RABIH ABOU-KHALIL – ”A unique map of the music”

Each new album introduced an additional ingredient, a new window into unexplored territory. But not in the sense of a collector of exoticisms — rather as the result of creative encounters. From the combination of diverse cultural elements emerges something deeply personal and coherent. Not East versus West, not “world music” in the sense of a tourist showcase, not orientalism, but a distinct language that has absorbed all of these things and transformed them into something entirely its own.

His instrumental virtuosity is exceptional, often recommended as study material for jazz guitarists — remarkable when you consider that the oud has no frets like a guitar, that intonation depends entirely on the player’s fingers, and that the scale system used in Arabic music includes microtonal intervals absent from Western tempered music. His ballads, on the other hand, revive memories of the poetic dawn of Arab culture without ever sounding traditionalist or predictable.

One essential detail about the way Rabih Abou-Khalil works: he never records solo. Frequently citing Miles Davis as a major influence in his pursuit of a coherent ensemble sound, he has spent years building groups in which the distinction between soloist and accompanist disappears. Everyone improvises, everyone listens, everyone contributes to the collective texture. Among the musicians he has collaborated with are Sonny Fortune, Kenny Wheeler, Glenn Velez, and Steve Swallow — major figures in international jazz who found in Abou-Khalil’s musical context a degree of freedom few composers offer. Yet the most stable core of his music over the last two decades has been formed by musicians who grew alongside the project itself: accordionist Luciano Biondini, tubist Michel Godard, percussionist Jarrod Cagwin, and Sardinian saxophonist and vocalist Gavino Murgia.

Murgia is a particularly singular presence. His vocal style recalls Tibetan kargyraa throat singing, a technique in which a single vocalist produces multiple frequencies simultaneously, creating the effect of internal polyphony. The fact that a Sardinian musician singing in the style of traditional Sardinian music sounds perfectly natural alongside a Lebanese oud player, an Italian accordionist, and a French tubist is one of the clearest proofs that the logic of Abou-Khalil’s music operates beyond any geographical logic. Here, maps are replaced by a shared musical current.

An album like Hungry People — a title referring simultaneously to hunger for food, hunger for knowledge, and hunger for music — contains pieces called “Bankers’ Banquet,” “Fish and Chips and Mushy Peas,” and “Shrilling Chicken.” This is not superficial music. It is a deliberate poetics of absurdity. “Bankers’ Banquet,” through the playing of Godard and Murgia, evokes the grotesque dance of those who take everything from the poor. “Fish and Chips and Mushy Peas” was born from a concert in London where English food literally stuck to his fingers. “Shrilling Chicken” is not dedicated to fast food, but to a plastic toy chicken gifted to him by his sister, whose clucking introduces an infectious Latin rhythm. By now, that yellow rubber chicken has probably become famous in its own right.

Music can be serious and undoubtedly must be approached seriously to remain credible. But musicians themselves should not take themselves too seriously. When they do, music loses its charm, much like a person who is perpetually serious eventually becomes unbearably dull. Through irony, we often understand the world more clearly. In the Middle East especially, everything frequently seems profoundly surreal and contradictory. That is why his compositions often carry surprising titles — to leave the listener more room for imagination. There is no need for overly profound titles with familiar gravitas.

A less visible aspect of Abou-Khalil’s career, but one essential to understanding it, is the total control he assumed over his own music. He decided early on to produce and release his work independently, refusing the artistic compromises that subordination to a major label would have required. Every aspect of his work bears his personal signature — album cover design, recording quality, liner notes written with literary sensibility. His album covers are created in the style of traditional Arabic calligraphy and non-figurative art, a choice that is not decorative but conceptual. His music refuses geographical or stylistic categorization; the covers refuse illustration. The coherence is unmistakable.

This independence allowed him to undertake projects on a scale that an artist tied to a commercial label could scarcely have imagined. He composed for the Kronos Quartet, wrote for the BBC Concert Orchestra, collaborated with Ensemble Modern, composed for orchestras in Germany, Austria, and Macedonia, and worked with Silkroad Ensemble founded by Yo-Yo Ma. He also composed film music, including for Yara, an award-winning Turkish-German film directed by Yilmaz Arslan.

Rabih Abou-Khalil has received less attention from the mainstream music press than he deserves. Partly this is a consequence of his independence — he never had a marketing machine behind him — and partly because his music cannot easily be summarized in three words or three minutes. It is not jazz. It is not world music. It is not classical Arabic music. It is not chamber music. It is all of these things and something beyond them, mapped according to the coordinates of a deeply complex personality.

But for those who have discovered him, his music operates with rare force. It works because it does not try to be anything other than what it is — the expression of a man who grew up at the intersection of several worlds and chose not to choose between them, but to find a common language for all of them. It works because humor and seriousness coexist within it without canceling each other out. It works because a plastic chicken can coexist with the dreams of a dying city on the same album and both sound entirely believable. And it works because Abou-Khalil’s oud, in his hands, does not sound like an exotic instrument presented to a curious Western audience. It sounds like the only possible instrument for the music he makes.