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Oum
Originally from Casablanca, Oum El Ghaït Ben Essahraoui seemed destined to become an architect but then decided to embrace a career in music. She quickly drew the attention of the media, who identified her with the Nayda, a movement of young Moroccans attracted by more urban sounds. The albums Lik’Oum (2009) and Sweerty (2012), which were only released in Morocco, made her a star in her own country. Then she had a crucial brainwave. She began to write in darija, the everyday dialect of Moroccan Arabic. This offered her the possibility of exploiting a new musicality in her lyrics, as well as new combinations of meaning – an entire poetry of assonances. In 2013, she surrounded herself with musical luminaries to release her first international album, Soul of Morocco. European audiences discovered an artist full of generosity who offered a new kind of fusion combined with great authenticity. Concerts followed each other in quick succession, allowing her well-honed group to achieve even greater cohesion. Two years later, Zarabi, recorded at the gates of the Sahara, deepened the aesthetic direction that Oum has chosen to pursue, whilst offering a discourse on the need to preserve nature and traditional micro-societies.
With Daba, her third album, released in 2019, Oum reached a new milestone. Entrusting the artistic direction to the Palestinian poetess, singer and oud player Kamilya Jubran, she went to Berlin with her musicians to make a record that was both atmospheric and danceable. For Oum, this dual aim reflects a sort of state of emergency, one that she describes as positive: to be together, share good times, dance and hold each and every one in a warm embrace, all of which seem to her to be necessities all the more urgent now that the means of communication and transport tend to radically reshape one’s experience of the world and of the other. Expressed in a poetry that is economical with its words and devoid of all artifice, the themes on the album are in accord with the general preoccupations of its creator, her humanism, her feminism, her spirituality and the importance she gives to reconnecting with nature’s mysteries.
Daba means ‘Now’ in Moroccan Arabic. Giving this title to her third album is, for Oum, all about linking yesterday’s experience to the one determined by the present moment. In this ‘now’, the singer, having achieved a certain artistic maturity, is able to mix traditional Arab and Sahraoui elements with discreet borrowings from more contemporary aesthetics - soul, jazz and electronic trance. Thus, her music thrives, as does her thought process as a woman anchored in secular spirituality and open to today’s world.
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Stockholm Pianist Max Agnas releases Komposition VII on Loumi Records
Source:
All About Jazz
Max Agnas’s compositions find surprising and elegant ways to express himself within fairly traditional frameworks. You’ll hear captivating and atmospheric ballads next to rhythmical tunes with jingle-like melodies, often with a twist that puts everything into a new light. Although it’s paradoxical to say about a twenty-year-old, Agnas's playing sounds remarkably refined and mature. Having the quality of very often saying more with less and always letting the music, as opposed to technique or ego, dictate what musical decisions are ...
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Rockyoumentally
Daniel Bernard Roumain - Etudes 4 Violin and Electronix (2007)
Source:
Something Else!
By Mark Saleski Not long after receiving Etudes 4 Violin & Electronix, I got up one morning before the alarm went off, and settled myself down to some coffee. The idea was to catch up on the reading material that had stacked up over the past few months. What ended up happening over the next 10 minutes or so was that I stared a hole through an advertisement featuring a reproduction of Edward Hopper's painting “Nighthawks." Hopper's artwork has always ...
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Under your skin
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Source:
HypeBot
Kyle Bylin: Artists too, those of the old and new digital sphere, share in this certain degree of dichotomy in their attitudes toward new technology and their willingness to integrate it into their careers. Why must artists embrace as much chaos as they can stand with new technology and let it transform their role as cultural creators rather than clinging to 20th century notions of what it means to make art? Rob MacArthur: A friend put it best in working ...
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Interview: Rob Macarthur of Ioumusic
Source:
HypeBot
Recently, I spoke with Rob MacArthur, who describes himself as a music fanatic and entrepreneur; he is currently overseeing operations at the online crowd-funding site IOU Music and Rock Garden Jam Spaces. In this interview, Rob talks about the willingness of the record indusry to emabrace new technology and chaos in general and the disruptive nature of these times. Kyle Bylin:"When a new technology arrives, it has to get integrated into society somehow," Clay Shirky writes in Cognitive Surplus. Between ...
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Ioumusic: New Artist Crowdfunding App Launches
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HypeBot
How Does It Compare To Other Fan Funding Sites?
IOUmusic, in a similar vein as other grassroots, crowdfunding applications such as Kickstarter and RocketHub, is a new donation website that's focused on assisting musicians and providing them with alternative means to fund their creative projects.
As well, they are positioning themselves as a way for fans to pay artists for music that they have obtained for free. The founders of the company state that while this is their first incarnation, ...
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Josef Koumbas: Waiting -- To Return to Cuba
Source:
Michael Ricci
Born of an Irish mother and a Greek Cypriot father in London in 1944, Josef Koumbas formed his first band at the tender age of 12. He went on to spend 3 years in Australia, fascinated by the art and music of the aborigines. He visited Cuba in 1990, arriving with a Ronnie Scotts group from London UK, for what was to be one of Cuba's best loved International Jazz Festival. During that visit he met many of Cubans top ...
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Source:
AMT Public Relations
Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR): Woodbox Beats & Balladry Available March 30th on Thirsty Ear Recordings Haitian-American violinist/composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) continues to establish himself as one of todays most relevant artists on the contemporary classical music scene. An innovative violinist, composer, performer, re-mixer, and band leader, DBR has won world-wide acclaim for his eclecticism and fearless exploration, whether through extended violin techniques, the infusion of electronics, or in his perspectives on the definition of chamber music. On Woodbox Beats ...
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Source:
All About Jazz
