Dhafer Youssef
Malak

It is not a compilation album, it is a story to experience on the couch on a cold evening, an escape from the incipient winter to immerse oneself in a desert atmosphere, where there is nothing around.

It's precisely this sensation of nothingness surrounding the entire production, the instruments play without obstacles and you can breathe it, Markus Stockhausen's trumpet cannot have an echo, it flies far away without any rebound, like the strings of Dhafer Youssef's oud.

The oud, the sultan of instruments according to the Arabs, literally "wood," sounds of sand and sweat and lament, lament of solitude, lament simply of the fact of being human in such a vast space as a desert expanse can be. And Dhafer Youssef's singing seems to want to say I am here, does anyone hear me? It's not a lament of love for a woman because the problem hasn't reached that far yet, it's a lament of strong wind, of unbearable heat, of an animal seeking its kind. Although Tunisian, Youssef becomes a bearer of a deeper, more remote Africa, far from Islamic issues but closer to the roots of humanity as such, in the constant search for balance between solitude and the desire for communion. All the musicians integrate perfectly, besides the already mentioned and excellent Markus Stockhausen, also Nguyên Lê's guitar and Renaud Garcia-Fons' oriental bass actively participate in the immersion in this rarefied atmosphere. Jatinder Thakur's percussion becomes an instrument and does not accompany but dialogues.

The CD opens with "Tarannoum," a song of despair with only Oud and voice, in which Dhafer Youssef's beautiful timbre has the chance to reveal itself to the listener and transport them across the Mediterranean. In "Iman" the album manifests itself in its entirety, and Stockhausen's trumpet mimics the Oud and the guitar, three instruments playing the same notes and interrupted by the bass and the voice that disperses high and far away. "Ekill" reminded me of certain sensations already felt in some pieces by King Sunny Ade, with the talking drum always in evidence. Then increasingly desert-like until the melancholic "L'Ange Aveugle", which closes the work with the very deep trumpet slowly fading away.

Strongly recommended are the other albums by both Dhafer Youssef and Renaud Garcia-Fons.