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All Reviews >>

Marcel Khalife Taqasim (Marcel Khalife) Nagam Records, Inc., 2007
Connecting Cultures Records, 2007

Lebanese composer and oud master Marcel Khalife has always finessed a fine balance between honoring Arabic music traditions and playing by his own rules. The concerts he gave amid bomb wreckage during Lebanon’s 1970s civil war signaled a refusal to separate art from history and politics. His debut release, Promises of the Storm, signaled a long and fruitful collaboration with Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Khalife’s uncompromising fidelity to the idea of peace, and efforts to harmonize religious differences have proven controversial in the Middle East, and he’s certainly earned his share of political and religious critics. He has also earned a reputation as one of the boldest and most consequential figures in today’s Arabic music. On his latest release, Khalife continues his maverick ways with a focus on his principle instrument, the oud.

Khalife has in the past composed for an oud duo (Jadal), as well as for oud in context of something like a jazz ensemble (Caress). Here he strips the sound down to just his oud, an upright bass (Peter Herbert) and percussion (Bachar Khalife). Furthermore, Khalife limits himself to only his instrument’s low register, as he says, “where the devilish subtleties lie, and where speech is limited. There, often lies the truth.” This might seem an arbitrary limitation, but it certainly leaves Khalife plenty of creative possibilities.

This hour-long work is divided into three roughly equal parts. The first features playful interaction between oud, percussion, and bass, at times bowed. The unity between the bass and oud is particularly striking. Part two begins with solo oud, playing in the manner of a traditional taqasim, the instrumental improvisation that often begins an Arabic classical piece. The section then settles into a unified ensemble mode, with exposition of themes. Khalife occasionally slips into a harmony, a subtle divergence from the closeness of the bass and oud. After some interplay, the percussion drops out, leading to a more ritual or ceremonial mood, somber but not overly dark. Throughout the segment, contrasting moods are strung together artfully, culminating in a fairly driving ensemble passage. In part three, these moods and colors recur like intertwined story lines that leave off and resume. In the end, the work feels satisfying and complete, in no way restrained by the artist’s strict choices. Taqasim is undeniably the work of great master who, in the fourth decade of his career, is not running out of new ideas, and still has the freshness and ingenuity to make them work.