SUFI SOUL: THE MYSTIC MUSIC OF ISLAM (Directed by Simon Broughton; TUGDVD001)

This is an exemplary documentary that tells the story of Sufi music, the mystical outsider of Islam. The hardline mullahs, the ones we all know and hate, want to banish music. I think they would ban women too if they didn't need to procreate. They are clearly the most miserable bastards on the planet. (Because of the natural laws of balance they must exist as long as we have our own fundamentalist Nazis like BushCo throwing their weight about.) However from adversity comes strength and beauty. You know that Robert Burns was the best-selling poet in nineteenth-century Britain? Well, in 1990 the best-selling poet in the USA was Rumi, the 13th-century Afghani mystic, with his message that love is the surest path to the Divine. Sufi singers generally take a well-known verse from one of their famous poets and then improvise. Nusrat who appears fleetingly here, did this like no one on earth. We also see and hear Youssou Ndour at the Festival of Sacred Music in Fez, Nusrat's nephew Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, and Abeeda Parveen as the camera follows William Dalrymple, who has lived in south Asia for two decades, from Pakistan to Turkey, Syria, & Morocco. Dalrymple is a scholar who sees Sufism as a peaceful bastion against fundamentalism. The film opens with a stunning performance by Sain Zaheer and his bluesy banjo-like dirge, his bare feet stamping to jingle his ankle bells outside a Pakistani saint's tomb. The camerawork is exceptional and so is the editing. It is a treat to see such a well-made film about something so precious and evanescent.

I had a little religious epiphany recently. My satellite dish unlocks random world TV channels so for a fortnight I had the Sikh channel and they have a live show called "Gurbani from the Golden Temple." As it was on endlessly I would often tune in when I woke up or was falling asleep and soon found myself checking into it regularly. There were three fixed camera shots: Outside the surprisingly tiny Golden Temple in Amritsar, a large manmade lake or cooling pond, and birds flying over. You could see what time of day or night it was and occasionally pilgrims cooling their toes or queuing to get into the temple. Inside the temple there was a shot of the priest who sat before a silk-draped altar adding or removing layers of fabric, occasionally waving a large white fly whisk slowly over it. And the third shot was the band, two harmoniums, tablas and singers crammed in a corner. Behind them was the door so you saw pilgrims entering and leaving & making obeisance to something off-camera. It was fascinating. While the music was a constant and some singers were better than others it was the slow, almost static quality of the events that kept me rapt. It was so immediate in a funny way, despite being halfway around the world, it was the here-and-now. I watched a nasty rich housewife elbow a big praying man so he moved out of the spot she wanted. The priest finally got to the bottom of the pile of silk and there was a giant book! That was a great moment, but he quickly started covering it again. Though I am deeply irreligious I see its uses. Sufism has a palpable effect in the whirling dervishes, who whirl so slowly they should be called perhaps the revolving dervishes. In Lahore the devotees whirl a bit more vigorously to attain waj, or ecstacy. This is probably more what it was like in the 13th century, Dalrymple tells us, easing from the wild bhangra dhol drum to qawwali and a sample of Nusrat doing "Allah hoo." DVD extras include full performances by Turkish ney player Kudsi Erguner, Sain Zahoor, Nusrat's nephew Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, the Bhitshah Fakirs who play six identical stringed instruments, and Morroco's Rokia Riman Jilala Band.

PUTUMAYO PRESENTS ACOUSTIC ARABIA

The popular compilations that Putumayo, Rough Guide, Nascente, Union Square, and other labels put out are an interesting sub-genre of music. Usually, if I know the field, I am critical of their choices. The selectors are limited by what's available for licensing and also the need to have a few name acts or popular hits to entice the buyer. The less-well-known areas tend to be more interesting to me because Jacob Edgar at Putumayo or Dan Rosenberg at Rough Guide have waded through the chaff for me. When I saw Jacob's music room in San Francisco lined with promo CDs many years ago I wasn't jealous, I pitied him having to spend real time listening to marginal music to see if it makes the cut. Putumayo has put together many intriguing slices of the musical continuum from across the globe. Their North African Groove, Turkish Groove, and Arabic Groove are superb sets. Their takes on Brasil and Puerto Rico, Colombia and the Dominican Republic deserve to be taken seriously, even if the pathetic covers, featuring vapid we-are-the-world art, suggest otherwise. IJ is always urging me to give more than a cursory listen to new product, but if a friend sends me an old Star Band de Dakar album or I decide to listen to ALL my Derrick Harriott with a view to making a Crystalites compilation, then I get sidetracked for days and the Putumayo promos edge closer to the free box. Which is a roundabout way of saying I finally gave the ACOUSTIC ARABIA CD another listen and decided it's okay. It starts strong with "Gamar Badawi" by RAS, but goes off into French cafe music which is why I got impatient, and there are a lot of artists on here I have listened to and given up on who are good for a song or two 'til I get restless and change the music. "Azara Alhai" by Rasha is the next good entry then we hear bits of Flamenco, pop/rock, and who-knows-what-all till we get to Souad Massi. The Souad Massi song "Ghir Enta" is a bona fide hit, so it's good to have it collected here. Also the album gets stronger as it goes on and the big guns, like Massi and Maurice el Medioni are saved for the end. El Medioni is a Jewish piano player from Oran who has Boogie Woogie and Cuban jazz under his belt and is pound-for-pound the most accomplished musician on here. But then we are derailed again by the last cut. A friend who lived in North Africa for years said it's the kind of music played in fancy bars where rich Arabs take their mistresses. It may be that the future of these compilations is circumscribed because now you can sample the tunes on Amazon or iTunes and just buy the ones you want. But do check out El Medioni.

GNAWA HOME SONGS (Accords Croisées AC117)

More North African music, in a package you will want because of the detailed liner notes and photos that will enhance your listening experience. There are four main artists on here. I had not heard of any of them, but the sound is familiar and I love this late-night trance music. The Gnawa were black slaves brought from Mali and still sing their songs in Bambara, though it is not their everyday tongue. They play and sing all night and the kif-toasted members of the audience go off into trances. They praise Allah but retain the right to speak to the djinns or genies that are part of their traditions for three centuries since they were transported to the Maghreb. Every year the greatest musicians in Morocco gather for a festival of sacred music in Tamesloht and on this occasion four of them sat around one night trading songs. The cyclical bluesy 3-stringed guembri seems barely awake on some numbers and even the metal castanets (qraqebs) are muted. This is a beautifully recorded, perfectly sequenced, and handsomely packaged set.

NIYAZ
NINE HEAVENS (Six Degrees 657036 1150-2MJ)

This is a grandiose richly textured set. The music comes from Iranian, Indian and Turkish traditional repertoires and has been given a modern treatment with loads of studio effects, synth washes and so on, but this does not detract from the effect. In fact the propulsive beat is occasionally helped along by the technology. Azam Ali, the singer, calls it modern Sufi music. It's more of a soundtrack than a dance album with dreamy vocals that, however, start sounding very samey to those of us who don't understand the words. The vocals, in fact, could have been left off and an instrumental disc would be as welcome as the "unplugged" second disc, which doesn't sound that different from the first. (It's the "raw" versions of the same songs, the unaugmented studio tracks, as if they couldn't decide whether to do a straight album or one with layers of effects.) There are drones on the unplugged side which I guess are not from synths, but it's hard to tell what's making the sounds, maybe a bowed oud? The acoustic set sounds more medieval, if anything, though a lot of European folk music also sounds medieval to my untutored ears. The overall mood of the treated set reminds me occasionally of Brian Eno's 1978 Music for Films or Peter Gabriel's 1989 Passion album (the soundtrack to the film). Both of those albums were groundbreaking in their own way so today it's almost a cipher when you have a synth wash and some traditional tunes. "Niyaz" means yearning in both Farsi and Urdu, and they are yearning for a global trance-dance hit with this album. It's a pleasant if low-key effort, well recorded, just needing an extra twist of something brilliant.

LE TRIO JOUBRAN
MAJAZ (Randana RAND002)

The Palestinian oud Trio Joubran returns with another set of dreamy improvisation on the maqãms written for the ancient strings. It's classical though only one track is drawn from the traditional repertoire; the others are all originals. The title means "metaphor," which they define as "the meaning of meaning," and they are inspired by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. There is gentle percussion accompaniment but otherwise the clean mellow sound of the ouds. Each of the brothers gets to do a version of "Tanasim" as a solo: Adnan is dramatic; Samir is talkative; Wissam, the lutier of the family, is poetic. The tracks are short and sweet. When they jam together, as on "Sama-sounounou," the results are incendiary. This is another wonderful album from these lads, and the beauty is they are touring to support it, so check their website for venues. (Doesn't the cover remind you of ABBEY ROAD?) While they were on tour behind their first album, "Randana," the bloody Israeli army bombed their home, so they must be happy to have a life on the road.

ETHIOPIQUES 8
SWINGING ADDIS (CRC 829282-2)

Some people can't get too much of a good thing, which is why the Ethiopiques series has now reached close to a thousand volumes. People who think they know better often tell me I should have an Ethiopian page. For me a little goes a long way. I have one album, Ahmed Mahmoud's ERE MELE MELA, that I like, on vinyl. I had it before the Ethiopiques series came along. It too has been reissued as part of the series, number 7, with extra tracks which don't improve it: in fact I prefer the LP, without the alternate takes. This is strange music, R&B backed, sometimes Bollywood-flavoured, strangely familiar but certainly strange. To me it's a music of extremes: either there's soporific sax or stressful singing. I am not comfortable with the Ethiopian vocal style and whenever there's a familiar sound, like a guitar solo, it seems highly derivative. When people would bug Cheb i Sabbah to play a certain tune he would ask them if they had the album, when they said yes, he would tell them to rush home and listen to it! When pseudo-hipsters would call during my radio show to ask for Ethiopian music I would put on Jabba the Hutt's palace band from the Star Wars soundtrack. Check it out, a pure Ethiopique groove! (It was one of the few things in the station library I could play, everything else was planned and brought from home in a large post office mail tub.) But just to make you ETHIOPIQUES devotees happy I present one outstanding album from the series. Alèmayèhu Eshèté (included here with 6 selections) is one of the best exponents of this music. His largest debt is to soul Brother Number One James Brown. But it's not your average afro-funk groove. There's army fanfare guys playing the big horn choruses, cheesy wheezy Farfisa organ, and above all that Amharic plaint. This album is a bunch of hits (we must presume) from 1969 to 1975, put out by AMHA Records, a small local label during the final days of Haile Selassie. Influences from Archie Dell and the Drells to Wilson Pickett are apparent in every song. During the rule of the tinpot demi-urge most music was restricted to the Army Band, the Police Band, or the band of the Imperial Body Guard. AMHA was able to record and issue music without going to the censorship committee because things were in such turmoil. But things got worse after Selassie was deposed and a military junta took over putting an end to the swinging sixties that had flourished briefly in Addis. If you want to dip into the ETHIOPIQUES series this is a good introduction to the funkier (& slightly more accessible) flavours.

MALOUMA
NOUR (MARABI 46819 2)

She has been called, rather blithely, "The Blueswoman of the Desert," but Malouma is much more than that. She has struggled for female emancipation in her native Mauretania. Since her first album DUNIYA she has continued to improve. Malouma's third international release is called NOUR. You may not have heard of her or even noticed her, because her album packaging is so abysmal. In 1998, Shanachie issued DESERT OF EDEN, produced by Pape Dieng at Studio 2000 in Dakar. The session men included Oumar Sow on guitar and Thierno Kouyate on sax. The first track, "Ya Habibi," was anthologized on a box set (WORLD DIVAS, I think) and it was from there that British DJ Charlie Gillett gave it several plays. It resurfaced on a Shanachie anthology called HOLDING UP HALF THE WORLD, which featured African artistes.

"Ya Habibi" is a standout track for me, and I wish the Senegalese musicians had been allowed more of a free rein throughout, as some tracks strike me as mannered. There is a version of Otis Redding's "Fa Fa Fa Fa" with Mauretanian lyrics: "Pardon my sins both old and new/ Yesterday and today/ I pray for the day/ when death will come / &c"! Significantly, several tracks are re-worked on DUNYA, and this might indicate that this first effort has been "disowned". Invited to the Festival des Metisses in Angouleme, she went into the studio with a hybrid band and produced this fine album. There's desert blues but definitely a global sensibility with some superb session guys dropping in the right amount of synth, bass, samples, whathaveyou. Yes, there's familiar rock elements but also an air of mystery with the Mauretanian instruments on her side. Malouma plays a ten-stringed harp and sings with a guttural edge that sounds abrasive, but she can also sound soothing. Bojan Z plays a Fender-Rhodes "Xenophone" -- a modified keyboard I guess-- Loy Ehrlich plays Gumbass, a cross between an electric bass and a Moroccan guimbri. Guitarist Pierre Fruchard has been listening to Jimmy Page and the atmospherics are by Tunisian-born Smadj. There are some fine harmonies and light pop touches which the Duchess dismissed as "wimpy." It gets quite bluesy for a spell then suddenly a very credible reggae number called "Casablanca" mashes it up and reinvigorates the set. Shades of King Tubby and flying cymbals in the mix! Overall the impression is of a modern sensibility without losing touch with the ancestors. In that regard I think this is a bold and interesting effort. In a side note, Mauretania held its first democratic elections this year, March 2007, since independence from France in 1960, and Malouma was elected to the Senate.

HAMID BAROUDI
SIDI (Vielklang EFA 03231-2)

Here's an instant golden oldie. IJ loaned me this CD that came out in 2001, and it's exactly the kind of fusion album that works. It's Rai music from Algeria so it has Arabic roots feeling but it also has a modern production without going off the deep end. There are samples and synths but also many traditional instruments as well as a small string section. Baroudi plays bindir, djembe and talking drum, and also rhythm guitar. There's a Moroccan gimbri player and even a balafonist from Gambia, but it's essentially Rai music. There are a couple of rap tracks, with an American called Soul S.K. which I can skip, but there's a range of stuff that is very engaging. Good Miles-style trumpet and dubby rhythm underline "Ghaddar," with excellent vocals from Baroudi. "I traveled far to find peace," he sings."Like an albatross I floated above the world and realised it doesn't belong to us." "Walah," featuring the throb of the gimbri, is a song about how life passes by along with wealth and power, so the singer's goal is to turn into a rock painting to survive! Cheb i Sabbah used to play "Gourara" when he deejayed at Nikki's club on Haight Street, SF, and it was always a dance floor filler. Surely an Arabic Groove classic. "Sidi" is a title of respect in arab cultures and Baroudi has earned the appellation.

NEMA MINT CHOUEIKH
MAURETANIAN MUSIC FROM THE TRARZA REGION (PAM oa 211)

Günter Gretz is a determined individual. Most of us, on hearing a great piece of music in a film, might wait till the end and read the credits to see who the artist was and, if we remembered later, try to find their music on-line or at a record store. Gretz however is out-of-the-ordinary, not least in the movies he goes to. The movie he was watching was En Attendant le bonheur by Malian director A. Sissako & the moment that made his hair and ears stand up was when Nema Mint Choueikh was teaching a young girl a traditional song. It just so happened that in 2003 Gretz was driving through the town of Noaudhibou, in the Trarza region of Mauretania, where the film was shot, on his way to Senegal. He inquired and was told the singer lived further along in another town but when he got there he found he had passed her house on the road long before &, as he had an appointment in Senegal, he couldn't turn back. A year later he was back in Noaudhibou and learned there was to be a music festival with Nema performing one week later, so he returned to catch her act and hopefully hook up with her. Again her voice sent shivers down his spine, but as soon as she left the stage she got into a limo for the airport and a flight to Paris. He left a message with the concert promoter and 14 months later was back to finally meet Nema and record her. But at this point a sandstorm was brewing and the tin rooves of the houses were beginning to rattle ominously but, undaunted, Gretz set up his recording equipment and went for it, working for 3 hours to capture Nema and her ensemble performing for this CD release. It is traditional Moorish music. Nema sings and is accompanied by hand-claps and a couple of thwocking string instruments, the tidinit a small hour-glass shaped lute with five strings, and a kora-like instrument, the ardin, which is played by women. Sometimes an acoustic guitar can be heard, but the bending notes of the ardin are most unusual like it's constantly being tuned, while the tidinit embroiders the melody like the Manding ngoni. There is also a deep drum called the tbal. Between the songs the musicians do indeed tune-up so the music doesn't stop, it just goes into a lull of very out-sounding noodling for a few seconds between tracks. While the concert is acoustic there is one interesting note. A bullhorn is used (it can be seen on the cover), not for singing but to pick-up and amplify the guitar and tidinit. It sits on the ground next to the pick-up of the instrument and can often produce wild Hendrix-esque distortions. This is a wonderful recording and a window into a traditional world that is of course rapidly shrinking. Gretz promises if people buy this album and support his label, instead of copying it and ripping him off, he will release an album of electric guitar & tidinit music from Mauretania next.

MARCEL KHALIFE
TAQASIM (Nagam Records/Connecting Cultures CC50034)

"Taqasim" means improvisations. This tripartite set of long meditations by oud player Marcel Khalifé is poetic and a bit melancholy. The accompaniment is spare: percusion and an acoustic double bass (which I think is unusual in arabic music). Khalifé is Lebanese. The sound is ancient and reverberates with the history of arabic music. I even hear echoes of Moorish music from the other end of the Mediterranean and about seven centuries earlier. In the liner notes, Khalifé explains that he was inspired to create this set by the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, the renowned Palestinian lyric epic poet. But there is no human voice on the recording, no poems printed in the booklet. It's the memory or thought of Darwish's poems, imagined in his voice, that moved Khalifé, and his playing is an expression of those vocal inflections he remembers. This experiment works well, as it did for John Coltrane, whose tune "Alabama" was composed while listening to a speech of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. You can hear Darwish reading here.

CHEB I SABBAH
LA GHRIBA: LA KAHENA REMIXED (Six Degrees 657036)

It's an inevitable as spring follows winter, or around here, winter follows spring... the Remix album. The latest from the Young Man of the Mountain is a set of oldies in a new galabieh: Cheb i Sabbah gave his raw material to some other master mixologists and like a chain letter they sent back their take on his latest set of tunes. I asked him whether the artists were all people he knew or did they work independently and then send him the results. He knows all of them, he says, and they mostly wanted the original "dry" track, without any of his own effects or add-ons. But this is quite easy, he tells me, with the technology that is used today. "A couple of people took little sections and built up a whole structure but all they wanted was a snippet." I asked him about the distribution of songs since obviously the most catchy tunes would be most popular. "Toura toura" and "'Esh dani, alash mshit" were the most popular. The latter, which was remixed by Temple of Sound and Bill Laswell, reminds me of "Truckin" by the Grateful Dead, I told Cheb i, as it has a catchy refrain that keeps chugging back. "Maybe I could get one of the Dead guys to remix it, he joked, then I wouldn't have to worry about the rent!"

Moroccan artists Ahderrahim Akkaoui and Pat Jabbar, known as Dar Beida 04, picked the hardest song, he tells me, and came out with a trance vibe. (Dar Beida is the Arabic name for Casablanca.) "Not many venture the hardest tracks: if it's more catchy they think they can do something with it. Bassnectar wanted to do 'Alkher illa doffor' which was cool because no one else wanted to do that one. If you like break-beats it works." We talked about remix albums in general. He told me so many sound the same. "It sounds like Logic," is a deejay in-joke because of the beginners who let the inherent sound of the software dominate the result. Cheb i Sabbah likes the latest from Bally Sagoo and thinks he did a fine job trying on different styles, like House, but he doesn't like Balkan music because the brass instruments grate on him, so he didn't get into ELECTRIC GYPSYLAND which was my top album last year. We also differ on Bally Sagoo, whom I find very inconsistent. "The big names were cool at first but then the interns took over, and so often it shows," he says, referring to the stratosphere of remix jockeys. On LA KAHENA REMIXED, he says, "There are 11 remixes here but 11 different kinds of sounds. Each track has an individual sound, so I was happy overall. I am not expecting everybody to love the trance tracks and the break-beats, but overall it represents pretty much the dance scene as of today. -- Well, there's no House, but who needs more House?"

LE TRIO JOUBRAN
RANDANA (Fairplay 500 Harmonia Mundi LC11983)

Here's oud music from Palestine, performed by three brothers from Nazareth. One oud is beautiful and three, while unusual, are quite stirring when played together. The result is sensual and soothing, making you wonder how they practice with all the madness and mayhem in their country, and where do they perform? I suppose life must go on, perhaps even mundanely so, despite what you see on the news. (I was in Belfast the morning after the IRA blew up the Law Courts and no one was much bothered.) There are five tracks here, four recorded in the studio in Jerusalem, the fifth live in Ramallah with vocals and an audience sing-along. Art is such a fragile thing to hold on to in these violent times. Try not to think of the hole the Palestinians have dug for themselves by expressing their democratic will & electing the people they see most fit to guide their future, after decades of compromise and loss of face (as well as life) while the fascists in Israel snap at their American masters & ignore the censure of the world in their murderous folly. An Israeli told me they are so desperately arrogant because they think inevitably the Arabs will prevail. Enough of that. Listen to this album in the evening when you are unwinding. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Rosebuds are gathered and presented in an alchemical musical mix. Samir Joubran, the eldest, is hailed as a master oud player in the Arab world. He and younger brother Wissam recorded TAMAAS in 2003. Then a year later their youngest brother Adnan, only 20 but considered a prodigy, joined the group. The longest track, "Safar," (perhaps it means journey) starts off with a slow arpeggio while a second instrument sets up an ominous vibrato, eerie in a cinematic way. After a long digression it returns to the theme but then fades out, suggesting they were just jamming in an endless take. The music is drawn from the traditional maqam repertoire which allows them room for exploration and innovation.

FANTAZIA
MUL SHESHE (World Village 450001)

The cover of this CD makes a visual reference to Gnawa Diffusion's consummate disc BAB EL OUED KINGSTON. At first I was taken aback that anyone would attempt to compare themself to that pinnacle, but Fantazia have succeeded. Fantazia have a lot going for them and this is a great album. Yazid Fentazi on oud is the composer and he is top notch, abetted by Karim Dellali on traditional Maghrebi percussion instruments. MUL SHESHE ("The turbaned one") operates in many layers. Traditional Algerian vocals and gasba coast on top of a bass-n-drum groove with muted trumpet and Celtic fiddle providing solos. The outfit comes from East London where there's been a melting pot for centuries. Being Algerian in London means having to reconcile where you are from with where you are at, and that is what this musical odyssey undertakes. The best demonstration of this is "Fatouma" where a loungey mood is set up and then the oud doubles guitar, but when the muted trumpet comes in, it is challenged by the derbouka. Intelligent use of programming and studio effects makes a real fantasy out of "Khira" which suggests the kif-laden atmosphere of Cheikha Rimitti's outings as much as the streetwise urban groove of Rai. There's hard Algerian vocalising but funk and jazz horns to reel it in and ground it in the Western world. It's a sincere and sophisticated effort.

ROUGH GUIDE TO THE SAHARA (RGNET1153 CD)

Now here's a truly rough spot for adventure travel. Despite the vastness of the Sahara and its generally unforgiving climate, it has attracted more and more travelers as the annual Festival in the Desert attests. I love the African desert: you can sleep on the ground under the vast starry heavens and there's no bugs or insects to pester you; there's beauty in the landscape (like acres of semi-precious-looking stones that you pick up and then drop when you can't carry them further), as well as surrealism (bones, decayed abandoned things). The sand makes a great bed. The nights are cool, cold even, but the days are filled with thoughts of water and how much you have. By all means drink the mint tea strangers will proffer you but don't eat the dates: they've been handled so much they carry staph infections! Assuming you don't get lost (as I did in the Nubian desert for a few panic-stricken days), take time to enjoy the music of the Nomads. This wonderfully crafted compilation starts with Andalusians melodies from the farthest Northwestern stretch of the continent and criss-crosses the Sahara like a crazy caravan in search of sound. There's traditional Tuareg music on here alongside wild rock 'n' roll, and many things in between. Tartit, Tinariwen and Malouma are the only familiar names, but the others are equally compelling and this is a top-notch assembly. There's a group of three songs in the middle of the album highlighting the Sahraoui of what was called Spanish Sahara, an area now under attack from Morocco who claim it as a contiguous bit of their own fiefdom. Nayim Alal's "Bleida" has very "out" guitar and one of the most unusual things I've heard in a long time. It starts with great promise but degenerates into a Jethro Tull rave up betraying the Brit roots of the compiler. A blend of tradition and rock is achieved by Mariem Hassan on "Id Chab": her singing seems untainted by outside influences, but the guitarist has been listening to "Run thru the Jungle" by John Fogerty. Seckou Maiga is tipped as an up-and-coming Songhai artist to watch. He turns in a desert blues that is the most familiar-sounding thing on here. Kel Tin Lokiene are reprised from Festival in the Desert with their thudding "washing-machine" sound. Things go out peacefully and gently into the night with the gasba blowing its hot breath into the dunes under the plaint of Sahraoui Bachir.

PUTUMAYO PRESENTS
NORTH AFRICAN GROOVE (PUT 237-2)

NORTH AFRICAN GROOVE picks up where ARABIC GROOVE left off: another set of great Casbah-rocking jams. ARABIC GROOVE stands as one of the best sequenced and consistently great compilations ever. NORTH AFRICAN GROOVE falls just below. The centrepiece is Khaled's "Ya Rayi," and everyone else ebbs and flows around it with the same metronomical insistence. But thankfully, it's not all techno: Amr Diab from Egypt has traditional instrumentation with a "Gypsy Kings" feel to the flamenco guitar which, in this context, is not unpleasant. French-born Rai singer Faudel does have synths but at least one of them is set to "accordion" mode. He's keeping Algerian music vital in the Paris suburbs. The cat-like mewing of one of his keyboards is overridden by the great slappy percussion. Amina who moved from Tunisia to Paris and became a star in 1989 with an entry in the hokey Eurovision song contest, gives us one of her solid hits "Dis-moi pourquoi," with a solid bass thwock. There's funk from Cheb Mami and disco from Mohamed Mounir, the Nubian Nut, on here. Mounir is from Aswan and apparently influenced by reggae but this is straight disco dance redeemed by the segue into the last track by Eastenders, a deejay from Germany who collaborates with Turks and Egyptians for a trans-Euro sound. "On the ride" is one of the strongest cuts on here, and bound to get you moving and grooving. Play it back on the track, Jack!

CHEB I SABBAH
LA KAHENA (Six Degrees [catalog number too small to read])

Cheb i Sabbah has gone home to Algeria and is doing what he does best: finding great music and kicking it up a notch with his self-assured mixing. After tooling around the Indian subcontinent for a few years (& producing SHRI DURGA, MAHA MAYA and KRISHNA LILA), the venerable Chebi-ji (he should be about to graduate to Pir i Sabbah, if not Hassan, any day!) pops in on some North African & Middle Eastern lady singers and comes up trumps! Actually in track four they mention Hassan i Sabbah (The "Old Man of the Mountain" you remember from Max Fleischer Studio cartoons!). I suppose the association is unavoidable. Hassan was a famous Islamic rabble-rouser and it is from his opiated devotees, the Hashishim, that we get our modern word "assassin." But Cheb-i is only out to slay us with a killer mix, & he succeeds on this outing. It's a soundscape or aural tour of North Africa, with street sounds in addition to the deftly layered music. Although he's a master mixer, this is not a dance set: it is in many ways a folkloric recording, though of course there are modern instruments on here. But then Rai music is itself a hybrid form that took to synthesizers and drum machines like a duck to stale bread. But Sabbah brings an urbane eye to the traditions, and he manages to keep the "world beat" slacker community happy by introducing Bill Laswell, Karsh Kale & Co., but the best part, for me, is you don't even notice them!! He's doing a fine job keeping them on a leash.

Because of the strife in his homeland, Sabbah recorded in Morocco, and brought in musicians from many traditions, Berber, Jewish & European, as well as Arabic. So the Women of Marrakech (B'net Marrakech), who normally do weddings and henna parties, appear alongside big-name dames like Cheba Zahouania, who opens singing "I got some shit!" -- or that's what it sounds like to me. But it's the third track, "Toura Toura" that opens up the vista for me as thudding bass (Bill Laswell, really?), handclaps, and those metal clackers called krakebs set up the groove for Gnawan singer & guimbri player Brahim Elbelkani. We are ready for trance time now. (This tune appeared on the great 1990 Moroccan NIGHT SPIRIT MASTERS album which Laswell was also on.)

"Im Ninalou (The doors are locked)" was previously on Michal Cohen's HENNA album, but I recognize it from Ofra Haza's 1988 hit. "Im Ninalou" has a dance beat that guarantees it a place on the next Putumayo Arabic Groove compilation. Though Cohen's Yemeni, it sounds Egyptian to my infidel ears. It's the most melodically transparent piece & stands in contrast to the brusquer harmonies of the Sufic chanting on Haddarates' "Madh Assalhin," which Sabbah treats with echo and washes of synth approaching a "Paul Horn at the Taj Mahal" ambience (or I could be kinder and say Stuart Dempster in Cologne cathedral), but this praise song soon kicks into a groove before metamorphosing again with crisp tablas and Nercan Dede's nay.

Track 6 is a medley of pieces first recorded in 1997 by Steve Shehan and now reworked with bass & drums and layers of voices for a great trance-inducing 8 and a half minutes. The album ends with a lovely 13 minute meditation that brings up the plangent sounds of the derbouka, riq and qanun, and conjurs up the cool chaharbagh, or rippling waterfall, in the shade and the smell of orange blossoms, honey and kif on the breeze.

KHALED
YA RAYI (Wrasse Records 127X)

This is a two-disc set, the second disc being a DVD. I borrowed it from IJ who had left the DVD in his machine so I didn't get to see Khaled, just hear him. There was also some discussion a month ago that the American release was going to be remixed to be more palatable to an American audience. I'm not sure if that meant they were going to switch from Arabic to English and have him do "The Star-Bungled Spanner" or "Onward Christian Soldiers," but as it is, this disc sounds fine. There's flamenco guitar and classical piano but mainly the stone groove you expect from the master of the Rai dancehall. "Ya-Rayi" means "my opinion," but it's more "my story." Khaled first hit with the incredible HADA RAYKOUM (Stern's 1986) which planted Rai music in our consciousness. His collaborations with trumpeter Bellemou Messaoud gave us another dimension. In 1992 Don Was produced the eponymous LP which included "Didi Didi," a top ten hit in France. N'SSI N'SSI followed the next year and in 1996 he topped the charts again with "Aicha," but then he went a bit off track. Two years ago I interviewed him before his last California concert; he told me when he was ten he started a band that aped the Jackson Five, they even had a minor hit but his father found out and punished him. When he opened for HAKIM "the Lion of Egypt" in Berkeley in 2002 he seemed past his prime, but YA RAYI is a regrouping and a restatement of what he's all about. There's still touches of synth and the mechanical beat that became so monotonous, but he has brought the traditional instruments back to the fore, which is a welcome sign. Maurice El Medioni, legendary Jewish blues pianist from Oran appears.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
ARABIC GROOVE (Putumayo 189-2 CD)

CHEIKA REMITTI
NOUAR (Sonodisc, distributed by Stern's in the US)

Cheika Remitti's album NOUAR made my Pick of the Pops for 2000. It starts out like a Rai album: with drum program, synth, guitar, and Rimitti on bendir, a large tambourine. But then the album shifts to a timeless mood of the Atlas and Rif mountains in a cloud of kif, the thread of Algerian tradition spanning back millenia and held in place by the tenuous pulse of a breathy flute, called gasba. The synth and bass create an atmospheric drone against which Rimitti, who is in her late seventies, sets up her plaint. On the third track, Bellamou Messaoud ("le père du Rai") comes aboard on trumpet. Derbouk, tar, and more percussion instruments are added. This curve into the traditional makes this a really engaging album. The typical rai sound underpins it all, but the tracks with gasba push it towards a timeless folklore that has more staying power and is welcome to my ears.

2000 years ago the Romans showed up and noted the rites of Bou Jeloud, the goat god, whom they equated with Pan. From those rituals we get the concepts "panic" as well as "boogaloo." Most importantly we get the groove, and yes it does veer out of control from time to time. But it's the haunting gasba flute played by Abdelmalek that pushes this album into the transcendental realms.

GNAWA DIFFUSION
BAB EL OUED KINGSTON

More cross-pollination is evident in BAB EL OUED KINGSTON by Gnawa Diffusion. As the title implies, it's a hybrid of traditional Moroccan music with Jamaican dancehall-style toasting grafted on. Amaz, the lead singer plays guimbri -- the traditional North African lute and ancestor of the guitar. The other band members are all multi-instrumentalists. The lyrics are in Tagnawit (I guess) and French, with an occasional recognizable dash of English ("Turbo, Valium, Hollywood, Mike Tyson") and comment on the unstable state of Algeria and everyday problems like curfews, stores being shut, potholes in the road, the need to score cannabis. The tracks alternate between traditionally scored and drum-and-synth-driven ones and of course occasionally fuse both styles, as on "H'moun Zawalia" a lament for the plight of Africa today. The purely traditional tracks, like "Chara' Allah" are outstanding, but the sequencing is so good that the album flows like a magic carpet ride, dipping in and out of different musical moods. There are even a few samples and snippets of ambient sound to add a Berber authenticity to the more rock-oriented tracks.

The final track "Gazel au fond de la nuit" uses a moving poem by the great French poet Louis Aragon about the fragility of love; the atmospheric interepretation by Gnawa Diffusion is a fitting reverie-infused coda to this wonderful new release.

HAROUN RACHID NIGHTS OF ALGERIA (united one records)

Haroun Rachid's NIGHTS OF ALGERIA explores the traditional sound of Algeria in five ten-minute long jams (each a medley of two or three tunes), with tar, guitar, banjo, canoon, violin and darbuka. Rachid has an interesting voice and doesn't sound like he's complaining which is one aspect of Arabic singing that turns off many Western listeners. A track titled "Andalousia" has a waltz beat then progresses through something that sounds a bit like "Havana gila" -- the Cuban lizard song -- (to my untutored ears) & goes into a rave-up outro.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
THE ROUGH GUIDE TO BELLYDANCING (Rough Guide RGNET1066 CD)

THE ROUGH GUIDE TO BELLYDANCING subtitled "Raks Sharki: Oriental Dance Moves" is a delight for new and old ears. Even if you are hip to the sinuous melody lines and propulsive percussion that goes along with bellydancing, you'll dig this new compilation by Salah Miller. "Raks Sharki" is Arabic for "Middle Eastern Dance"; the term "bellydance" comes from a mis-hearing of "Baladi" meaning country. Locally (in San Francisco) it's known as "Tribal dance." At the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, a dancer called Little Egypt brought shocked and delighted onlookers by the thousands and soon her dances were being imitated in vaudeville and burlesque. The fake "Oriental" costumes donned by American dancers made it into Hollywood and ultimately, from American films shown in Egypt, the Westernized version of the spangles and bangles was adopted into the tradition.

Watching my daughter-in-law dance with her troupe, Tabu, at the SF International Ethnic Dance Festival a couple of years ago, I realized that the good dancers are performing for each other, knowing the subtleties are lost on the audience. There is amazing isometric skill and muscle control. It's turns out more spiritual than erotic.

Mahmoud Fadl's epic drum set "Aament Beliah" (from the poor neighborhoods of Cairo) goes off into a 12-minute trance. The full-scale Andalusian orchestra of Ahmad Fouad Hassan is a trip deep into the Arabian Nights: "Dimashq" refers to the capital of Syria, Damascus. "The Happy Sheik" from Rabih Abou-Khalil's "The Sultan's Picnic" has a wonderful trombone solo. You hardly hear the oud; the liner notes tell us Milton Cardona plays conga on this track. The set shifts seamlessly around the Mediterranean through Lebanon to Turkey. Two of my favorite pieces are the Sufi-trance suggestive "Laz" from Omar Faruk's Tekbilek (I think that's him on woodwinds) and the next cut, "Kirkpinar Çiftetellisi" by Kemani Cemal Çinrli, from his album "Sulukule." This latter slow piece has an echoey violin playing over a ponderous drone and solid four-on four-off beat. Mahmoud Fadl returns for a heavy instrumental dirge with a tango-like beat and flying fingers percussion. Whatever Rough Guide's modus operandi is, they are certainly doing it right, and can be counted on for the inside track on world music.

JALILAH'S RAKS SHARKI 6
IN A BEIRUT MOOD (Piranha PIR CD 1788)

Oriental dance, mistakenly called "Belly dance" in the West, is actually known as Raks Sharki in the Middle East. Jalilah is a famous dancer and this CD presents her orchestra doing their thing. Without the distraction of watching the dancer (use your imagination) you can really get into the rhythms. There's a huge band, including six violins, piano, bass, cello, oud, kanoun, nay, percussion, accordion and chorus. The repertoire is original with one track drawn from the folklore of Lebanon. Hip-swivelling fun, and a must for fans of the genre.

ROUGH GUIDE TO SUFI MUSIC
(Rough Guide RGNET1064 CD)

I had elective laser surgery on my eyes in June 2001 and spent 24 hours sedated in the dark while the anaesthetics wore off and my vision slowly returned. In my subdued-for-once state I decided to listen to Sufi music and the new ROUGH GUIDE TO SUFI MUSIC was to hand. It starts modestly enough in Turkey with a classical piece composed in the nineteenth century: a good introductory dirge, while we imagine the dervishes assembling. Sufi music was traditionally performed at religious sites, such as shrines, and in addition to the dervishes, members of the audience often go into trance and have to be brought round with verses from the Koran. Twenty years ago I saw dervishes in Omdurman performing in what was essentially a cemetery near the Mahdi's tomb. They whirled up a storm. Though frenzied, there's a stillness at the heart of the sound, in the breath of the flute or singer. A lot of Sufi music uses classical poetry as lyrics and it's easy to get into it as an accompaniment to reading Rumi or Kabir, both of whom are widely available in English translation.

After the Sabri Brothers from Pakistan and a taste of Egyptian religious singing ("inshad dini") we get a second Egyptian Sheikh, Yasin al-Tuhami, who cuts loose with "Alam" -- after a suitably reverential build-up on a scratchy lute.

Old hippies known the Gnaoua because of the Marrakesh connection and Hassan Hakmoun is one of the best-known exponents of this type of Moroccan sufism. In a track from "Gift of the Gnawa" with his long-time American collaborator Adam Rudolph on tabla, the brittle, limpid percussion gets your body moving, while Hakmoun puts the rest of you in a trance with stoney flute and vocals helped into the aether with one of my favourite toys: the Roland Space Echo. This is music to placate spirits and it sure made mine mellow.

After Abida Parween comes another gem: Ostad Elahi from Iranian Kurdistan on the sacred tanbur, the ancient Persian lute. His virtuosity is apparent, and I was reminded of Ravi Shankar. Not to slight West Africa, the compilation (which is extremely well sequenced) next offers up some mystical ritual drumming from Senegal, by Boubacar Diagne and drawn from TABALA WOLOF. Back to Egypt for a blind singer accompanied by flute and a trip to the lush sound of Damascus with another long slowly building piece on dulcimer, and we are nearer to enlightenment. Of course the best is last and that's Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Fateh by name and fatty by nature, he brought Pakistani qawwali music to young people worldwide and made his simple brand of devotional music very hip. There's no doubt that Nusrat had one of the greatest voices of the twentieth century, and set off against the simple harmonium, tabla and hand-clap backing it soars close to heaven.

TEA IN MARRAKECH (Earthworks)

Earthworks has issued a fine compendium called TEA IN MARRAKECH. I liked this immediately because many of the tracks are familiar and it's always fun to relinquish the programming to someone who knows what they are doing. The focus is on North African music of the last decade of the twentieth century. For most of the twentieth century the grandiose Sharqui music of Egypt was the dominant strain, but in the sixties Rai music from Algeria and Moroccan Sha'bi music gained ascendancy, particularly as the North African diaspora continued after the wars with the French. In Paris, Arab musicians came in contact with other influences while groups like the Stones and Led Zep followed pilgrims Brion Gysin and Paul Bowles to Morocco looking for music, kif and dark holes to hide in. There are some top hits on this album, from Setona's "Tarazina" to Sawt el Atlas's "Zmane y dore," but the overall presentation is wonderfully balanced between familiar ditties and surprises. Two of my favorite Algerian ex-pat bands, Orchestre National de Barbes and Gnawa Diffusion, are included. The former with "Poulina," the title cut from their 1999 album; the latter with a cut from their essential BAB EL OUED also from 1999. Morroco itself it represented by Nass Marrakech (who are based in Spain, keeping their traditional Gnawan music alive in Barcelona). Salamat from Egypt perform "Noura" a light acoustic ditty that is the "Marrakesh Express" of this set. There's a strong traditional undercurrent to the compilation but most of it has a pop sheen, typified by Rasha, a Sudanese singer who has been compared to Billie Holiday and Cassandra Wilson. Without getting into hyperbole let's just agree she has a warm soulfulness to her voice. The sax accompaniment is "Quiet Storm" jazz but goes down smooth, like illicit liquor in the Nubian Desert. TEA IN MARRAKECH is a superb compilation worthy to stand alongside the previous great sets from Earthworks.