New Andalusian Music, m. 1 Audio-CD, m. 1 Buch, 2 Teile, 2 Audio-CD (CD)

The Spanish language provides for two words translating Anda-
lusian, one being andaluz, the other andalusí. The first one refers
to the geographical region. The latter evokes the glorious past
when the Moors ruled the country and turned Andalusia into
Europe's cultural hotspot. The music on this album is definitely
andalusí - or rather an updated version of that age-old musical
interchange between North Africa and Southern Spain across
the Mediterranean.
The record owes its existence to sheer coincidence: writer
and anthropologist Cluse Krings brought the biography of an
8th century Moorish Emir published shortly before plus some
tapes by a group called Ranin recorded in Berlin. Ranin's front-
man, wonderful Egyptian singer and songwriter Nasser Kilada,
exiled in Berlin, offered his help. José Mateo, director of a local
60-piece orchestra assembled a band. Bjørn Driessen, a Belgian
businessman and drummer , helped with his Villalobos Record
Studios. Finally, magnificent singer Sensi Falán, at the moment
the most prominent voice of Almería's La Chanca gypsy district,
joined the production. And off went a musical adventure that
whirled around everyone you came near it.
Recording sessions would typically begin at around 9 pm and
run all through the night into a hot Andalusian sunrise. Cluse
would start with a sequence of his book. The musicians would
take the plot and the atmosphere for an inspiration discussing
how best to translate that scene into music. The first licks were
guitar professor at the Córdoba Supreme Music Academy and
gifted composer . Nasser Kilada and Moisés Santiago, an incredible
drum machine on the cajón and nephew to the flamenco guitar
legend Tomatito, would join in. There was total chaos, at times,
with José searching for scales on the clarinet, Rafael Fafi Molina
developing his bass lines, and Nasser writing lyrics in Arabic and
trying them out in loud voice. Isolated tracks were recorded,
some of them more than