Nuits d’Afrique | Sarab, East-West Conversation In Your Face

On a July evening in Montreal, Sarab arrived just a few weeks after Sanam. What these two bands have in common is a contemporary Arab sound and a rock attitude.

In the case of Sanam, from Beirut, we were into post-rock, drone, noize, ambient and Arab classical music. Sarab, invited to the Ministère on Tuesday as part of the Nuits d’Afrique festival, was an expressive blend of metal, krautrock, jazz-rock and Syrian-Lebanese classical and contemporary vocals.

Climène Zarkan’s vocal expression is strong, eloquent, hypnotic, engaged body and soul in the context of the profound disruptions that the wider Levant region has been undergoing for far too long.

We find ourselves at the heart of the dialogue between the singer, the daughter of immigrants from the Levant but very Parisian at the same time, and her guitarist colleague Baptiste Ferrandis, a highly gifted instrumentalist and musical director respectful of the East-West balance to be achieved in such a fusion exercise.

Sarab’s melodies are a blend of tarab (ecstatic chanting), Sufi incantations and the typical affects of great modern Arab pop (Abdel Wahab, Fairouz, Oum Kalthoum, etc.), not to mention the rock spirit that sets them apart and gives them their distinctive edge.

It’s both rough and complex, expressing the state of today’s Parisian souls who absorb the situation and turn it into art. And it’s done by seasoned artists, well-versed in advanced forms of amplified instrumental music. Clearly, the artists in this quintet are educated and advanced in their respective playing – excellent drummers, by the way.

Their intellectual curiosity has led them to bring together contemporary Arab song and poetry with music that is sometimes Middle Eastern, but above all Western in its expertise and execution.

In short, we’re not talking about quick-fix pop, but this kind of mix is slowly and surely taking hold, provided its practitioners persevere on this path of openness that excludes the easy way out.

We hope they do.

Photo : M. Belmellat