This is the 8th post on My Top 100 Tracks
I had an Oud. It's a Middle-Eastern lute-like instrument. Roundabout 2000 or so I was given one as a gift. There are various types and mine was an Arabic oud from Egypt. I meant to learn how to play it. I can play the guitar at a very basic level, so thought that would help me get started. But I had enough on my plate as a head of department at my university and after that involved in the trade union, community education, and other things. I really didn't then feel up to what I felt I would have to do properly, and would have been a really challenging project if done as such. But the oud was beautiful. So, it sat on display in my house and was lovely to look at, and to be honest I suspect it was as a decorative thing that it was given to me.
In a decluttering exercise about 20 years later, I decided the oud would be better used by someone who would actually play it. I had a buyer for it but just before collection one of my cats knocked the oud over and it got damaged. In the end, I gave it away to a local guy, an oud player, who turned up one day on his motorbike, with an oud bag, some wood glue to fix it with, and a very happy smile on his face. I felt better just giving it away to an oud enthusiast. I didn't like making money out of something I had got for free. And I felt like it was going to a good home.
The oud makes a beautiful sound, quite deep and resonant. Of course, I wonder now if I should have kept mine and learned to play it in a later period when I had more time. It's not the first occasion I've had regrets about getting rid of something. Anouar Brahem is an oud player and his music is often categorised as jazz. But that makes no sense to me. Using the categories I'm familiar with, it is a mix of classical, folk sounds, and yes a bit of jazz. But it is really uncategorisable and includes Arabic and Middle-Eastern sounds. Brahem's music brings to mind words like spellbinding and mesmerising, and the music is haunting, hypnotic, and magical, sometimes mournful and evocative of resilience, in others exalting and vibrant, sometimes striving, others melancholy. At least, this is how it is for me. When I listen to it I can get a feeling of peace and serenity, but not in an ambient music way, much more enriching and fulfilling than that.
Brahem is Tunisian, born in 1957 in Tunis. I went there with my parents as a child. I think I first came across him about 2002 or so when he released the album La Pas du Chat Noir, or at least that's the first album of his I bought. I got it on a CD with a simple stylish cover including a photo by André Kertész. It was beautiful and I listened to it over and over. I think I came across Brahem through Jan Garbarek, a saxophonist who played with Anouar. At least, I recall that this is what led me to Brahem, probably enhanced by the fact that I had my oud so was alert to any artists who played one. There were no music streaming services then as there are now, and no personal algorithms. So you just found out about new music through more accidental links or hard research and I think it was a bit of both of these that led me to Brahem.
I like the small groups Brahem plays with, sometimes with a piano, recently with a Cellist, sometimes a clarinet, violin or accordion, or a ney which is kind of flute, and with Garbarek and other saxophonists. There's often but not always a bass and percussion such as what I learned to be a darbouka. I've always preferred small trios, quartets, or quintets to big orchestras and I like the set-ups that Brahem has on his albums. And his music is quite subtle and spare.
Le Pas du Chat Noir has a special place in my heart. It's the first album and track where I really began to find Anouar Brahem. But another favourite is The Astounding Eyes of Rita, released in 2009. In this piece, the group starts with the oud, then Brahem humming lightly, then the bass comes in and the darbouka, then the sax. In this performance the bassist then darbouka player start smiling very early on, getting great pleasure from the little masterpiece they are performing. I must admit it's also partly the title of the track that gets me. It refers to the poem Rita and the Rifle by Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet and activist. The poem is in the liner notes and the album is dedicated to Darwish who died shortly before it was released.
Brahem's most recent album After the Sky was composed just before the Hamas attack of October 2023 and the ensuing genocide in Gaza. The album was then recorded in May 2024 during the genocide. The tracks are given titles that link to the experience of Palestinians and Gaza. 'After the Last Sky' refers to Darwish's poem that includes the line (and title) 'Where should the birds fly after the last sky'. After the Last Sky was also the title of a book on Palestinian lives by Edward Said. The liner notes written by Adam Shatz focus very fully on Palestine and the genocide in Gaza.
And, of course, as a Tunisian, Brahem has lived in a country with a history of colonialism and occupation, independence in 1956 shortly before Brahem's birth, and the Jasmin Revolution in 2011 at the start of the Arab Spring. Although his music is instrumental and can be read any way by the listener and Brahem himself is not shoutily political, in fact he stands back and encourages people to make of it what they will, these contexts for Brahem's music are there, get mentioned by him, and if you know they're there you can't help but feel them.
It's a rich treasure. If you don't know Brahem try his music, the latest album After the Sky isn't a bad place to start. But don't put it on in the background. Sit down and just listen to it and only that.
Rita and the Rifle, by Mahmoud Darwish
Between Rita and my eyes
There is a rifle
And whoever knows Rita
Kneels and plays
To the divinity in those honey-colored eyes
And I kissed Rita
When she was young
And I remember how she approached
And how my arm covered the loveliest of braids
And I remember Rita
The way a sparrow remembers its stream
Ah, Rita
Between us there are a million sparrows and images
And many a rendezvous
Fired at by a rifle
Rita's name was a feast in my mouth
Rita's body was a wedding in my blood
And I was lost in Rita for two years
And for two years she slept on my arm
And we made promises
Over the most beautiful of cups
And we burned in the wine of our lips
And we were born again
Ah, Rita!
What before this rifle could have turned my eyes from yours
Except a nap or two or honey-colored clouds?
Once upon a time
Oh, the silence of dusk
In the morning my moon migrated to a far place
Towards those honey-colored eyes
And the city swept away all the singers
And Rita
Between Rita and my eyes—
A rifle