Sunday, August 5, 2007: Meeting with Anouar Brahem
by Agostino roncallo
"Is it good for you, Agostino, to meet us at 3:30 PM, near the Rialto Cinema?" "Is it perfect for me, please?" Right on time, Anouar Brahem arrives accompanied by his producer: he's here in Locarno, Switzerland, to present "Mots après la guerre," a documentary film made up of interviews with cultural and political figures, aiming to capture the moods and atmospheres following the Israeli military intervention in Lebanon in 2006. I wanted to ask him what drives an established musician and composer to make a film and present himself at an international film festival, but the answer already existed: in the flow of images, in the testimonies that followed one another, in the emotion that was in the words and In the glances, especially in the silences, there was a dilated time that seemed to overlap naturally with his compositions. It would be inappropriate to call it a "soundtrack": this definition conveys the idea that images can find support, a support, in sound, yet in Brahem's film it is impossible to separate the music either from the representations of the destruction of cities or from the macerated faces of those who agreed to be interviewed. This is not the first time Anouar Brahem has composed for cinema and theater; he has written many original film scores, including his collaboration with choreographer Maurice Béjart for the ballet "Thalassa Mare Nostrum." Many of these compositions were later recovered and reworked for the CD "Khomsa" (ECM, 1995), after whose release he himself declared he wanted to "free music from the chains of the image." I ask him how he perceives the connection between sounds and images and, receiving no answer, I remain a bit confused. A little dazed. Perhaps he notices this embarrassment: we're used to interviewers who press the interviewee with stringent questions, cornering him, trying to extract some secret. It's as if he wanted to make me understand that thought and speech require different tempos than ours: in fact, he answers me after a while and talks to me about time, about the strong connection he feels between his music and the "duration" of the image. By this he doesn't mean, and he's keen to point out, that duration depends on the fixity of the image but on time, on all the time necessary for its persistence, its sedimentation: if they don't have time to settle in our eyes and our mind, the images fly away, the figures become indistinct and no trace of them remains. We're left with shadows, diaphanous appearances. Listening to him, you understand many things, starting with the reason why, even before we sat down at the bar tables and ordered a beer, he asked me how much time I needed. But I also understand what I had seen in his film: the depiction of the destroyed neighborhoods, the apparent sense of immobility, the slight shifts in the frame, the movements of indistinct characters in the background. All of this slowly penetrates us. There are no cuts except between the faces of the characters and the destroyed buildings: but ultimately it's the same thing, the eyes reflecting dust and twisted metal. The film is an enveloping continuum. One might call it "slowness," but those who know and appreciate the music of Anouar Brahem know that "slowness" and "speed" are absolutely relative concepts. For those unfamiliar with this composer, born in the Medina of Tunis in October 1957, we could discuss his ability to solo an ancient instrument in Arab culture: the lute, or rather, the oud. His father, he tells me, wasn't overjoyed at the idea of having a son who was a musician, but he was a very sensitive person: he was present on the day of his first concert and, after hearing him, approached him with tears in his eyes. Anouar also remembers well the time he studied the instrument, the days spent at the home of maestro Ali Sriti: "I owe him a lot, he taught me everything, starting with Taqsim." Taqsim in Arab music is a traditional form of improvisation and, at the same time, a "school of freedom." The definition is intriguing: one might have thought of music, in its broadest sense, as an expression of freedom and creativity, but not of the existence of a true technique that, like a seed, acts from within, transcending conventions and generating new ideas. Taqsim was very important to Brahem's development because those early experiments sparked a desire to go beyond the Arab tradition, to bring together sounds from other regions, such as India and Iran, to integrate jazz elements into his music, to restore the oud's full dignity as a solo instrument. His journey, this ability to write music that transcends regional boundaries, thus develops in continuity, and in this sense he wishes to emphasize that "there is no conflict between tradition and modernity." This is not a foregone conclusion: first of all because, in every part of the world, transcending a tradition still carries the tinge of sacrilege, and secondly because, since the dawn of humanity, the idea of "freedom" has always caused a certain concern. And in this sense, music is certainly no exception; it takes a truly receptive ear and mind to embrace a proposal that transcends established patterns. But to delve deeper, he says, we need to reflect on the meaning of transcending tradition, and he tells me about his own compositional style: "I begin with a simple phrasing, a motif that I slowly develop and gradually expand. There are ideas that arise spontaneously, anywhere and at the most unexpected times, but which I then have to find the time and tranquility to fully elaborate and develop." Even when Brahem returns to the Arabic tradition, for example with "Rabeb" (1989) and "Andalousiat" (1990), he does so with smaller ensembles (for example, a trio or "takht," the original form of the traditional orchestra) in which each musician plays the role of soloist and improviser: this is the way to capture the spirit, the refinement of the variations, and the intimacy of Arabic music. Purists, to put it mildly, would be wary: in the light of a summer day and the wind sweeping away the dust, they prefer the darkness of a cellar to store things. But for Brahem, inspiration does not separate the present from the past, light from darkness; it is like a tree growing toward the sun, spreading its branches toward it while simultaneously developing its roots. This artist's early career, precisely because of the novelty of his art, was not easy, and his move to Paris, a culturally vibrant and cosmopolitan city, in 1981, corresponded to Brahem's attempt to find the collaborations necessary to fuel his creative spirit. For this very reason, his career would be punctuated by important encounters, such as those with Jan Garbarek, Dave Holland, John Surman, and Barbarose Erkose. Perhaps the most significant turning point in his career came in 1990 when, without hesitation, he embarked on a demanding tour of the United States and Canada. Upon his return, he was contacted by Manfred Eicher, producer and founder of the ECM record label. This meeting sparked a long collaboration that led to the release of numerous CDs, including "Thimar," "Astrakan Café," and the recent "Le Voyage de Sahar" (ECM 2006), where Brahem is accompanied by François Couturier on piano and Jean-Luis Matinier on accordion. This is the same lineup as Brahem's previous album, "Le Pas Du Chat Noir" (ECM 2002), a seemingly anomalous musical encounter that today gives us a splendid recording, perhaps one of the finest, certainly the most hypnotic.