Bachar Mar-Khalifé
Ya Balad (InFine, 2015)
With a musical pedigree that includes a degree from the Conservatory of Paris, work with conductors Lorin Maazel and James Gaffigan, work with the Orchestre National de France and Ensemble Intercontemporain, collaborations with Bojan Z, Carl Craig and Murcof, the Lebanese composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist Bachar Mar-Khalife has been steeped in music from childhood being the son of eastern lute master Marcel Khalife and brother to composer, pianist and Aufgang band member Rami Khalife.
Spreading his own musical wings on the 2010 release of Oil Slick and the 2013 release of Who’s Gonna Get the Ball from Behind…, Mr. Khalife is now set to release his latest Ya Balad on October 16, 2015 on the InFine Music label. Listeners should be prepared for a captivating collection of tracks on Ya Balad or O Homeland where Mr. Khalife musically maps out his own memory and nostalgia for the complicated history of Lebanon.
Listeners are flung headlong into a vocally rich, percussively dense collection of songs crafted by Mr. Khalife and re-imaginings of traditional songs to create a masterful recording. From the vocal opening of “Kyrie Eleison” and its flowering into an elaborate dance of vocal and piano, Mr. Khalife provides plenty of rich drama and quiet contemplative spaces.
Building on the bones of piano, harpsichord, percussion, drums, synthesizers, melodica and nay, Ya Balad dazzles its way through subterranean goodness like the reggae beat backed “Balcoon” and the light of quirky dance track “Lemon,” where Mr. Khalife uses a harpsichord to punch up the electric feel of this track.
“Layla” proves equal measures of poignant and edgy, where the track “Wolf Pack” just comes across as incendiary with its stunning sharp piano and melodica edges in this Philip Glass/trance number. Mr. Khalife is joined by Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani for the delicately worked nursery tune “Yalla Tnam Nada.” Listeners also get the darkly worked “Laya Yabnaya,” the utterly lovely instrumental “Ell3” and the sweetly charming “Dors Mon Gas [E].”
Musically poetic and deftly wrought, Ya Balad is powerful and bold. Beyond the music itself, the recording of Ya Balad is superior. With so many recordings these days so digitally enhanced where nuance is simply lost, Ya Balad gives it all up, allowing the listener to pick up the raw edges of vocals and the meatiness of percussion and piano. Ya Balad is a savagely inventive earful.
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Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
