Eclectic Doesn't Begin to Tell The Story

 

By Phil Reser

 

 

Born in Beirut, Lebanon to parents of Turkish, Syrian, Greek, and Armenian lineage, Abaji is a multi instrumentalist that backs it up with his personal collection of more than two hundred and fifty instruments from the Mediterranean region, South America, Europe and the Middle East.

 

He says, "I've gone through a whole life time of collecting and learning to play different instruments, and I'm still buying old instruments.  Sometimes friends tell me, "Hey, you don't know how to play those instruments! Why did you buy them?" My answer? "Because I don't know how to play them! "

 

His folksy, bluesy Mediterranean instrumentation reflects his multiple ethnic roots. He sings in five different languages, including French, Arabic, Greek, Armenian, and Turkish and has become familiar with instruments that range from the Greek bouzouki to Bali's bamboo flutes, via Bolivian charango and Mexican percussion.

 

Abaji's music is born of one of the Middle East's major tragedies, the twenty-year-long civil war in Lebanon. None of his personal or family blights have dampened his optimism and open-minded desire to study endless musical paths.

 

His music is a family tradition. Abaji started playing and experimenting on an inexpensive Chinese-built guitar alone in his Beirut bedroom, listening to Cat Stevens, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Bob Dylan while strains of Oum Kaltoum and Turkish music drifted in the window.

 

"Everything was music. When I was ten or eleven, I got really involved with sounds. Not just the guitar, but the sounds themselves." His use of the guitar was followed by other instruments: clarinet and percussions, oud and bouzouki and flutes brought from his travels all around the world.

 

Later he worked on the transformation of instruments to synthesize his musical passions: Indian music, Oriental music and Blues. An encounter with Gabriel Yared, the famous film music composer who listened to his first musical compositoiins and encouraged him. In 1996, Abaji composed his first album Paris-Beyrouth, singing already in French and Arabic and English. Then Bedouin' Blues where his song "Gibran" was discovered by the German world music label Network Medien.

 

He began a five-year collaboration with the label which included the CDs Oriental Voyage followed by Nomad Spirit, an album where other great musicians were invited to play on the collection: Armenian duduk player Djivan Gasparyan, Indian percussionist Ramesh Shotham and Moroccan musician Majid Bekkas.

 

Abaji has also worked as a composer for films and television with the French label Kosinus. He composed the music for Jean-Charles Deniaud's documentary "Le Temps des Otages" which was released last year.

 

Abaji's world visits have included meetings and collaborations with musicians on five different continents: examples being the Zulus of South Africa, the Indians of Mexico, the Gnawas of Morocco and the Kawwali of Lahore in Pakistan.

 

"The Blues are everywhere,
before America, it came from Africa,
but in Africa, it came from
the Eastern people who arrived with Islam."

 

He describes his music as a journey, exploring history and culture through some of the magical instruments that he experiments with. "On my first trip to South Africa, I bought some very nice percussions and kalimbas," he says.  "It is true that I'm crazy for instruments. Wherever I go, I buy them and try to play them in my own way, mixing traditional and creative music."

 

"There was this extraordinary night with these fantastic South African musicians.  I was invited to play two or three songs and I began with an improv of the bow played on my guitar, it is a kind of speciality that I do. The response from the audience was incredible."

 

Last year was a special year for Abaji because he returned to Lebanaon after an exile of thirty-three years for his first concert as well as releasing his latest album, Origine Orients, where he sings in the five languages of his family: French and Arabic and Greek and Turkish and Armenian.

 

Abaji says, "Everything is related to the Blues. People say the Blues were born in Africa, but really, they appeared when humanity was born."  He says, the Blues is a worldwide phenomenon, a sonic trade route stretching from Afghanistan to the U.S.  "The Blues are everywhere, before America, it came from Africa, but in Africa, it came from the Eastern people who arrived with Islam," he explains. "People talk of the banjo coming from Africa. But before that came the rebab from Afghanistan, the great-grandfather of the banjo."

 

Abaji has worked to capture his own trans-Mediterranean brand of the Blues, not only by creating sounds from new instruments, but by developing a unique approach in the studio.

 

For Origine Orients, he says he wanted to record all his songs in a single take, playing all the instruments himself, without overdubs.

 

He turned himself into a global one man band during the recording session, rotating through many different instruments, playing piano with the Colombian sax (Origine Orients), or oud-guitar with stomp boxes and rattles (Min Jouwwa), singing all the while in a deep voice reminiscent of one of his favorite folk/Blues performers, Greg Brown.

"In my head, I'm always searching for different musical compositions, opening doors, going left or right. It can be a bit tricky to live with sometimes, but I made Origine Orients exactly the way I wanted it, totally and completely, and hopefully now people can understand my music totally."