It’s been a little over a year since the inaugural release of Maqām Records, musician Amir ElSaffar‘s label focused on old and new music based in various Arabic and adjacent modal traditions. New to the roster is Firas Zreik, a much-acclaimed composer and kanunist who draws on his Palestinian roots in his art. Zreik’s new album Tarabesque is a sparkling example of this work and a brilliant addition to Maqām’s growing repertoire. A cross-genre record flowing from a transnational confluence of instruments and styles, Tarabesque is a kind of platonic ideal of some sector of contemporary jazz: dialogic, complex, and made so with a great sense of purpose.
As the album’s name implies, Tarabesque as a project centers around the idea of tarab, an affective state of ecstasy produced in the process of making certain music and felt by musicians and audience in tandem. Often translated roughly as enchantment, tarab generally emerges within live performance contexts, dependent as it is on relationships between spaces and participants. Whether that can be captured in a recording is not my call.
What I do know is that Zreik keeps this notion and the sounds historically associated with it very much at the forefront in his arrangements on Tarabesque, even as he incorporates staples of American and global jazz. In addition to Zreik’s own kanun (a large zither often used in musical representations of the Middle East), the ensemble here includes oud (Anan Makhoul), violin (Layth Siddiq), nay and saxophone (Gideon Forbes), keys (Jemina Brechoire), guitar (Ramiro Marziani), bass (John Murchison), percussion (Alber Baseel), and drums (Clemens Grassman). Though it’s not a short list, it’s a tight ensemble in which everyone contributes significantly to the overall shapes of the work.
There’s a lot of energy in the seven tracks of Tarabesque, centered around (but never limited to) Zreik’s irrepressible strings. This manifests in several different ways. The sedate solo kanun track “Jiharkah” is simple in concept and still dense with nimble playing. The final song, “Longa”, invokes a host of rollicking Mediterranean party dances, with quick exchanges between Zreik’s strings and Forbes’ nay in syncopation with Murchison’s bass. The rest of the album falls somewhere between these extremes in terms of pace.
Opening track “Sanasel” has the most classic jazz hues, Forbes taking up sax for some fantastic solos. “Ambivalent” winds around and around, Brechoire’s piano work especially poignant under Zreik’s sprightly plucking. “Fields of Figs” is smooth, rich: musical and emotional abundance. “Samai Saba” has a stately aura and focuses on uplifting the heterophonic textures of the takht ensemble at the core of the group. The longest track on the album, penultimate cut “Hangala” gives everyone a chance to shine before the quick closer.
Even at this early stage of Maqām’s development (this is its third release), the label is proving itself to be not only a wellspring of Arabic and West Asian traditions but of some of the freshest jazz in the industry. Firas Zreik’s thought, charisma, and virtuosity are remarkable on Tarabesque, as is the chemistry of his ensemble. This is an edifying and sincerely uplifting gem of an album.