Keyvan Chemirani, Dorsaf Hamdani, Juan Carmona, En Chordais - Melos (Chants de la Mediterranée) (2012)

In Greek melos evokes both combination and separation. For Keyvan Chemirani’s project the term was just right: it is both promise and metaphor, enunciation and summary.
Since he got into music more than twenty years ago, this percussionist of Iranian origin has often explored the possibilities of meetings between musicians of different Mediterranean traditions. He has above all discovered how “it’s wrong to believe that for a dish to become Mediterranean it’s enough to add a little olive oil.”
In Melos - Mediterranean songs, he brings together flamenco, Greek music and the traditions of the Maghreb, among others. “Everyone is moving towards the other, towards a very concrete and clearly defined space, but still keeping his or her own language, phrasing, intonations, all of that which makes you who you are.”
This is not about a search for the in-betweens, invariants or common points of all the musics of the region. This is also not about finding a compromise that is everywhere acceptable and audible, but about “trying to create meaning while retaining the strength of his or her own identity and artistic power.” On paper, the challenge is clear. But the pathway is not simple, it is one that should unite cultures in a humane, geographic space whose dimensions are similar to a trip from Sicily to Scandinavia...
Son of the great Djamchid Chemirani, Keyvan grew up surrounded by Persian music, a cousin of certain Mediterranean musical territories. But his knowledge of these cultures is mainly that of someone who is French: as a youngster he met Françoise Atlan in Aix-en-Provence, Juan Carmona in Aubagne, Montanaro Miqueu near Nice. And twenty years ago, at the end of his adolescence, he joined Pedro Aledo’s Mediterranean Ensemble, a pioneering attempt to bring together musicians from all over the Mediterranean. Keyvan’s journey has been that of a border jumper who likes to venture where the encounter is unpredictable: we remember his Rythme de la parole (Rhythm of speech) concerts and albums, a cycle mixing artists and music from three continents.
Actually, Melos - Mediterranean songs fits into a European programme for artistic and cultural cooperation between two sides: in the north, the festivals and producers in France, Germany and Greece; in the south, the energies of a Tunisia that has just made its revolution. And it’s from there that comes the great singer and musical explorer Dorsaf Hamdani. Coming to Melos with her violinist Mohamed Lassoued, she will dare everything: the forms, languages, rhythms, intervals, they always invite her to seek out.
She dares to dive in with the flamenco guitarist Juan Carmona, singer El Kiki, and percussionist Sergio Martinez. And she likes to explore the Greece of En Chordais, the trio from Thessaloniki. Keyvan Chemirani has also invited two of his usual accomplices, the Greek Periklis Papapétropoulos on the saz, bulgari and lafta, and the Moroccan player Mohammed Rochdi Mfarredj on the qanoun.
The eleven musicians work together during the summer in Djerba, Tunisia, where they give their first concert, just before the first live recording of Melos - Mediterranean songs at the Stimmen Festival, Lörrach, Germany.
The enterprise demands that the musicians go beyond the deceptive evidence of modalities or related melodic colours.
“Modalities, intervals, rhythms are so different,” observes Keyvan Chemirani. “The function of music and musicians is actually not the same everywhere in Mediterranean cultures. Our work needs to take that into account: there are things in common, things to share, but they are very different cultures.”
Between themselves, the musicians talk to one another in French, Spanish or English, no one language being spoken and understood by all. “For each area there had to be a musician who was proactive, a kind of artistic director for his or her culture. Moreover, what’s at stake is that we do not always play all together. On the contrary, I vary the number of people from title to title - four musicians here, eight there, then a few others do not play on two pieces... So that everyone reveals what he or she can do; you have to feel safe, not think you have to prove you’re a good musician. Virtuosity is not what matters most; the important thing is generosity in sharing vis-à-vis the public and other musicians.” That’s why Melos - Mediterranean songs is not a parade of champions of malouf (traditional Tunisian music) and record makers of flamenco. The challenge is to share new places, sometimes based on Keyvan Chemirani’s original themes, sometimes based on songs coming from the traditions of one another. At times a North African rhythm is the twin of a flamenco rhythm. But sometimes, too, the proximities are even more dramatic, as when it is discovered that a Greek song about the exile of women who have left to marry men who have already emigrated to the U.S. or Australia finds an echo in a Tunisian tale about the same historical situation and in the same tone.
Perhaps it is here, the greatest strength of this project: the music of the one becomes all the more easily the music of the other when it bears the embryonic form of this plural affiliation. Underground kinships that historians can sometimes explain, secret proximities, mutual enthusiasms, desires to share, collective breaths... As in a fable of initiation, the encounter makes possible much more than the list of guests. The whole is worth much more than the sum of the parts. This must be that which the Mediterranean sings: an arena made richer by the relationships it generates than by the accumulation of its treasures.

Bertrand Dicale

Keyvan Chemirani : direction artistique & percussions
Dorsaf Hamdani : chant
Mohamed Lassoued : violon, rebab
Mohammed Rochdi Mfarredj : qanoun
Drossos Koutsokostas : chant
Kyriakos Kalaitzidis : oud
Kyriakos Petras : violon
Periklis Papapetropoulos : saz, bulgari & lafta
Juan Carmona : guitare
El Kiki : chant
Sergio Martinez : cajon

Tracklist:
1.01 - Keyvan Chemirani, Dorsaf Hamdani, Juan Carmona, En Chordais - Melos (Ouverture) (7:02)
1.02 - Keyvan Chemirani, Dorsaf Hamdani, Juan Carmona, En Chordais - Une histoire de l'exil (8:00)
1.03 - Keyvan Chemirani, Dorsaf Hamdani, Juan Carmona, En Chordais - Nanas (6:49)
1.04 - Keyvan Chemirani, Dorsaf Hamdani, Juan Carmona, En Chordais - Karsilamas (4:34)
1.05 - Keyvan Chemirani, Dorsaf Hamdani, Juan Carmona, En Chordais - Hommage à Ibn Arabi (5:36)
1.06 - Keyvan Chemirani, Dorsaf Hamdani, Juan Carmona, En Chordais - Louanges (4:36)
1.07 - Keyvan Chemirani, Dorsaf Hamdani, Juan Carmona, En Chordais - Turkish Melos (4:31)
1.08 - Keyvan Chemirani, Dorsaf Hamdani, Juan Carmona, En Chordais - Suite tunisienne (8:13)
1.09 - Keyvan Chemirani, Dorsaf Hamdani, Juan Carmona, En Chordais - Gallop (7:43)
1.10 - Keyvan Chemirani, Dorsaf Hamdani, Juan Carmona, En Chordais - Ta Poulia (5:29)