Sons Árabes

Rabih Abou-Khalil - Traversing Cultural Barriers

As tradições musicais do mundo árabe fundem-se com uma improvização de jazz e uma técnica clássica europeia.

Born and raised in the cosmopolitan climate of Beirut in the sixties and seventies, Rabih Abou-Khalil leaned to play the oud, the Arabian short-necked lute, at the age of four. In the Arab world this instrument is as popular as the guitar or the piano in the West and is the composer's instrument par excellence. The Lebanese civil war forced him to leave his country in 1978 to study classical flute in the German city of Munich, where he was tutored at the Munich Academy of Music by Walther Theurer. The analytical preoccupation with the European classical tradition enabled him to grasp Arabic music from a further, theoretical position, opening his eyes to the possibility of operating simultaneously within musically divergent systems. Whereas Arab instrumentalists were content to imitate human voice techniques, Abou-Khalil set out to explore new ways of playing his instrument. Music critics have even recommended his accomplished technique as a "study for jazz guitarists"; his ballads, on the other hand, rekindle memories of the poetic dawn of Arabian culture, without ever sounding even remotely traditionalistic. ( retirado daqui)

Tenho ouvido e gostado muito de:

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As capas dos seus cd's são peculiares e muito bonitas sendo algumas delas desenhadas pelo próprio autor.( ver aqui )