Blind Note

Muziek Publique is a young label with just three CDs in their catalogue. Their latest, Blind Note, deserves to bring it a bigger audience. It's the record of a concert given in Brussels at the label's own 400-seater concert space, the Molière, in December 2010. The six musicians – Emre Gültekin, Vardan Hovanissian, Malick Pathé Sow, Osvaldo Hernandez, Karim Baggili, and Talike Gelle – hail from Turkey, Armenia, Senegal, Mexico, Belgium and Madagascar. Their music features a shifting range of intimate solos and delicate ensemble pieces featuring the West African hoddu flute, the Armenian duduk, Arabian oud, as well as saz, riq, calabash, accordion and violin.

The focus is on the subtle over the showy and to emphasis that, the key concept behind Blind Note is that the entire concert took place in the dark, for both musicians and audience. The concert and its resulting album are in support of Belgian NGO Light of the World, a charity with opthalmological hospitals in Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania and Burkina Faso.

Some 30 instruments contribute to the album without sounding displaced or jarring across the 15 tracks, which, though short, merge and mutate from culture to culture, from region to region. Rather, they are enhanced by the supple acoustic fusion they are part of, and given an extra sensitivity for having to feel their way in the dark.