Electrified, globalized oud sounds out through Beirut

30 April 2009

Review

BEIRUT: Wailing high above a stomping beat, crunching out cacophonous chords or twanging frenetically: It's the oud, but not as you may know it. Mehdi Haddab and his accomplices, collectively known as Speed Caravan, brought their show "Kalashnik Love" to Music Hall Tuesday. An Algerian-born Frenchman, Haddab is one of this world's few players of the electric oud. Tuesday's concert offered a chance for Beirut audiences to see Speed Caravan in action with their unique brand of folk-rock.

An 11-stringed, pear-shaped instrument without frets, the oud is believed to be the precursor to the western lute and, as such, lays claim to being one of the most ancient musical instruments in use today.

Persian polymath al-Farabi pronounced the oud to have been invented by Lamech, a grandson of Adam (of Eden fame). Today, it is a staple of Arabic classical and folk music, to the extent that its rich, resonant voice is a defining characteristic of the region's music.

So it is a surprise to see the instrument plucked with Jimi Hendrix-like vigor, or strummed flamboyantly as in the finals of an air-guitar championship. The soaring, elegiac song of the lute is an unexpected sparring partner to a stomping disco beat.

Haddab has made it something of a mission to bring the venerable instrument bang up to date. After mastering the classical form of the instrument, he joined the Ekova trio, a Franco-Celtic-Persian-electronica outfit that experimented with a melange of folk sounds and contemporary music styles such as trance.

In recent years Haddab collaborated with oud player and sound engineer Jean-Pierre Smadja of Tunisia, under the name DuOud, pushing the instrument into yet other new territories with break beats and jazz grooves.

Speed Caravan is the oud-supremo's latest outfit. Joined by electronic musician Hermione Frank, bass player Pascal Teillet and a singer and bongo player who goes by the name of Simo, the group has a sound that defies easy labeling, yet is surprisingly easy on the ears.

The quartet have the head-banging energy of a group of hardcore rocksters. Haddab's long hair and rebellious dress code suggest a latter-day Keith Richards while Teillet, popularly known as Pasco, dripped with sweat by the end of his evening at the bass guitar. At her computer, Frank presides over the act like a silent MC, grooving to her beats and twiddling dials.

For all the hard-rock, high-tech appendages, the group maintains an Eastern tone. Simo's throaty vocals ground the music firmly in Arabic folk tradition, as does the often melancholic song of Haddab's oud.

Even when Frank overlaid a South American merengue beat, her bandmates took the tune faster and faster, bringing the audience out of their seats like musicians at a Cairo wedding.

The group brought their wild, cacophonous sound to a surprising range of tracks. In addition to their own compositions, the group covered "Killing an Arab," the first single of post-punk rockers The Cure, and encored with a pounding re-interpretation of "Galvanize" from British electronic duo The Chemical Brothers.

The Speed Caravan musicians are in the Middle East as part of a tour to promote their album, released in France last June and soon to be available worldwide. "We're excited to be here," said the band's producer David Husser after Tuesday's show. "It's our first visit to Beirut."

Next on the agenda are concerts in occupied East and West Jerusalem, Amman and Cairo. With the group's dizzying ability to soak up sounds and rhythms from across the globe, Speed Caravan's adventures in the region will only enrich their unique cross-cultural mash-up.

Speed Caravan's album "Kalashnik Love" is released on the Newbled label and can be obtained in electronic form from most online vendors.