Live @ Tokyu Bunkamura Theater Cocoon (3rd Oct ‘06) by Smashing Mag

Another essential middle-eastern dub & electronic fusion album you’ve got to own is a joint project by DuOud & Abdulatif Yagoub. DuOud is an obvious play on “duo oud”, and consists of French Musicians Mehdi Habbab (Algeria) and Jean-Pierre Smadj (Tunisia) who I’ve heard before from his activities in Istanbul. He’s done some projects with percussion celebrity Burhan Ocal, and although I’m not really into Ocal and his celebrity ways, I decided to check Smadj’s stuff.

Fast forward >> I’ve been playing their 2006 album “Sakat” almost non stop for a few weeks now, enough to get some criticisms of my music taste by other residents of my house (I’ve begun to play too much world music these days I guess). First off, this is not your run of the mill, “east meets west” ethnic stuff. Nor the banal 4/4 dance music spiced by exotic elements, which is the modern “orientalism” or in some cases even worse, a re-orientalism of eastern music for eastern audiences. In the words of the mighty 2/5bz, “NO GOETHE NO HAFEZ NO BRIDGE“, which is the cheapest excuse for some of the music created these days.

“Sakat” has elements of North Africa & Middle East folk and traditional instruments like the double reeded mismar & the oud, backed with spacy dub rhythms and rhythms from African roots. In that way “Sakat” sounds contemporary without losing its certain traditional desert vibes. Although we might have to thank the addition of oud player and singer Abdulatif Yagoub, and the mismar player Ahmed Taher here as their voice and mastery in traditional music lends this second album its defining quality over the previous one. Once again very hard to choose which songs to sample as all of the songs are top notch here. Hands down the best Eastern electronic fusion stuff I’ve listened in the last few years along with Thilges, and a must for listeners with a sincere interest in Eastern Music. Out on the prestigious Label Bleu.

Zanzibar

DuOud & Abdulatif Yagoub - Ya Janiat
DuOud & Abdulatif Yagoub - Wa Rariah