's oud improvisations, mostly favouring shorter, staccato lines that show the Moorish roots of flamenco, mark an effective contrast to Muthspiel's more loquacious approach. But his real virtuosity is his voice, a spellbinding instrument lying somewhere between Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Bobby McFerrin.
Like the latter, Youssef has elaborate methods of manipulating his tone, the high point of which sees him sing right into the bulbous body of the oud to turn the room into an enchanted echo chamber.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
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Thursday, November 15, 2007
Ancestral Sufi Laments - Glow
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
World music is a vague, pliable, record-industry term and its ambiguity is perfectly exhibited tonight.
While Tunisian singer and oud player Dhafer Youssef and Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel create music that sounds deeply rooted in ancestral Sufi laments that would send Womad punters into raptures, they constantly pull apart, embroider and restitch the form of each piece. In other words, it is jazz.
Giving further credence to this sleight of genre is the fact that the repertoire, drawn largely from the duo's fine new album Glow, suffers in no way from the absence of the trumpet, bass, keys and drums featured on the studio recording.
As well as extensively improvising, both musicians - whose former collaborators include Miles Davis's percussionist Mino Cinelu and Wayne Shorter's drummer Brian Blade - sample, slice, loop and distort phrases to fashion off-the-cuff beats and swooning textures. In other words, it is ambient electronica.
Yet in the midst of their most technophile moments, both musicians retain an organic, sensual musicality.
Muthspiel, armed with electric and nylon string guitars, unfurls fleet, flickering arpeggios and tightly coiled, intricate solos that often segue into muscular, primal bass lines.
Youssef's oud improvisations, mostly favouring shorter, staccato lines that show the Moorish roots of flamenco, mark an effective contrast to Muthspiel's more loquacious approach. But his real virtuosity is his voice, a spellbinding instrument lying somewhere between Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Bobby McFerrin.
Like the latter, Youssef has elaborate methods of manipulating his tone, the high point of which sees him sing right into the bulbous body of the oud to turn the room into an enchanted echo chamber.
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By Kevin Le Gendre - The Guardian - U.K.Tuesday, November 13, 2007
World music is a vague, pliable, record-industry term and its ambiguity is perfectly exhibited tonight.
While Tunisian singer and oud player Dhafer Youssef and Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel create music that sounds deeply rooted in ancestral Sufi laments that would send Womad punters into raptures, they constantly pull apart, embroider and restitch the form of each piece. In other words, it is jazz.
Giving further credence to this sleight of genre is the fact that the repertoire, drawn largely from the duo's fine new album Glow, suffers in no way from the absence of the trumpet, bass, keys and drums featured on the studio recording.
As well as extensively improvising, both musicians - whose former collaborators include Miles Davis's percussionist Mino Cinelu and Wayne Shorter's drummer Brian Blade - sample, slice, loop and distort phrases to fashion off-the-cuff beats and swooning textures. In other words, it is ambient electronica.
Yet in the midst of their most technophile moments, both musicians retain an organic, sensual musicality.
Muthspiel, armed with electric and nylon string guitars, unfurls fleet, flickering arpeggios and tightly coiled, intricate solos that often segue into muscular, primal bass lines.
Youssef's oud improvisations, mostly favouring shorter, staccato lines that show the Moorish roots of flamenco, mark an effective contrast to Muthspiel's more loquacious approach. But his real virtuosity is his voice, a spellbinding instrument lying somewhere between Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Bobby McFerrin.
Like the latter, Youssef has elaborate methods of manipulating his tone, the high point of which sees him sing right into the bulbous body of the oud to turn the room into an enchanted echo chamber.
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