Daqa'iq Tudaiq

Away from his work with various North American alt-rock bands such as Suuns and BIG|BRAVE, the Canadian-based composer/producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh has spent several years exploring his Lebanese musical heritage as Jerusalem in My Heart. His third album under this banner is his most ambitious avant-Arabic work yet, dominated by a reinterpretation of the Egyptian classic ‘Ya Garat Al Wadi’, originally composed and recorded by Mohammed Abdel Wahab. Moumneh retitles it ‘Wa'Ta'atalat Loghat Al Kalam’, taking a line from the song's original lyric that translates as ‘the language of speech has broken down.’ In Wahab's version, the lyric was an expression of love transcending words, but Moumneh gives it added layers of socio-political meaning for the 21st-century Arabic diaspora, as he augments his 15-piece Beirut orchestra (of riq, santur, darbukaandqanun) with subtle electronic effects.

The other four tracks, without orchestra, are even more experimental, particularly the percussive, loop-driven instrumental ‘Bein Ithnein’ and the unnerving processed vocals on ‘Thahab, Mish Roujou, Thahab’. It is brave, or possibly foolhardy, to put out the record with only Arabic script and a pic of a keffiyah-wearing figure toting an AK-47 on the cover, however.