Anne Dudley & Jaz Coleman
Songs from the Victorious City

The next time I go to Cairo will be when I have made my fortune. I want to respond with a banknote to every Arab who approaches me, and Greater Cairo has a population of eight million Arabs, all beggars. According to the chronicles of explorers from past eras, the insistence for "backsheesh" (a tip, literally "a gift") remains unchanged through the centuries, but the allure that the pyramids exert on Westerners is also irresistible. And I'm not surprised, knowing the fascination that the occult exerts on Jaz, that parts of this work were recorded in the mummy room in one of the pyramids of Giza. For a Westerner, anything is possible in Arab territory - for a suitable backsheesh.

However, poverty infects happiness, because those who have nothing have nothing to lose: high-volume transistors amidst the chaos of traffic whistle-police and clouds of dust, spread through the streets of al-Qãhirah, "the Victorious City," colorful and festive music. Anne and Jaz have noticed it, and after studying Egyptian instruments and their scales, they send us a sunny and supersonic postcard: one of the best outcomes of the current taste for cross-fertilization. The rhythms jump like chips in boiling oil and the instant melodies entice with the shamelessness and irony that Anne hasn't forgotten to import from the unforgettable Art of Noise. The regional inflections of string and wind instruments heighten the allure: in particular, an oboe with articulate and gentle loquacity in the gracious "Habebe" and the strings, as melodramatic as ever, in the delightful "The Awakening" and in the nostalgic "In a timeless place." But melancholies are banished: "Ziggarats Of Cinnamon" can't stand still and "Minarets and Memories" is an unlikely cafettano-clad version of "Moliendo café."

If forty minutes seem too short for a CD, listen to it twice: you'll end up liking it twice as much. To go to Cairo, you don't need to be rich. There, happiness costs half as much: a small backsheesh and you make a friend for life. Arabs are people with a heart.