Parfum de Jasmin

There is something very Western-centric and media-friendly about the fashion for naming popular uprisings after colours, seasons and horticulture. It’s a trend with its roots in the Prague Spring of the late 1960s (from which the Arab Spring derived its punning name), and it went viral with the orange, rose and cedar revolts of the 2000s. Yet while such labels succeed in placing these events in Western minds bombarded by information media, they are often not relevant to the people themselves. That caveat leads one to suspect that Med Fusion Orchester’s album Parfum de Jasmin is directed more at a European audience, intoxicated by scenes of liberty blossoming in North Africa. The orchestra consists of eight graduates from the Higher Institute of Music in the Tunisian city of Sfax. It’s the town from which the rapper El Général hailed, he who so eloquently denounced president Ben Ali in his track ‘Rais Lebled’ and got jailed for his efforts. Sadly, this group is far from the raw energy of the Tunisian street. Instead, these institutionally trained musicians produce music that is pleasant but comfortable. Qanun player Houcem Masmoudi, flautist Youness Kassis and drummer Ayman Ben Atitallah give a refined Arabic air to the jazz-focused core of piano and strings. The sound is easy on the ear, but has a light pan-Mediterraneanism that, to give it a political analogy, is closer to the Euro-friendly Ben Ali years than the raucous homegrown revolution its name embraces.