ALEP BREST (vinyl)

Description

The continuous transmission chain from one musician to another and from one soul to another, reviving millennia-old melodies that were once heard everywhere in the city, in churches and cafés; in mosques and on the terraces of stone buildings. These tunes, in Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, Turkish, or Kurdish, have been passed down from generation to generation, strong in their beauty, as the only weapon against oblivion. Their common denominator is, for Fawaz Baker, their constant innovation within a traditional structure. Eastern music indeed offers great possibilities in terms of rhythm, melody, and improvisation. It is what is called modal music: composed of musical phrases, not tones or notes, like most compositions in the West since the 18th century. The Eastern sound is based on improvisation and polyphony; a freedom that allows two melodies to evolve simultaneously within a complex architecture, and permits each musician to interpret and improvise. How, then, to find the balance between written and improvised music, between modal and tonal? The challenge is not easy, but it illustrates how music – and art in general – is capable of creating a dialogue between contradictory forces, where ideology fails. Fawaz Baker's imagination, as a citizen of the world, draws from multiple sources. With his album Alep-Brest, the composer invents a free and deterritorialized musical idiom. It is indeed difficult to assign a residence to this universe bathed in Eastern scents, infused with South American and gypsy aromas, both classical and traditional. Thanks to a luminous marriage of timbres, the small miracle occurs.