When Houssaine Kili was a young man in Morocco, he had his own band. It played covers of Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix and James Brown. But as smitten as he was by those foreign sounds, he never lost sight of his roots, particularly the Berber music of the Atlas Mountains. Kili says it was not so much his choice as his destiny to leave Morocco and pursue a musical career abroad. Either way, he lives the North African expatriate reality in Kessel, Germany, dreaming of crossover success, and yet longing for the mountains of home.

The story may sound familiar, but the music is a revelation. Kili has managed such a natural and creative melding of genres on his second international release, Mountain to Mohamed (Tropical Music) that one really wonders how he could have been kept a secret all these years. Within Kili's tight, intricate pop arrangements, mystical gnawa music, lively shaabi and a little rai merge happily with funk, rock, and flamenco. Kili's robust, versatile voice tops things off. Kili's ability to write pop songs with catchy melodies and great grooves in no way compromises the authenticity of his roots feeling. For music to incorporate so many genres, and never sounds forced or awkward, is quite remarkable.

Apparently Kili follows music trends back in Morocco by buying imported cassettes. He particularly favors rhythms, sound textures, vocal qualities and instrumentation that evoke the music of the Atlas mountains. But there's no way to pigeon hole this guy. Definitely one to watch!

Banning Eyre

Here is Kili's record company biography, quite a remarkable story!

Kili grew up in a Berber family of 11 with Arab folk music, Berber songs and American Pop songs, which he became familiar with over the radio. As a bass guitarist Kili played with his first band "The Southern Band" a multitude of Pop-song cover-versions that found their way over from the USA. The American Pop scene of the late 60's and early 70's was for Kili something both exotic and strange, but based after all to a large extent on musical roots of African origin. Stevie Wonder and Jimi Hendrix were just as much his musical idols as the Gnawas were.

Touring through Morocco the "Southern Band" played their Pop cover-versions in Hotels and at festivals with a musical melange comprised chiefly of Moroccan musical ingredients. After he had tried out different trades such as welder, carpenter and footballer in the beginning just to make ends meet, Kili gradually managed to make a living as a musician. His parents were, however, of a different opinion. When he was 17 his mother smashed his Spanish guitar to pieces, as music in her eyes was no respectable trade: "Musicians, those are people who sit around the streets playing for money, that is no art, that is misery."

Besides playing for the "Southern Band" there was also "Tam Tam", another band with whom Kili played traditional Moroccan folk music and in particular the music of the Gnawas. Kili worked with both bands during the seventies and early eighties. The "Southern Band" had to be constantly supplied with new musical works and sometimes El Houssaine Kili only had one song-book containing notes that he could not read. It was for this reason then that Kili acquired for himself, at the Musical Conservatory in Agadir, the musical qualifications that was to support him in his later professional music career. There he also had the opportunity to play with American Jazz greats like Randy Winston. Morocco was in those days for many musicians, especially from North America, an important destination. Already in the late sixties people like Jimi Hendrix and James Brown came to the little hippie hang-out of Diabet on the Atlantic coast, near the city of Essaouira. Even artists like Pharoa Sanders, Peter Gabriel and Bill Laswell have played during the past years with musicians of the Gnawa-tradition.

Agadir - Kassel

In 1977 a very coincidental, but nevertheless momentous, encounter between two men took place in one of the streets of Agadir. A German Hippie and musician named Christian bumped into a Moroccan called Houssaine with a guitar case and asked him "Etes-vous musicien? - Are you a musician?" The Moroccan said "Oui! - Yes!", and then the two started talking. The German coaxed the Moroccan into coming with him to his hippie-bus and his friends. The bus was full of musical instruments. For two months the young Moroccan El Houssaine Kili and two of his friends travelled with the German freak Christian Burchard of the Jazz-Rock band Embryo throughout Morocco. That involved two months of endless jam- sessions, beach concerts and a sweet hippie life, of the sort that was only possible back in the seventies. On many occasions Kili ended up in police custody, as the bus that they travelled in generally aroused the suspicion of the authorities.

Three years later, 1980, Embryo, sponsored by the Goethe Institute, came back to Morocco. Kili's band "Tam Tam" and Embryo went together on tour throughout Morocco. The Embryo musicians learned a lot from the north Africans and Kili gained his first insight into the international music scene. Up to 1984 Kili worked on in Morocco as a musician until one day he received a letter from the "Dissidenten" (dissidents), Friedo Josch and Uwe Müllrich. Both of them had left Embryo and founded the band "Embryo Dissidenten", later to be called simply the "Dissidenten". They wanted to have him as a band member for live appearances, whereby they organised his trip to Germany and took care of the formalities involved in obtaining his residence permit.

He came to Germany, where the "Dissidenten" Josch, Müllrich and Klein gave him their recently released record "Sahara Elektrik", which they recorded during their travels in Morocco with the famous band Lem Chaheb. In the music of Lem Chaheb Arab, African and western influences intermingle with elements of Berber and Gnawa music. It is here that the Guimbri plays a central role. Kili, together with Hamid Baroudi from Algeria became a singer for the "Dissidenten". It was in this way that an exciting mixture of Jazz, Pop and ethnic elements from North Africa and Asia evolved, bringing to the "Dissidenten" group world wide acclaim in the year thereafter. Kili went with the band on tour, where they played in the USA and Europe. After having worked on the release of three "Dissidenten" LP's, as musician, composer, writer, singer and arranger (Life at the Pyramids, Out of this World, Dissidenten live in New York), Kili left the group in 1988 and started working on a solo project. In the following years Kili played with musicians like Don Cherry and again with Embryo, With them he worked on two more LP's, "Turn Peace" and "Jazz Bühne Berlin". Together with the Embryo member, Roland Schäfer, Kili still appeared in many concerts.

It could be said that Kili lives with one leg in Morocco and one in Germany. Morocco is for him his homeland and the place where he can find musical inspiration. Germany is the place where he can transpose his work, and it is here that Kili finds a cosmopolitan public that is fully enthused with his musical harmonisation of Orient and Occident. In Morocco too, there is a large public eager to hear his music, which needless to say, is not regarded as world music. There, it is simply called Pop music. The presently available first solo album of Kili's is the result of a long development that reaches back to his beginnings as a bass-guitarist in Morocco, over the formative and intensive experiences with Embryo and later with the Dissidenten, leading then up to the years as an independent musician in Germany. Old acquaintances like Roland Schaeffer from Embryo and Hamid Baroudi have also had a hand in the production work. For El Houssaine Kili this album represents a beginning, not a final conclusion. Rather, it can be seen as a matured, musical distillate of the 20 years of personal experience between Morocco and Germany.

Alexander Trofimow Alexander Trofimow
Tropical Music GmbH
POB 2230 D-35010 Marburg
Tel +49-6421-26312
www.tropical-music.com