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RootsWorld reviews Wameedd |
Kamilya Jubran and Werner Hassler's Wameedd is the most challenging, creative, and disturbing. Hassler, a Swiss composer and performer of electronic music, provides an eerie, subtle, and remarkably appropriate sound background for Jubran's voice and 'ud. Jubran's 'ud playing is mostly basic and spare, her repetitive lines and note-bending often bearing a family resemblance to that of Mississippi delta blues guitarists. The focus here is less on melody than on emotion, feeling, and the words.
For Wameedd Jubran has set to music texts chosen mostly from contemporary Arab poets, like Paul Shaoul and Aïcha Amaout, as well as from the celebrated Gibran Khalil Gibran and Greek poet Dimetri Analis. Jubran's expressive vocals and the instrumental atmospherics make it easy to appreciate Wameedd without understanding the lyrics, but nonetheless a key element will certainly be missed.
Here's a hair-raising sample, from the end of the song, "Nafad al-Ahwal 2": "I remembered the day I was killed, raped, cut to pieces lemon by lemon, cigarette by cigarette, was ripped and for the first time I cried for my death and for nature." These lyrics are by Lebanese poet Paul Shaoul, who frequently writes about his experiences during Lebanon's horrific civil war (1975-1990).
No doubt these lines resonate somehow with the experiences of Kamilya Jubran, one of Israel's second-class Palestinian citizens, who was born in Akka (Acre), and who moved to the West Bank in the early 1980s to live under the Israeli military occupation, now in its 40th year. Jubran has lived in France, in voluntary exile, since 2002 but her music still resonates with the emotions, the trauma, and the cultural vitality, of her homeland.
Related Links
- More about Kamilya Jubran
- Listen to samples from Wameedd
- Visit Kamilya's official website
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