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The sweet taste of condensed milk, the fumes of coffee brewing on a fire, croissants flavoured with zaatar ('thyme'), the scent of baladi ('local') soap and the coarseness of a loofah sponge: these memories were deeply ingrained in him by his native homeland of Lebanon. Bachar Mar-Khalifé sings a country exposed to the sea, endlessly trying to cast off memories into the distance with the help of its sun, snows, lemon trees, jasmine, wine, arak, flesh and raw kibbeh. But also through the perpetual flow of light and dark, flashlights flaring, flickers of the candle and the hum of generators.
On this his third album, Ya Balad ('O Homeland'), the singer tells us of his lost proximity with his native country. He talks about the nostalgia that connects him to his roots and the loss of memory leading him onto a path of peregrination. The country itself has been driven to exile, expelled by a nationalistic conception of governance. Landscapes have been replaced by maps, the horizon by frontiers, songs by national hymns, the truth of voices by the fallacies of the bugle call. Thus unfolds the tragedy of a country that is at the crossroads of civilisations but whose limits are becoming apparent to its children. They find themselves cut off from the fundamental way in which one interacts with the world: language.
Mixing piano, harpsichord, percussion, drums, synthesizers, melodica and nay, this third album ambitions to reconcile the musical paths Bachar has taken (percussion and the piano) and instates his singing in Arabic as his central means of expression.
Furthermore, it confirms the musician's predilection for artistic synesthesia, a tendency the previous album (Who's Gonna Get The Ball... InFiné 2013) had established. Ya Balad, like its predecessors, gives pride of place to poetry in general, that of the Middle-East in particular. But this time, many of the tracks' origins can also be traced to the theatre and film.
With its 'oriental-reggae' tinge, Balcoon outlines a caricature of the Lebanese youth, torn between adhesion and rejection, mixing Arabic, English and French and with a musical culture developed to the sound of both classical Arabic music (Oum Kalthoum...) and Rock (Doors, Pink Floyd...). 'This song's lyrics are written night after night across the bars of Beyrouth'.
On Kyrie Eleison - initially composed for Hicham Ayouch's film 'Fièvres' (awarded the Étalon d'or at the 2015 Fespaco), 'Saint' Khalifé implores God to spare humankind: 'Leave us alone!'. But this is no dismissal of the Sacred. 'I tick all the boxes for being a believer, but I do not love God'. Sacred is what best describes Bachar's on-stage experience, exploring the full spectrum of creation. But that doesn't stop him from invoking the Mother of the deity on the album's other prayer, Madonna, uttered for children gone too soon, against music by his father Marcel Khalifé and with the help of words by Iraqi poet Saadi Yousef.
There are also the temporary voyages embarked upon by those who fall asleep, to the tune of Théodore Botrel's lullaby, Dors mon Gas [E]. Or to the traditional Lebanese nursery rhyme, Yalla Tnam Nada, set to music for the end credits of 'Go Home', Jihane Chouaib's film. This is where we come across the album's only guest, Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, the star of many independent, French-language films and of Ridley Scott's productions.
But the artist himself never sleeps. His song, Layla, which features the figure of his very own father, gives us the reason: night has forsaken him and, in turn, seems to have been erased from his memory. It also served as the theme song for Pia Marais' film 'Layla Fourie' (Jury's Honourable Mention at the 2013 Berlinale).
A song of celebration and dance, Lemon is the fruit of a musical collaboration between Bachar and his mother, based on a poem by Egyptian Samir Saady. Following the recording of a duet for Yolla Khalifé's Hawak album, the composer wanted to further highlight the raw, simple and repetitive nature of folk music. The song's uniqueness lies in the use of a baroque harpsichord tuned down a quarter tone: 'It was a studio epiphany, I've used it in many songs since.'
On Laya Yabnaya, he covers a bawdy folk song depicting a wretched lover driven to madness. 'It's quite a violent song, traditionally sung with cheek and joy. I wanted to get back to its primal essence and honour in a less formal way this man's reality'.
A whiff of perdition is perceptible on Wolf Pack, 'a modern, exhilirating and fractured trance', improvised at the studio one evening, after the recording session. This dancey and anarchic track was borne out of 'tiredness... and wine', Bachar admits. The album's only instrumental track, Ell3 ('elle' meaning 'she') is a piano-melodica dialogue. 'It represents everything I am able to give in terms of love, images, sea, barques, wind and stars. This song is for Ell3.' Along with the eponymous track, this trilogy of songs represents Bachar's first incursion into the world of theater, for 'Le paradis de Helki' directed by Charif Ghattas.
Echoing the concept of another author, also from Lebanon, Bachar's new album is a 'Black Swan' on the current musical landscape. More than ever, the freedom of the artist overcomes all stylistic constraints and excludes him from the realm of the mundane. |
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