Dhafer Youssef
Abu Nawas Rhapsody

So red is the rose that shines on the cheek

that it deceives the heart.

It imprints itself on the gaze and captivates it,

beauty that distorts deceives those who look at you

and to your hand delivers its heart in servitude.

Beauty that teasingly offends: what does it matter

if the fist to which I entrust a lovestruck heart

has fingers like thorns? What does it matter if then the heart becomes a lute

and the fingers turn its lament into music?

And finally my heart becomes an arrow

shot by the hand of an archer who gripped it to death:

of the blood of my pierced heart

I boast of it, and laugh

Abū Nuwās

On December 22, 609, the message of the Quran was communicated to Muhammad, which would be published for the first time in 650, but between the late 700s and early 800s, an Iranian poet, Abū Nuwās (or Abu Nawas), spoke of betrayal, ephebic loves, and how wine and game meat were better than water and white meat. He would obviously be killed, probably for the "sin" of homosexuality…

On March 1, 2010, Jazzland Recordings released the album “Abu Nawas Rhapsody” by Dhafer Youssef (quartet), a Tunisian who emigrated first to Norway, then to Austria, and finally to France. The album aims to be a sort of elegy to one of the most influential poets of all time in the Arab world.

This work, which lasts about an hour, is literally a marvel. It is an album that emerges from the multiple facets of jazz, from the simplicity with which one might use the term fusion, from the banal identification with Middle-Eastern singing.

One of the main reasons why “Abu Nawas Rhapsody” rises to the highest levels is the quality of its performers. “The heart” that “becomes a lute” is obviously that of Dhafer Youssef (oud, voice), alongside Tigran Hamasyan (piano, beatbox), Mark Guiliana (drums) and Chris Jennings (double bass).

It is the sensation of awakening post-alcohol night, that of the piece that opens the ode to wine (“Sacré – The Wine Ode Suite”), with Youssef's harmonic singing accompanied by the lyricism of the Armenian pianist, because in the end, I imagine this Abū Nuwās a bit like a Baudelaire born a millennium earlier, in the most spectacularly wrong place.

“Les Ondes Orientales” and “Odd Elegy”, in my opinion, are two monumental manifestos of Youssef's music.

In the first piece, the oud sonorously dialogues with the piano until, affirming it together, the two instruments agree on the theme to share. Guiliana takes the two soloists by the hand with an ostinato reciprocated by Jennings' double bass, but the motion is not constant, it is almost an invitation to sin, but it is stopped by the spirituality of the Tunisian's singing, almost chanted. The demonized Mark Guiliana (multi-awarded at the recent Drummer Awards) leads Hamasyan towards transgression in a powerful, determined, exhausting solo that alternates purely jazz phrases, with the modal music loved by Youssef, reminding him of the previous “dialogues” they had, until bringing him back to the “reason” of the theme, even accepted by both double bass and drums. A story in a nine-minute piece.

“Interl’oud”, wordplay aside, is a short solo by the Arabic lute that precedes “Odd Elegy”. "The elegy of the odd" from the poet of “The Thousand and One Nights”, is the second piece I will dwell on, literally devastating, for its construction and musical rendition. The groove provided by Mark Guiliana, on which the other three musicians rely, is incredible: a timing, although I'm not absolutely certain, managed in three 7/16 movements and two 9/16 ones, stuff for heavy analgesics. The New Jersey drummer completes his capital performance with a final solo that would break the sticks of many novices, for taste and execution technique (I invite you to listen to the live version that I will attach to the review).

It is worth spending a few words for “Hayastan Dance” (the Armenian dance) mastered by Tigran Hamasyan from the first to the last hammered string and for “Khamsa – The Khamriyyat of Abu Nawas”. It is a piece that reveals itself as modern in the finale, almost funky after a decidedly introspective, intimate beginning, that develops mainly on Phrygian scales and harmonic minors. The Khamsa (or Hand of Alo or Hand of Fatima) is an “infallible” amulet against the evil eye and is associated with the beliefs of Nawas who spoke of it in his Kamhriyyat, or his bacchic poetry, to defeat post-drunkenness pains.

“Shaouk”, “Sura” and “Shata” keep us within the Mediterranean context with pleasant musical exchanges, where piano and oud always play a Virgilian role, even more so than the singing.

The Middle East is perceived in its traditional musical form, but with an uncomfortable theme like libertine love “Ya Hobb – In the Name of Love” and in its form closer to mystical music “Mudataman – The Wine Ode Suite”.

The recited part of “Profane – The Wine Ode Suite” closes the work that, more than any other, has created empathy in me with the master of the oud.

To a good listener, few (precious) words.