DJ Cheb I Sabbah - La Kahena
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CD Details
Artist: DJ Cheb I SabbahBrand: Ma's India
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2005-05-10
Music Label: Six Degrees
Soundtracks:
- Esh Â?Dani, Alash Mshit: Why Did I Follow Him?
- Sadats: Saints Of Marrakesh
- Toura Toura
- i - Alla Al Â?Hbab: Blessed Be My Friends ii - Hajti Fi Gurini: Longing For My Lover
- Madh Assalhin: Praising Of the Saints
- i - Alkher Illa Doffor: Peace Is Found Behind Woundsii - Ad Izayanugass: What Will Happen Will Happen
- Im Ninalou: If The Doors Are Locked
- Jarat Fil Hub: Love's Chalice
Music reviews of La Kahena
Music Review: OK at the ends, fantastic in the center.
Rating: 4 Stars
The middle tracks of this CD, particularly numbers five and six, leave little to nothing to be desired. They're an exceptional marriage of musical insistence and serenity; the motif of a single, seemingly much older woman leading a strictly responsive chorus of more youthful women, in what is very much a question-and-answer/declare-and-affirm musical manner, is nothing short of brilliant.
With perhaps one or two exceptions, the beats on all the tracks sound very true to the Middle Eastern and African roots behind much of today's modern rock. "Sadats" features a much more contemporary approach to percussive rhythm, but it works very well given the more festive and even somewhat raucous charatcer of the track. Cheb i Sabbah clearly has a penchant for additive musical build-up, and "Sadats" showcases this better than perhaps any other song on the disc.
Speaking of which, my favorite song of _La Kahena_, "Ad Izayanugass," features a very subtle but alarmingly effective increase in the volume of its choral response section. After being kicked off by a great laugh track at 05:45 (a very suitable noise that sounds like a small girl being tickled, or perhaps more appropriately, facing the threat of being tickled), the song segues into a processed mix of calm and distant female singers, vocalizing what sounds like a chant. Soon, at the cue of a stop-beat, they are abruptly headed up by the almost intrusive voice of an old woman, a sound rife with wisdom and wear, spatially much closer to the listener than the far-off chorus, who spend the rest of the song trying to catch up and overtake the older woman in sheer sound volume and amplitude. It is a wonderful, wonderful motif that works better for this type of music than anything that I've heard in a long time, precisely because the method is so well representative of assorted situations involving youth vs. old age. The best music sounds like truth, and much of this CD does.
"Alla Al'Hbab" is another superb track. The sound quality and technical skills of the musicians are enough to captivate, but the song is catchy to boot, and is quite simply full of a kind of brotherly/familial love. It's celebratory in the manner of "Sadats," but more intimately so -- like the difference between a parade and a wedding. The two prominent vocalists are exceptional; their voices are very unique and warmly incisive, and frankly very well recorded. I can understand every word of what's sung without any idea at all about the literal meaning behind the lyrics.
I'd heard some very small amount of Cheb i Sabbah's work before listening to this release. None of what I'd heard impressed me nearly as much as the music of _La Kahena_, which really isn't of the ambient variety of Cheb i Sabbah music that I'd heard previously. I want to hear more of him (and his musical companions) in this vein; as a big fan of Dead Can Dance, who ventured into this type of music later in their career, I hear too much "world" music of this flavor that's much too processed and overly-infused with contemporary aesthetics, music that eschews the respect for origins conveyed by DCD's magnificent compositions. Here's hoping that more musicians like DCD and Cheb i Sabbah crop up, artists who know the difference between blurring a line and crossing way past it!
-- Milo
Description of La Kahena
Cheb i Sabbah, one of Six Degrees? best selling artists, is known around the world for his ground-breaking South Asian trilogy, Shri Durga, Mahamaya: Shri Durga Remixed and Krishna Lila. Sabbah's heartfelt, spiritual approach to bringing music to the dance floor has established him as a highly respected international music producer, DJ and an influential pioneer of the underground.On his long awaited new studio CD, La Kahena, the Algerian born Sabbah returns to the roots of his native North Africa gathering some of the most distinctive female singers from the Maghreb in a studio in Morocco. With tracks by vocalists from many different traditions of North Africa, La Kahena compellingly illustrates the diversity of this region. Tracks by traditional ensembles B?net Marrakech and Ouled Ben Aguida reflect Berber traditions. Khadija Othmani conveys the matrilineal noble culture of Algerian Tuaregs. The Gnawa master Brahim Elbelkani brings the spirit of sub-Saharan African mystic healers, originally brought to Morocco as slaves. Nadia introduces the first music Sabbah remembers hearing in his life, elegant, Andalusian songs performed at weddings and celebrations in Constantine, Algeria. And Cheba Zahouania delivers the freewheeling spirit of rai, a music born in the pleasure-loving port city of Oran, Algeria, where many Andalusians fled after their expulsion from Spain. To complete the collection, Michal Cohen, a Jewish singer of Yemenite descent, shares a song based on a poem by Shalom Shabazi, the 16th century Yemenite Jewish mystic.
Recorded in studios in Marrakech, San Francisco, New York and New Delhi, Sabbah finished the sessions by adding his own "dj Science" or modern aural magic to these performances, making La Kahena a truly original and ground-breaking project the likes of which only the artistic vision of Cheb i Sabbah could have created.
On his new CD, named for a 7th-century freedom fighter, the Algerian mixmaster DJ Chebi i Sabbah takes the music of the North Africa and Moorish Spain on a magic carpet ride that floats electronica/techno effects over Berber, Jewish, Black African, and Arab instruments and genres, with vocals by some of world music's most evocative female singers. The enchanting rai vocalist Cheba Zahouania is heard on the reggae influenced number, "Esh 'Dani, Alash Mshit." The Yemenite singer Michal Cohen adds her Semitic swing to the intoxicating "Im Ninalou," while the Moroccan group Haddarates sing in their mystical, Sufi-style on "Madh Assalhin." "Toura Toura," is motored by Brahim Elbelkani's Afrocentric, Gnawna tantric tempos and tones, and "Jarat Fil Hub" transports the listener back to the splendors of Andalusia via Cheb i Sabbah's wheels-of-steel alchemy, which easily moves Afro-Arab music across the sonic sands of time. --Eugene Holley, Jr.
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