338: Targ, by Bargou 08

Bargou 08 (Tunisia)
Targ (2017)
9 tracks, 43 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

The past few years have been a really exciting time for new directions in Tunisian music. I’ve already covered the ecstatic religious Afro-Tunisian industrial noise group Ifriqiyya Électrique and the pan-Maghreb bass music from Tunisian producer AMMAR 808, and today’s album is another one that is preserving one of the country’s little-known traditions by engaging it in a new way.

Bargou 08 was put together by Nidhal Yahyaoui, who grew up in Tunisia’s Bargou valley in the mountains of the country’s north-west. The people of the valley had created their own unique musical culture that had never gotten out into the rest of Tunisia, let alone abroad, but was starting to become lost. So, in the great tradition of the song collector, Yahyaoui began learning and recording the music from the valley, the music of all walks of life, to make sure a record of these traditions persisted. Then he decided to take it to the world, and for that, he brought in the help of Sofyann Ben Youssef – also known as the aforementioned AMMAR 808.

Together, they worked on arrangements of the folk pieces, bringing in musicians from the valley with those from outside it, they created a sound that is intensely of its place but cosmopolitan too. Ben Youssef’s synths and the drum kit of Benjamin Chaval put Targ undeniably within the 21st century and turn the tracks into banging floor-fillers, but they’re also somehow subtle; the architecture of these instruments working in complete complement with the traditional instruments of Bargou. The rasping gasbah flute and the astringent sound of the zokra shawm are paired with grinding sawtooth synths and the booming, distorted resonances of the bendir frame drum is enhanced with the pounding beats and cymbals of the drum kit and the fluid synth bass. The arrangements, too, make the best of both worlds, with the melodies and accompaniment entirely based on traditional songs, but still ramping up and occasionally dropping out in anticipation of a hearty bass drop, conducted by Yahyaoui’s passionate and subtle vocals, wrenching these beautiful songs from deep in his soul, gifted from his ancestors, while picking out lines on the wtar lute.

As far as I know, Bargou 08, as a project and a band, is on indefinite hiatus, but even if one album is all we get, Targ is an incredible achievement. It’s a shining example of how to keep traditional and endangered music alive without preserving it like a museum piece or patronising its musicians by keeping it chained to the past. Bargou 08 treat the music of the Bargou valley with the utmost respect while understanding its potential within the worlds of electronic and dance music, bringing these elements to the songs without taking any of the meaning or sound or energy away from their traditional forms. Nothing is destroyed, only built upon, and it’s magnificent. It’s a great album of cross-cultural collaboration done exactly right, and yet another brilliant, exciting and refreshing sound to come out of Tunisia in just the past handful of years. That country has so much to offer this world of music, and I can’t wait to hear what’s coming next.

304: Rûwâhîne, by Ifriqiyya Électrique

Ifriqiyya Électrique (Tunisia/France/Italy)
Rûwâhîne (2017)
9 tracks, 44 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Ifriqiyya Électrique are responsible for one of the most intense musical experiences I've ever had – twice. This record – their debut – gives a good idea of the sound of their music, but it cannot convey the sheer power of its live performance.

The Banga are black Africans, descendants of West African slaves, who live in the Djerid desert in the south of Tunisia. They are a Sufi community, and as such they use their music as worship, reaching out to Sufi saints and the spirits of their ancestors in large-scale healing ceremonies, where initiates fall into ecstatic trance, vehicles for the unknowable forces.

Ifriqiyya Électrique is a collaboration between four Banga musicians and Italian-French industrial noise duo Putan Club, with additional electronics from Pierpaolo Leo and extensive samples from on-the-ground recordings of the rûwâhîne (spirit) ceremony. On the face of it, these collaborators may seem to have very little in common, but their musical aesthetics align in wonderful ways. Both use sound to break the brain. Banga music and industrial noise are both used to confuse the ears, to detach the listeners from mundane reality and occupy the entirety of body and cranium.

Together, they create an overwhelming wall of noise. Clattering krakebs, wildly distorted bass, pounding Tunisian tabla barrel drums and naghara kettle drums, smashing cymbals, anguished massed cries of religious utterances, wailing electric guitar, garbled synthesised sound, low-pitched rhythmic chanting and authentic sounds of late-night ceremonial hubbub. All of it combines to create something terrifying, exhilarating, raw and passionate. The intensity comes in waves – sometimes the noise is all encompassing, but at others it is smouldering, tension building and just as captivating, and both modes work to increase the impact of the other.

In live performance it is ear splitting. In the dark, shoulder-to-shoulder with other humans, moving together, sweating together, it becomes an assault of simultaneous sensory deprivation and sensory overload. The only way the feeling could be more acute is if it were conducted in the ceremony’s rightful location, in the deserts and tiny huts, surrounded by candles and in air suffused with many incenses, teas and highly-spiced food.

You won’t get that from this album, but you will get a flavour of it. Play it as loud as possible, turn off the lights, turn up the central heating and bring your neighbours around and you’ll get closer. But, if you can, experience Ifriqiyya Électrique in the flesh. There’s nothing quite like it, and you may never feel quite the same again.

282: Maghreb United, by AMMAR 808

AMMAR 808 (Tunisia/Algeria/Morocco)
Maghreb United (2018)
10 tracks, 36 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Together with the last two entries, this week has become a trio of modernised North African sounds, each putting their own unique stamp on the traditions. AMMAR 808 goes probably the most left-field of them all.

AMMAR 808 is Sofyann Ben Youssef, Tunisian producer and synth player and the owner of an incredibly wide range of musical expertise: jazz, metal, rock, Tuareg music, classical music of Arabic, Western and Indian flavours and all sorts of electronica – they’re all in Ben Youssef’s wheelhouse, and they all go towards the headspace that flowers into his work as AMMAR 808.

Maghreb United is Ben Youssef’s first album under this particular moniker, inspired by the upheaval of political systems and societies in the Maghrebi countries – Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco – over the past decade. In this period of revolution and subsequent rebuilding, people are looking to radically different ways of doing things, and with Maghreb United, Ben Youssef takes it to the extreme, creating a musical sci-fi that is indelibly rooted in the region’s musical styles. To create this style of ‘Maghrebi bass,’ he enlisted three singers from different spheres across the region, each adding their own sound and style: Cheb Hassen Tej, a specialist in Targ music from Tunisia; Sofiane Saidi, Algeria’s star of nu-rai; and Medhi Nassouli, a Gnawa musician who also plays the guimbri lute, from Morocco; also involved on several tracks is Tunisian gasba (flute) and zokra (bagpipes) player Lassad Boughalmi.

These musicians all gave their own musical perspectives on each of their respective styles (all but one of the tracks on the album are derived from traditional songs), and from them, together with a studioful of synthesisers, drum machines (especially the fabled Roland TR-808) and a fair few extra samples, Ben Youssef juggles all these influences together to create the new traditional music of the pan-Maghrebi space colony. This is deep bass and dark techno as if they were traditional music, evolving in the urban metropolises and arid deserts over a thousand years or more. Ben Youssef’s personal connection to these styles means that his application of electronica is in perfect harmony with their original musical intentions, while creating music that reaches beyond club banger. The scale is so epic as to render the dancefloor irrelevant – it will hit you where you stand, take you out of your mind and throw you into a world of booming trance, making your limbs move and emptying your brain of all but that most essential reverberating sound.

This is Afrofuturism, North Africa style: a utopian vision of a Maghreb post-revolution, post-nation-state, and definitely not Earthbound. In an exciting time for Maghrebi music in general, AMMAR 808 is a game changer. Maghreb United is just the beginning. Ben Youssef is currently recording album #2, with Tamil musicians – this space journey is set to take a different course. I can’t wait.

182: Nahadin, by Hijaz

Hijaz (Tunisia/Belgium)
Nahadin (2014)
7 tracks, 38 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Back when I used to write reviews regularly for fRoots magazine, I apparently somehow gained a reputation as a connoisseur of music from the Middle East and North Africa, and as a result I was sent loads of albums from those regions for review. Out of those, an extremely common subsection emerged: Arabic jazz. This stuff is being made all over those regions (and further afield), and each group has their slightly different take on it, but after a while, all these albums seemed to blend in with each other. Nevertheless, this one, Nahadin by Hijaz, stood out as particularly special.

The impression starts before you've even pressed play: the album has a beautiful cover that you unfortunately cannot appreciate fully in its digital version at the top of this post. The album's jewel case is enclosed in a sleeve of entirely off-white, textured card with what I think is the album's title, written in ornate Arabic calligraphy, embossed on the front. Always lovely to have pleasing visual (and tactile) art to accompany the musical. That musical element is similarly pleasing. The Arabic elements – most recognisable in the contributions of the oud of Moufadhel Adhoum and the vocals of Abir Nasraoui – are met with absolutely top-class jazz, and every one of the musicians ably blend the two in their performance; a real highlight of this can be heard in the piano solo by Niko Deman on the first track, 'Nahadin'.

A lot of these sort of Arabic jazz experiments stick to meditative styles, or at least to atmospheres that bring to mind Arabic classical music – serious, intense and introspective. But Hijaz aren't afraid to go upbeat and lively with it, even with their all-acoustic ensemble – see the track 'Desert Dancer', which starts with a funky double bass, joined by Arabic percussion, buzzing oud and finally piano, bringing in all the sophisticated influences and ambitions while losing none of that funk – or fun.

I still do write for fRoots occasionally, even sometimes about North African musicians (you can read my article on also-Tunisian musician and producer Sofyann Ben Youssef in the current issue!), although I rarely write of Arabic jazz nowadays. However, in a surprisingly crowded marketplace, Hijaz and Nahadin still stand out as a high point of musical expression and close intercultural collaboration.

038: Souvenance, by Anouar Brahem

Anouar Brahem (Tunisia)
Souvenance (2015)
11 tracks, 89 minutes (2CD)
Spotify · iTunes

This is the first time on this blog that I’m featuring an album that I’ve previously reviewed. I reckoned it would be interesting to compare how I felt about the album after just one or two listens with how I feel now, often a few years later. I’ll try not to repeat myself too much, I’d like these to work more in conjunction with my previous work than to trump them.

I reviewed this one back in 2015 for fRoots Magazine – you can read that one over on my other blog. I remember at the time, this album came to me after a long run of various Arabic jazz albums. Some were good, some less so, but I definitely needed a break, so I ended up putting this one off for a while; North African oud in a jazz style? Heard it, mate. But the fact that this was an ECM record should have let me know that this was going to have a special something to it. In fact, I would hesitate to say whether ‘jazz’ would even be an accurate descriptor.

In the endless debate over the proper way to call, talk about and define ‘classical music,’ a term that often crops up is ‘serious music.’ It’s not really the best suggestion, because there are so many examples on the contrary, but it most definitely fits this album. It is straight-faced art of the highest order. Souvenance is a work that demands to be at the centre of your attention; stick it on in the background and it may just sound wishy-washy and without any real movement. But it’s all there for the focused ear.

There are lots of gentle timbres over this album – oud, piano, bass, bass clarinet and string orchestra – but like waves, there is an immense power behind the gentle stirrings that occasionally break dramatically before returning to its previous calm, as themes return or overlap, or fade and morph into something not-quite recognisable. The Western classical instrumentation and compositional style gives the album its overall sound, but it is informed by the Arabic, North African and jazz of its composer’s roots, providing a similarly oceanic depth to the work. Enjoy this album in solemnity and wonder at its immensity.

For the London-based of you, Anouar Brahem will be playing at the Barbican on the 15th March. It’ll probably be a bit more jazzy than this album, as he’s playing alongside the legendary musicians Django Bates, Dave Holland and Nasheet Waits – that’s a line-up to make your mouth water. I’m hoping I can be there myself, so maybe see you there!