It is as though Emel Malthouthi didn’t grasp how close she was coming to cliche, how she teetered on a tight rope ready to trip at any second into unintentional self-parody. Twice. And how she managed to slip out of the cloak of hackdom through sheer skill. For one song “Stranger”, Emel mentioned she was inspired by Khalil Gibran’s poem “al-Awasif (The Storms)”. Gibran is one of those poets you get over somewhere around the age of 17, or give your life to soppiness. It is not really Gibran’s fault, if you can remove “The Prophet” from the hippie hosanna’s of the mid-20 th century, it isn’t that bad. But how do you do that? Well, it helps if there is a straight connection between Gibran’s song on the otherness of being here and Emel’s song on the otherness of exile (my interpretation, true). It works because it fires inside, maybe also because I can’t understand the words.
The other cliché was the penultimate song of Emel’s performance at Live@360 Thursday night, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” . The world needs another version of that song like it needs a hole in the head, and evoking Cohen and Saint Jeff Buckley doesn’t change that. So why after she completed the song did the audience finally shake off its Lincoln Center stuffiness to give it a rousing applause? Because, accompanying herself with just guitar, and strumming mostly chords, she sang that sucker into the ground and tap danced on it: a powerful, gorgeous voice, a great voice,. That would be enough but wait there is more:
- Emel rhymed the last words. Look, it’s Cohen’s song and if he wants to kill the rhyme for rhythm’s sake that’s his privilege, everybody else rhyme the damn work. It is “woodja” with “lujah” not “would you”. Good for her.
- Like “Stranger”, just under the surface there is a connection between what Emel is singing and who she is. Cohen is a great Jewish man, Lyon Cohen, founding president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, was his paternal Grandfather. Emel is a great Arab woman (and Tunisia is 98% Islamic), her music the theme to the Arab Spring and her politics a spitfire and surefire and huge element in her work. And, if Emel’s comments about homelessness in Paris is anything to go by, she will soon unleash her sense of justice and its opposite on the West. Self-Exiled from Tunisia in 2008 after her songs were banned from radio and performance , she became a voice for her people and something more, a voice for herself, a modern pop singer, comfortable with loops, beats, and computer programing.
All of this is clear during Mathlouthi’s 75 minute set at the Elibash Recital Hall. Made possible by the support of the Baisley Powell Elibash Fund, Live@365 introduces graduate students, and fans of World Music, to music from around the globe. Curated and produced by Isabel Soffer, who began her career 30 years ago, producing shows for the talents of King Sunny Ade, Nusrat Ali Khan (she handled a US tour for Khan as he broke through and recorded with Eddie Vedder!), and Youssou N’Dour. December 3rd’s Edmar Castaneda Trio performing South American Harp music will close the third season of Live@360.
Mathlouthi will be performing at Globalfest, January 15, with her new band, a programmer and a drummer, formed since she moved permanently to New York City before the summer this year. At Live@365, she took the band out for a spin and found them capable of sounding like everything from traditional Arabic music, to trip hop, to lo fi electronica, all held together by Emel’s superb voice, a great instrument which sounds Arabic in Arabic and European in English and French.
In 2010, the Tunisian people rose up against President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and overthrew him and this was followed by the country’s first free elections, Emel sang it and now comes the hard work for Tunisia.But what Tunisia did was justify both Emel’s anger at Tunisian lethargy towards and anger with the government to the place where they took her song “My Word Is Free” as the theme to their Uprising:
I am those who are free and never fear
I am the secrets that will never die
I am the voice of those who would not give in
I am the meaning amid the chaos
I am the right of the oppressed
That is sold by these dogs (people who are dogs)
Who rob the people of their daily bread
And slam the door in the face of ideas
I am those who are free and never fear
I am the secrets that will never die
I am the voice those who would not give in
I am free and my word is free
I am free and my word is free
Don’t forget the price of bread
And don’t forget the cause of our misery
And don’t forget who betrayed us in our time of need
I am those who are free and never fear
I am the secrets that will never die
I am the voice those who would not give in
I am the secret of the red rose
Whose color the years loved
Whose scent the rivers buried
And who sprouted as fire
Calling those who are free
I am a star shining in the darkness
I am a thorn in the throat of the oppressor
I am a wind touched by fire
I am the soul of those who are not forgotten
I am the voice of those who have not died
Let’s make clay out of steel
And build with it a new love
That becomes birds
That becomes a country/home
That becomes wind and rain
I am all the free people of the world put together
I am like a bullet
I am all the free people of the world put together
I am like a bullet
While Emel’s Tunisian protest songs might use modern production values, they sound like classical Arabic music, just replacing the Aoud with beats and synthetic shadings, looping her vocals and singing back to it like a child of Tune-Yards but nothing akin to Bjork or Tricky or even trip-hop as a form of music, even though the concert is subtitled “Arabic Trip-Hop”.
Perhaps the sense of transition in her music makes it less studiedly in one place. A cover of Bjork’s “All Is Full Of Love” , dedicated to her husband, suggest that while the revolution formed her, the revolution is over, Emel doesn’t sound Arabic as such, this is Indie Brooklyn electronica geared to the same audience who will be picking up the new Panda Bear album next year. Her upcoming album will begin a new story where the musicianship isn’t forced to bear the weight built into it. Maybe Dylan after the civil rights revolution is a good comparison.
In other words, Live@360 saw a pop star AND a protest singer.
Grade: B+
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