Ludovico Einaudi: Taranta! Feat. Chilly Gonzales, The ... - Barbican

Group Doueh,
Hayvanlar Alemi &
Sublime Frequencies DJs
Group Doueh
Doueh (Bamaar Salmou) guitar, tinidit
Halima Jakani lead vocals, hand percussion
El Waar Baamar keyboard
Edraija Abaid El Barka
percussion, backing vocals
El Kouria Messoudi percussion backing vocals
Soulima Reguibi percussion, backing vocals
Hayvanlar Alemi
Hazar Mutgan bass
Is˛ ık Sarıhan drums
Özüm I˙ tez guitar
Clubstage
Sublime Frequencies DJs
Tonight’s Barbican concert celebrates the cutting
edge of cultural diversity, focused as it is on
musicians and DJs linked with Sublime Frequencies,
the Seattle, Washington, based record and film
label. Sublime Frequencies describes itself as “a
collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and
exposing obscure sights and sounds from modern
and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film
and video, field recordings, radio and short wave
transmissions, international folk and pop music,
sound anomalies, and other forms of human and
natural expression not documented sufficiently
through all channels of academic research, the
modern recording industry, media, or corporate
foundations.” Sublime Frequencies focuses on an
aesthetic of extra-geography and soulful experience
inspired by music and culture, world travel,
research, and the pioneering recording labels of
the past including Ocora, Smithsonian Folkways,
Ethnic Folkways, Lyrichord, Nonesuch Explorer,
Musicaphone, Baronreiter, Unesco, Playasound,
Musical Atlas, Chant Du Monde, B.A.M., Tangent,
and Topic.
Initially, Sublime Frequencies concentrated on
issuing CDs and DVDs. Many of the label’s early
CDs were compilations of radio broadcasts they
had taped while travelling in Asia and the Middle
East. Others were straight reissues of cassettes they
had purchased – Cambodian Cassette Archives:
Khmer Folk & Pop music Vol. 1, a selection of Khmer
pop recorded in Cambodia, has proved particularly
popular and influential, reintroducing as it did the
exotic sounds that people danced to in Phnom Penh
before US bombing and Pol Pot’s genocidal regime
destroyed Cambodian cultural life. As the label has
grown Sublime Frequencies have taken to touring
some of their artists. This began in 2009 when Group
Doueh first visited the UK in tandem with fellow
Sublime Frequencies artist, Syria’s Omar Souleyman.
The tour proved a success and demonstrated clearly
the Sublime Frequencies aesthetic: the musicians’
sing and perform their raw, uncompromising music
for Western audiences just as they do for audiences
back home.
Such a direct “field recordings” approach to “world
music” is quite unique in a genre where many
Western world music labels have attempted to
make ethnic musicians more commercial by adding
Western production elements (rock guitar, jazz
saxophone, smooth pop production, dance beats).
Sublime Frequencies keep things as they were when
they first heard the music in its home territories.
For some in the audience this has proved a shock:
where, they asked, were the big production values?
Where was the slickness they tended to associate
with world music concerts? Others were thrilled,
enjoying the unfiltered sound, aware the absence of
stage craft meant this is how the music is encountered
when experienced in a Saharan souk or at a Syrian
wedding.