Various Artists
Tea in Marrakech
Stern's Africa,
Earthworks, 2001
For fans of roots music, this is easily the best of the recent spate of Arabic and North African music compilations that flooded onto the market this year, prior to September 11. The focus in this case is specifically North Africa, and much of the music is not Arabic per se, but some variant on Berber, Gnawa, or Nubian music. That may partly explain why a good number of the acts featured in these 15 tracks live and work not in their home countries--Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Sudan--but rather in France or Spain.
Youcef, who would go on to join Orchestre National de Barbès, kicks off with "Salem," a clubby track that fuses North African roots with a freewheeling world music aesthetic, including an ambient accordion and a ragamuffin Reggae vibe. Two Gnawa oriented tracks by Nass Marrakech and Gnawa Diffusion offer contrasting but equally appealing takes on updating the ancient healing music of the mystic Gnawa. The former melds it with Mediterranean sounds adding oud and mandolin; the latter goes with accordion and a bouncy downbeat that comes very close to Zydeco music.
The popular rai and shaabi genres are here of course, but mostly in their more folkloric and less electronic forms. Orchestra Faicel's "Ayit Nasbar" (Tired of Being Patient) is a beautifully loping, acoustic-tinged number with soulful vocals from Esseheri Azel Arab, a shaabi pioneer from the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Chaba Zahouania is a veteran rai and shaabi singer of mixed Algerian and Moroccan ancestry. Her "Ellila Matefrach" (Tonight there will be no sleep, love) transcends its cheesy keyboard part with lively percussion and Zahouania's husky vocal sound, but this is the in the vein of the knockoff keyboard rai recordings that have flooded the market in the past decade. Also in the more commercial vein, Amr Diab, the heart throb of Egyptian pop, comes through with a flamenco-flavored love song--not unlike The Gypsy Kings, but with Arabic lyrics and accordion. Diab's song, "Nour El Ain" (The Mind's Eye), is reportedly the biggest single the Arab world has yet produced, a hit on three continents.
There are two tracks by Sudanese divas, Rasha delivering tasteful pop in a soft, breathy voice, and Setona--"The Queen of Henna"--singing a playful wedding tune about a girl who leaves her husband in the village and goes to live in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. Sawt El Atlas, a powerful and progressive band of brothers from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, ends the collection on a celebratory note with "Zmane Y Dore" (Times Change). By any measure, this is a superior compilation, focused enough to make sense, and varied enough to stand up to a lot of listening.
Contributed by: Banning Eyre for www.afropop.org
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