ROTTERDAM, Netherlands: I can distinctly remember the first time I heard Anouar Brahem’s playing because the circumstances were so cinematically odd. As a wanderlust-struck student sitting in a café in Tangier, Morocco, a sketchy-looking local struck up a rapport and insisted on taking me to a nearby pirate CD shop, where he demanded the owner put on his favorite album.
The sounds which spiraled from the speakers were magical — a spellbinding swirl of oud, woodwind and percussion unlike anything I’d ever heard before. I bought the album on the spot. It was called “Madar” and was co-credited to Tunisian oud virtuoso Anouar Brahem.
May 18th marks the 20th birthday of “Thimar,” arguably the most enduring recording of Brahem’s glittering, three-decade international career. Brazenly paired alongside two distinguished English jazzmen — bassist Dave Holland and saxophonist/clarinetist John Surman — the “transcultural” conceit exemplifies Brahem’s restless mission to transplant Arabic classical music traditions into an international, improvisational context.
Brahem’s sparse, maqam themes offer a skeleton frame for collective sound-scaping of the most intuitive kind: Holland’s low growls and Surman’s plaintive cries a sympathetic sonic foil to the oud’s meditative meandering.
Tellingly, Brahem’s is the last voice to be heard, the oud only appearing half-way through the eight-minute opener “Badhra.”
There’s something special about the sparseness of “Thimar,” democratically colored by three largely monophonic instruments, like three wise men in a conversation.
This is music to think to, not think about — sounds which fire up the synapses and set memories reeling into motion.
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