TWO MASTERS OF THE OUD PRESENT THEIR LATEST RECORDINGS
Rabih Abou-Khalil's Journey to the Center of An Egg and Anouar Brahem's Le Voyage De Sahar both combine the exotic with Western improvisation

by Marshall Bowden

The oud is a kind of fretless guitar shaped like a lute; the lute was actually derived from the oud after the Knights Templar returned from the Crusades with the oud, introducing it to the various courts of Europe. It figures prominently in Arabic music, being the instrument most used for composition. The instrument plays a slightly less prominent role in the music of Turkey and Armenia, but is still highly important.

It is both interesting and just a bit odd that the instrument has proven very fertile for some players who have expanded both the instrument and the Arabic musical language into Western improvisational musical formats, which most often interest an audience that is a sub-section of the overall jazz genre. Add to that some who enjoy Arabic and Turkish music and some folks who just like to hear musicians get together and play without regard for style or culture of origin. Lebanese oud player Rabih Abou Khalil and Tunisian Anouar Brahem both play oud within an improvisational format inspired in part by jazz music. Both have recent CD releases that demonstrate their differing but effective approaches to bringing together musicians and styles from wildly different cultures to create music that both respects its influences and at times surpasses them by creating something that is truly fresh.

Khalil has recorded a large number of albums with musicians that include Steve Swallow, Kenny Wheeler, Sonny Fortune, and Charlie Mariano, and if one gauges a musician’s talent and flexibility by the company he keeps, than one would easily conclude that Khalil is a very gifted musician who can fit readily into a variety of musical formants. On his new Enja release, Journey to the Center of an Egg, Khalil plays with German pianist Joachim Kuhn, himself a major figure in European jazz, and drummer Jarrod Cagwin. Wolfgang Reisinger provides additional drums on two tracks in the middle of the CD as well. Walter Qunitus, sound engineer, is credited with the musicians, which makes sense in as much as Khalil and his collaborators are heard very clearly with clean sound and little distortion.

Khun is a perfect co-creator for Khalil, helping to boost things up when they might otherwise tend to flag or meander, and just as readily bringing things down a notch or two when they threaten to overheat. Having played with a variety of open musicians, including Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri, and Jean Luc Ponty, Khun’s musical chops are fluent in styles ranging from avant-garde to fusion and European concert improvised music. In the 1970s he lived in California and played with the left coast’s array of fusion stars, including Billy Cobham and Alphonse Mouzon. Since then he has lived in Germany, and most recently in Paris. He has concentrated on both composition and periodic recordings that have continued to show him as a restless, dedicated musician.

The addition of a second drummer on “Natwasheh and Kadwasheh” and “Mango” afford the group more rhythmic drive, and there is plenty of jamming from both Abou-Khalil and Kuhn. Journey to the Center of an Egg is a stunningly excellent recording that both proposes a fresh sound and actually manages to create it. It has broad appeal to anyone who enjoys ‘world’ music, jams, and improvisation, whether jazz, free, or in the European tradition.

Anouar Brahem comes from Tunisia, and his compositional style is more minimalistic than that of Abou-Khalil, though the two have often been compared. Brahem’s work has all been for the German ECM label, and he’s collaborated with an impressive cross-section of that label’s jazz talent, including Dave Holland, Jan Garbarek, Richard Galliano, and John Surman. His last CD, Le Pas du Chat Noir, introduced the trio of Brahem,, pianist Frocois Couturier, and accordian master Jean-Louis Mattinier. That recording received widespread critical acclaim, and now Brahem, Couturier, and Matinier have returned with Le Voyage De Sahar.

Having no drums means that generally either the piano or the accordion can provide rhythmic backing, as, for example, Matinier does during Brahem’s solo on “Nuba.” It seems obvious to say that Brahem’s music is a bit less rhythmically driven than Abou-Khalil’s, but this by no means implies that Brahem and company lack rhythmic interest in their music. However, they are capable of creating fairly ambient sonic landscapes, with piano and accordion able to hang in the air like the lingering odor of perfume. That may seem more like the defining element of this band. The austere opening of the CD, “Sur Le Fleuve,” shows immediately that Brahem is also mining a more structured, European-heavy brand of East/West fusion than Abou-Khalil. To some, this music will seem more like film music than an organic musical performance, and one does get the sense that these pieces have been laid out a bit more explicitly than perhaps Abou-Khalil and Kuhn did on Journey to the Center of an Egg. Nonetheless, Brahem does achieve a true cultural fusion here, bringing together the Middle Eastern flavors of Tunisia and Turkey with the North African flavors of Morocco and Algeria and adding elements of French and Spanish European traditions.

Brahem’s work with the trio on Le Pas du Chat Noir was called ‘Pan-Mediterranean musical haiku’ in its Billboard review, and that phrase is very apt, even though it seems unnecessary to try to pin this music down with a description. The introduction to “Vague,” a revisiting of a previously-recorded Brahem piece, is both very classical and evocative of minimalist composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

Both Le Voyage De Sahar and Journey to the Center of an Egg are steeped in the exotic, but elements of non-Western musical cultures are highly blended into a somewhat organic state, not presented as mere ornamentation. The realization of each oud player’s vision produces vastly different sonic results, though both CDs could be described as meditative, Brahem’s is perhaps more pensive, while Abou-Khalil’s is focused, even mindful.

The interest in oud music that seems to be somewhat in vogue in jazz circles these days is merely the continued interest in hearing excellent musicians play stringed instruments. This includes the continued popularity of the guitar as well as Mike Marshall’s (and others) work with mandolin and the oud. The nasal, droning string instrument heard on John Coltrane’s 1961 Village Vanguard sessions is usually credited as oud, but it seems doubtful based on the sonic evidence, and more recent investigators have posited that the instrument in question may be a tamboura. Nonetheless, it does confirm Coltrane’s interest, at the time, in music of other cultures and ways to attempt to bring those into what he was doing from a jazz perspective. Both Le Voyage De Sahar and Journey to the Center of an Egg are highly recommended to adventurous listeners who love improvised music and cultural fusions.