Migration

The core of the US-based ensemble on this album is the singer Maryam Yusefzadeh and guitarist Thomas Nordland, amid bass, piano and percussion. Yusefzadeh was born in Iran, and when she sings in Persian the languid sound of the language adds something to the soft timbre of the voice. That interaction is absent in the wordless pieces on the rest of the album, in which the jazzy music can verge on easy listening. They are saved by some innovative key changes in the instrumental accompaniment, and some residual emotional melody lines vocalised by Yusefzadeh, especially in the lamenting phrases of the song ‘Spirit’ and in ‘Rumi’, a wordless ode to the Persian Sufi mystic Rumi.

In the English-language pieces on Migration, the ensemble can convey its message in a language most of their immediate audience will understand; as in the title-track, with a heartrending spoken text about living in two worlds as a migrant. Here the music tones down the emotion of the text, conveying a mood of resignation rather than of anger.