Music / world music
Review: Justin Adams and Mohamed Errabbaa/Soufian Saihi, Jam Jar
The sterling efforts of their national football team on the day may have added an extra sparkle to this celebration of Moroccan culture, but the music alone should have ensured a great time for the packed Jam Jar audience.
Ricardo de Noronha (percussion) and Soufian Saihi (oud) (Pic: Tony Benjamin)
Easing us gently into the North African mood, opening act Soufian Saihi’s oud wove a traditional Moroccan tune that combined rhythmic insistence with melodic intricacy. His elaborations on the 7-time theme were lifted by Ricardo de Noronha’s hand percussion into a fine acoustic evocation of Sufi music, both meditative and uplifting. While Soufian’s fusion tunes like the blues jam inflected Girasol or the Flamenco-leaning Parfum des Gitanes were interesting it was the snappy quadruplets of more traditional numbers that really stood out, bringing thunderous finger work from Ricardo and an intense drive from the oud.
Driss Yamdah, Mohammed Errabbaa and Justin Adams (Pic: Tony Benjamin)
Having already found ourselves in North Africa there was a distinct gear change when Mohamed Errabbaa and Justin Adams plugged in and drove into an instantly recognisable Gnawa groove. Backed by percussionist Bala P.D. and the ringing metal clash of Driss Yamdah’s krakeb castanets the music’s pulse ran through the crowd. Head nodding graduated to swaying and swaying into dancing as the Arabic call-and-response vocals seemed to invoke a more lively response. As a master musician in the Gnawa tradition, the coolly smiling Mohamed maintained the heartbeat of the music with the distinctive tone of his bass guembri, a rounded sound with deep resonances.
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Driss Yamdah, Mohamed Errabbaa, Bala P.D. and Justin Adams (Pic: Tony Benjamin)
Justin’s longstanding immersion in ‘Desert Blues’ guitar has given him a proper understanding of the economies of style Gnawa music relies on – it is intended for lengthy trance-inducing dances, after all – and thus even when he used the more dirty effects pedals the contrast of tone felt appropriate. Indeed, they even transposed the classic American country song Wayfaring Stranger into a kind of Desert’n’Western number without breaking their North African spell, especially when it speeded up into a percussion-led Dervish frenzy that had Driss spinning onstage (as far as space would allow). But, again, it was the more traditional 6-time Moroccan numbers that really got the audience moving, the relentless groove punctuated by stinging guitar phrases and underpinned by that visceral guembri bass.
A serial collaborator himself, Justin had explained that this was still a work in progress – Bala P.D. was in fact making his first appearance with them – but the simpatico of the four was very evident in the tightness of the music and the copious amount of smiling on stage. Happily for Bristol both Mohammed and Soufian are settled in Bristol and Justin lives just down the road so it is likely we shall be seeing much more of the progress as it works out.
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