Mouasalat Ila Jacad El Ard

Description

Issam Hajali is best known as the singer and composer of the Lebanese band Ferkat Al Ard. While they recorded 3 albums, only their classic "Oghneya" was released on vinyl and is highly sought after by record collectors (a copy sold in Beirut this year for $5,000 US). Before the band was formed, he recorded this first album in Paris in 1977. This rare album fuses jazz and folk with Arabic and Iranian influences for a unique beauty. It was only put on sale in 75 copies. It is now officially reissued by Habibi Funk. It is a completely unique blend of traditional Arabic elements, jazz, Brazilian motifs, and folk, paired with lyrics that are both poetic and politically engaged. The band was active in the leftist movement in Lebanon at the time and openly communicated its political ideas. Unfortunately, like many musicians from the 1970s, not much trace remains of them, let alone on the internet. Nowadays, Hajali sells silver jewelry, mainly from his favorite travel destination, Nepal. Issam Hajali had to leave Lebanon after the Syrian intervention for political reasons and spent a year in exile in France. During this period, he struggled to make ends meet by playing guitar in the subway. He could only afford one day in the studio to record the entire project with a group of musicians: French, an Algerian, an Iranian, and a friend from Beirut, Roger Fahr, who had left Lebanon around the same time. Eventually, this lost album fell into the hands of Ziad Rahbani, son of Fairuz and a Lebanese musical institution in his own right. Ziad really liked the music and played on most of the versions of Ferkat Al Ard. Issam is fairly certain that fewer than 100 copies of the tape were made at the time and he only managed to keep one, from which this recording was made.