| |
 |
 |
| |
It was in Damascus, in 2002, at a private reception given by Sylvain Fourcassié, head of the French Cultural Centre there, that Serge Teyssot-Gay and Khaled AlJaramani first met. "We were on a tour of the Middle East," recalls the Noir Désir guitarist. " Khaled AlJaramani was invited to play at the reception. I really paid attention and was intrigued with his playing, which seemed to reflect a certain liberty and open-minded approach to music. Very up on Middle Eastern and North African music, he is also very keen to hear new things. He is happy to cross musical frontiers. He really projects his music. As an oud player he's got superb right-hand technique and can really let it rip. Once he'd seen us play, we both felt the same urge to work together." Khaled AlJaramani would admit to Serge later that he'd loved the group and its tight playing, and was particularly impressed by the drummer, who was always right on the mark, giving the band a solid anchoring. He was equally impressed with Serge's creative playing style and how without losing the rhythm he could come up with his own musical digressions. All that remained was to fix the dates for this collaboration. The respective schedules of the guitarists and the oud teacher at the Damascus Conservatory and the Horms Music Institute didn't offer any immediate possibilities, and so it was only a year later, in October 2003, that Serge and Khaled finally got together in Damascus over the space of four days. "We worked from 9 am to midnight," says Serge. "We put down one track a night, when the dialogue was working."
No preconceived ideas
There was another equally short working period in France, before the two gave two concerts in January 2004, in Saint Ouen in the Paris suburbs. "Khaled had never been to Europe. I was really happy to share this moment with him. Particularly since we'd started from scratch. We'd worked without any preconceived notions," Serge says of the creative process. "That's how it worked. I think we both had enormous respect for each other, and a strong desire to build a bridge and really listen to the other person. We'd take turns in proposing a musical theme, which we'd then develop together. Western music and rock music are more solid, more like a large building. But with Middle Eastern music, you invent it along the way as you progress. So we worked that way, without ever consciously trying to arrive at the finished piece. We didn't have time for that."
Shataraban, the opening track of the album, is named after the place where two rivers meet up and their waters move into a common stream. It's an obvious metaphor for the meeting of the two musicians, and the track is, according to Serge Teyssot-Gay, "the one that is closest to what the future holds for us, what we will be sharing together. It's a track that opens up perspectives. Our work was based on our intentions." Recorded over about ten days, these nine tracks (plus a hidden track which ends in a roaring laugh) will form the basis of the concerts the two will give over the next couple of months. "We rarely did more than four takes of any track. The last one was the good one. Similarly, on stage, we won't necessarily look for the easy option, we want to aim for authenticity, the truth of the moment. I work for example with a sequencer which I trigger live. I don't keep the loops, I recreate them at each concert. Each time is necessarily different. That means we really have to pay attention to each other and not just play rote. We have to be really demanding."
Serge Teyssot-Gay & Khaled AlJaramani Interzone (Barclay/Universal) 2005
