World Music Matters

Senegalese-born singer Julia Sarr has become one of the most sought after backing vocalists in France. Salif Keita, Youssou N’Dour, Lokua Kanza and Francis Cabrel figure among the big names who’ve called on her powerful yet delicate mezzo soprano voice. With two solo albums and a third in the making, she’s building a successful solo career too, blending jazz and traditional percussion with her native Wolof. She talks to RFI about breaking the codes, working with her icon Miriam Makeba and the big break she got playing at Carnegie Hall in 2005.

Altan are without question one of Ireland's great traditional music groups. They talk to RFI about The Gap of Dreams, their 13th studio album, why no two reels are the same, and giving their all whether playing to huge crowds or just one man. "Music is like eating and drinking," says Ni Mhaonaigh, "it’s part of what we are".

When you're passionate about music and art, but your big brother M is a star in France, your dad Louis is a successful musician and your grandmother was a much respected poet and thinker, what do you do? French singer-songwriter Joseph Chedid talks to RFI about finding his own voice within the famed Chedid family as he releases the second part of his album Source.

20 years ago, with drum and bass and techno at its height in France, classically-trained cellist Vincent Segal and Cyril Atef, drummer and singer with a punk attitude, decided to make 100% improvised music, playing in bars "like a giant DJ". A mad idea, but it worked. They formed Bumcello: "I'm the bum, he's the cello", says Atef. The odd couple talk to RFI about their 8th album Monster Talk and how this improbable partnership has stood the test of time.

Franco-Syrian flute and ney player Naïssam Jalal is as eclectic as she is talented. Equally at ease flowing with Palestinian rapper Osloob as part of sextet Al Akhareen as surrounding her music with silence on her new album Quest of the Invisible. She talks to RFI about “spoken notes” and the challenges of getting musicians to “play” silence rather than just feel it.

“I really wanted to try to compose a music project which is really about silence, trance, mysticism and spirituality in music,” says Jalal.

Quest of the Invisible is the fruit of that quest, and sweet to the ear it is.

“The whole album is a kind of very long silence. Even if you listen to the music you can hear the space around the music, the silence around the music, and that’s actually very hard to do."

She managed to get Leonardo Montana (piano), Claude Tchamitchian (double bass) and Hamid Drake (daf) on board.

And while the trance bit wasn't a big deal, “everybody does something about trance", Drake was initially skeptical about the sound of silence.

“It could be very frightening,” Jalal says, “people say 'OK I’m a musician I’m supposed to feel the silence, not play silence'. So it was very hard.

“Every time we play this music it’s a big issue, we really don’t know if we can do it.”

And yet the audience, men and women, are often moved to tears.

Al Akhareen "the others"

Jalal takes fewer risks playing alongside Osloob as part of Al Akhareen, but it’s still an original mix.

She got to know the Palestinian rapper in Beirut in 2008 when she was studying classical Arabic music in Cairo.

When he got refugee status in Paris in 2014 they decided to build a project as a duo, though on stage they’re a sextet with DJ, bass player, drummer and saxophonist.

Al Akhareen means “the others” in Arabic.

“We were looking for a word for the band and we were like searching for what’s the common point we have together.

Despite their roots in the Middle East, Jalal says they’re not exploring Arabic identity.

“It’s about being the other in the society where we were born: him as a refugee in Lebanon and me as an immigrant in France.”

The flow of the flute

Osloob takes care of the lyrics, telling stories based on his own experience but which are also the stories of others.

For the melodies it’s often a collaborative process. But Jalal flows too.

“I use my flute as a mouth, I’m talking with my flute so it’s spoken notes, not spoken words,” she says.

And while classical flute is a rare instrument in any rap formation, Jalal couldn’t care less about musical codes.

“There is no frontier, no borders between rap and jazz and that’s what I really like when we play together. I can see young and very old people too. People are coming because they are open to different things, they don’t care about the borders. If you talk to them they feel it.”

“When you try to be really sincere with what you are feeling, the message can be received,” she says. “I think people can feel it so deeply because I’m trying to get it from very deep in myself.”

Al Akhareen play Arabofolies festival on 2 March at Paris’s Institut du Monde Arabe.

Quest of the Invisible is released 1 March 2019 on Les Couleurs du Son

Check out concert dates on Jalal’s facebook page

Osloob on facebook

Franco-Syrian flute and ney player Naïssam Jalal is as eclectic as she is talented. Equally at ease flowing with Palestinian rapper Osloob as part of sextet Al Akhareen as surrounding her music with silence on her new album Quest of the Invisible. She talks to RFI about “spoken notes” and the challenges of getting musicians to “play” silence rather than just feel it.

Palestinian pianist and composer Faraj Suleiman was just three when he showed a love of piano, growing up in the village of Ramy, Upper Galilee. Despite a shortage of role models, he has gone on to become one of the Arab world's leading composers. And is now developing his "Eastern" sound here in France.

French flute player and composer Jean-Luc Thomas travels the world performing with, and learning from, musicians from countries as diverse as Brazil, Niger, India and Ireland. "Everybody was my teacher," he says. Most recently, as co-composer of the score for Ex Anima by avant-garde circus and equestrian artist Bartabas, he's been learning from horses.

When Israeli rock musician and singer Dudu Tassa said he wanted to rework and re-popularise his grandfather's repertoire of Iraqi Arabic songs from the 1930s, everyone thought he was crazy. But with the release of El Hajar - the third album in the Dudu Tassa & The Kuwaitis series - he's shown there's real interest in the region for a contemporary take on the music so adored by King Faisal II.

For her third album The Capitalist Blues, Haitian American singer and multi-instrumentalist Leyla McCalla questions the race to get ahead, and sings for the people left behind. "It’s hard to call a revolution when you’ve got the blues," she says, "but change is needed".