Jarak Qaribak review: Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa deliver soaring debut

The celebration of Arabic love songs may be one of the most memorable records of the year

Dudu Tassa, Jonny Greenwood and Karrar Alsaad perform Ya Mughir al-Ghazala. Photo: World Circuit Records

In Jarak Qaribak, musicians Jonny Greenwood and Dudu Tassa collaborate with a series of Arabic singers to pay tribute to Middle Eastern songs of love.

Released on Friday, the debut album by the duo may be one of the most memorable records of the year. It blends electronic rhythms, overdriven guitars and orchestral flourishes that are reminiscent of the big bands behind many Middle Eastern singers of the 20th century.

The album’s influences are not far off.

Jarak Qaribak, which is Arabic for Your neighbour is your friend, reimagines songs by Egyptian singer Mohammed Abdel Wahab, Emirati singer Mehad Hamad, and Algerian singer Ahmed Waby, among others.

Even before their collaboration on Jarak Qaribak, Tassa and Greenwood had both shown a penchant for reinterpreting folk songs.

English musician Greenwood – of Radiohead and The Smile fame – worked with Indian ensemble The Rajasthan Express and Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur on the 2015 album Junun. It was recorded in a studio in Rajasthan and featured only local musicians.

The Rajasthan Express comprises musicians from various backgrounds, including from Qawwali and Muslim Roma traditions, as well as Sufis from Southeast Asia. The album shied away from traditional western arrangements. The compositions, instead, took cues from North Indian ragas.

With Jarak Qaribak, Greenwood says that his approach to assembling the songs was to imagine what Kraftwerk – a pioneering electronic band – would have done if they’d been in Cairo in the 1970s.

For his part, Tassa has long been known for his charged renditions of Arabic folk songs. With his band, Dudu Tassa and the Kuwaitis, the Israeli musician has been refashioning old Iraqi and Kuwaiti songs for more than a decade – many of them originally composed by Tassa’s grandfather and great-uncle Saleh and Daoud Al-Kuwaity.

Tassa has evident ties to the Middle East and his appreciation for Arabic songs stems from his Iraqi and Kuwaiti roots. Greenwood, on the other hand, has married into an Israeli family that was originally from Egypt and Iraq.

“Israel is a small country between all those countries, so we’re very influenced by those cultures and by that music,” Tassa says on the official website of Jarak Qaribak. “A lot of us in Israel – like my family – are descended from people who came here from elsewhere in the Middle East, so everything gets mixed up.”

Tassa called the album “a letter in a bottle, thrown into the ocean. Who will get it, who will hear it, I don’t know. But someone will love it.”

Jarak Qaribak opens with Djit Nishrab, a lovelorn song originally written in the 1940s by Algerian singer Ahmed Wahby. It begins with a violin wafting in semitones on top of a pulsating electronic rhythm before Egyptian singer Ahmed Doma takes the forefront with vocals that inflict the senses like the great tarab singers of the last century. The track effectively sets the mood for the whole album with a climax of traditional percussions, oud phrases and a brass section.

The second track, Ashufak Shay, is one of its most rousing – certainly worthy of day-long looping. Beginning with a drizzle of piano notes, a capering string section then sets the primary theme before Rashid Al Najjar elevates the song with his soaring tenor. The track was originally written by Emirati singer Mehad Hamad, who is himself known for interpretations of Emirati folk songs.

For many listeners in the Middle East, the sonic make-up of Jarak Qaribak will seem familiar. Yet, there are surprises in every track. Abdel Wahab’s Leylet Hub is given a contemporary treatment with an effervescent, popping drum track, reeling bass line and contemplative brass section. Vocals by Mohsinne Salaheddine, meanwhile, would’ve certainly done the late legendary Egyptian crooner proud.

The album doesn’t wane in energy as it pushes forward. In the ballad Ahibak – a reverie-like interpretation of Daoud Akram’s song – Safae Essafi, a singer living in Dubai, lends her velvety vocals to a medley of geometric drum patterns and more traditional orchestral harmonies.

Ya ‘Anid Ya Yaba brings aboard Syrian singer Lynn Adib, renowned for her long-drawn, almost-operatic vocals as well as her regional collaborations that include Bedouin Burger, a Paris-based project she formed with Lebanese underground musician Zeid Hamdan. Between the electronic beats – that the ear, seven tracks on, has become comfortably ensconced in – and the slippery upright bass melody, is an uplifting rendition of a traditional Middle Eastern song.

All in all, Jarak Qaribak will no doubt become one of the more enduring albums of 2023. Its respectful treatment of folk classics seeks to celebrate the originals and contains much of their emotive essences.

Each of the nine tracks on the album is a highlight in its own right. Though only a few days old, Jarak Qaribak marks a charged and confident collaboration between Greenwood and Tassa that already has us yearning for more.