Rabih Abou-Khalil - 1992 - Blue Camel

Rabih Abou-Khalil 

1992

Blue Camel

01. Sahara 8:18
02. Tsarka 6:45
03. Ziriab 6:49
04. Blue Camel 8:20
05. On Time 6:19
06. A Night In The Mountains 8:37

Alto Saxophone – Charlie Mariano
Bass – Steve Swallow
Congas – Milton Cardona
Drums [South Indian], Percussion – Ramesh Shotham
Flugelhorn, Trumpet – Kenny Wheeler
Frame Drum [Frame Drums] – Nabil Khaiat
Oud – Rabih Abou-Khalil

Recorded 19-21 May 1992 at Sound Studio N, Köln, Germany.

Bridging the gap between the folk music of his Lebanon homeland and modern jazz, Rabih Abou-Khalil crafts on Blue Kamel a distinctive atmosphere, that fuses the two major styles of music involved with admirable seamlessness. The end result is a moody, evocative set of songs which in moment evokes smoke-filled speakeasies and the next smoke- filled hookah lounges. Exactly what the camel is so blue about, we can't tell, but there's a melancholy aura hovering over the whole thing which is established and maintained masterfully. With a backing group drawing equally on Western and Arabic musicians, the album offers a boundary-shattering cultural blend which deserves to be celebrated.

Although the classification of Abou-Khalil's music as progressive folk may be misleading, since it is far more close to jazz, it is equally wrong to take it under the jazz-rock/fusion banner for the simple reason: it is lacking the rock element!

However, such an eclectic mix of jazz and the mid-eastern folk traditions (improvised soli on trumpet, bass and oud-lute and varied percussive and dynamic patterns) can be even called Global Jazz Music in order to avoid misinterpretation of the overused World Music tag. What is more important than the genre label is the beautiful music that is equally atmospheric, ambient-oriented and creatively produced as a top quality contemporary jazz act.

Jazz music has long outgrowth its American roots of the Southern Black communities and developed throughout the 20th century spreading across the Globe and incorporating many local, indigenous folk traditions from all regions. Blue Camel is one of the masterpieces of that kind of musical creativity, which will certainly be cherished by the fans of progressive rock, particularly those favouring not only prog folk but also jazz rock, psychedelic and the so-called oriental sub-section of Krautrock (e.g. EMBRYO).

What is maybe even more important is that Rabih Abou-Khalil is the authentic artist, native of Middle East, who is able to adopt some of the Western tenets of jazz production and technique, much like the earlier Western prog rock musicians (from the classic pshychedelic/prog era of late 1960s) were able to enrich their music with many oriental ingredients.