This is Arabic music. The quicker the listener accepts it, the bigger the favor he or she does for him/herself. The soloist of the album, Brian Prunka, thinks though that jazz is not so different from Arabic music – eg. “both prize improvisation and rhythm”; but as far as I’m concerned that assimilation is far too general. Arabic music has certain idiomatic features (tone system, rhythmic patterns, homophony etc.), and this album is no shy about them. Not to speak of the solo instrument: the pear-shaped, lute-like oud. Once the listener stops expecting more from the album than what it is, it becomes “arresting and compelling”, as the accompanying text puts it. Many of pieces are pleasantly joyful to live with, go with the current. This is a great disc to start getting used to Arabic music, both by the ear and mind.

For your info: With this album Brian Prunka became the next step in a loosely established tradition of fusing Arabic music and jazz, starting as early as 1958 when Thelonious Monk’s bass player, a New York native of Sudanese descent named Ahmed Abdul-Malik, put out Jazz Sahara, the first in a series of oud-meets-jazz records that he would release well into the 1960s with bands that combined die-hard jazzers like saxophonist Johnny Griffin with some of New York’s finest Arabic musicians.