Ganga

I was listening to a remix CD called “Remix the earth – I wanna get off” today.

Produced by Zeb Visini or “The spy from Cairo” as he likes to call himself these

days. Its really great stuff – funky oud playing and great beats in sweet harmony.

You can get the album/EP here. 

Here is what Douglas Heselgrave writes about him and his latest album “Secretly Famous”. 

For those seeking clarity or a doorway into the world of Middle Eastern music, The Spy from Cairo’s  album Secretly Famous will be greeted as a godsend. For the more uninitiated who have only a fleeting knowledge of the rhythms, cadences, time signatures and ineffable qualities of songs from this region, the music will still remain challenging, but one could not ask for a better guide than Moreno Visini – the artist formerly known as Zeb and currently recording as the Spy from Cairo – to usher us through the world of contemporary and traditional Islamic melody. The title of the album, Secretly Famous is most certainly an in joke referring to the fact that as The Spy From Cairo or Zeb  Visini,  has written hundreds of songs and produced more than ten albums over the past dozen or so years, yet he is still hardly a household name outside of DJ music circles. In addition to creating his own music, he is in a constant demand as a remix artist who in the past few years has gloriously fractured and expanded songs by musicians as diverse as a Billy Holiday, Baba Maal, Astor Piazolla and Novalima.

With Secretly Famous, The Spy from Cairo has woven together a dossier of songs that encompass many of the musical styles of the Middle East including those from African and Bedouin culture in an album that miraculously finds a way to sound cohesive in its diversity. As different as many of the cuts are from one another, under The Spy from Cairo’s curatorial hand, it’s very easy to hear a common melodic thread running through the endeavor.

The fact that Visini is not only a normal DJ, but also a talented musician, helps maintain the album’s great sense of unity. Not content to simply twirl knobs and add beats, he turns his talented hands to contribute more than credible efforts on a variety of instruments including the oud, chifteli, bass and moog synthesizer. The gifted Tunisian singer Galia Benali also appears throughout the album, adding her heartbreakingly lovely vocals to three of Secretly Famous’ best songs. Worth special mention is Ana Arabi, a song that she both wrote and sang that enjoins her listeners to understand that every Arab is not a terrorist.

Some of the songs features very straight ahead readings of traditional music fare. Tracks like ‘Nayphony’, ‘Kurdish Delight’ and ‘Leila’ make such understated use of some nice dubby effects and beats that they wouldn’t sound out of place in a collection of conventional Arab music. Yet, to say that Visini — as producer — simply stood aside during these songs and let the musicians play would do a disservice to the importance of his contributions. On each of these numbers, he carefully constructs backing beats and shifts the volume levels to emphasize certain elements of the tracks that fall within most listeners’ comfort level. In short, he allows listeners to identify similarities between the Jordanian, Kurdish and Egyptian sources with other musical styles such as reggae, funk and disco. The effect is to make the songs sound both familiar and challenging. Only a great  musician with such a thorough knowledge of music from that speciel region could make such auditory leaps sound so credible while still remaining very musically vital.

As someone who has long admired classical oud music, not surprisingly I was initially most drawn to songs like ‘Sufi Disco’, ‘Oud Funk’ and “Ala Shan’ which prominently feature the instrument. Of these, ‘Oud Funk’ is the most traditional sounding track, and to my ears is reminiscent of the Algerian Rai sounds popularized by Khaled. ‘Sufi Disco’ is very trance inducing and features a wonderful conversation between a bamboo flute and oud to lull listeners into a reflective state while ‘Ala Shan’ is a remix of a traditional song filtered through Studio One dub inflections and aesthetics.

The Spy from Cairo rounds off his excursion through Arab soundscapes by checking into how the music has been interpreted by those living in the Balkans, Africa and India. ‘Blood and Honey’ explores the juxtaposition between the allure of the beautiful Balkan countryside with the unfortunate history of war that has plagued the region in a powerful song once again sung by Galia Benali. Lighter and more uplifting are ‘Kembe’ — another oud dominated song delivered in a Bedouin style that should have fans of Tinariwen rocking in their seats – and ‘Indian Rope Trick’ a vocal and sitar duet that brings this exceptional collection of songs to a close.

In the very end, not hat  many people may have the chance to hear Secretly Famous, and that would be too bad. There is no question of the musical value of the material that The Spy from Cairo presents here. It is more that western culture has not yet opened the door and shown itself ready to assimilate these types of songs, and Visini may unfortunately find himself preaching to the converted. He has certainly done a wonderful job of arranging the songs on Secretly Famous in a way that maintains his musical integrity and is designed to appeal to the larger culture at the same time. The Spy from Cairo is both tricky and smart, and the deep espionage he’s undertaken here should be rewarded. He’s taken on the embedded resistance to this music and thenperformed a profound kind of subterfuge and melodic stealth that in a perfect world should gain him legions of fans. He has neither sold out to the dance floor, nor has he recorded museum music to be argued over by dusty academics on the library steps. These songs are very vital, thrilling and blessed with a pulse that can take listeners on a journey through the centuries to come up with an album that’s as good as almost anything being recorded on the planet today. (Courtesy Douglas Heselgrave)

<a href=”http://www.ganga.dk”>Ganga – Downbeat / Chill Out Music</a>

http://www.ganga.dk

http://www.flincmusic.com

http://www.myspace.com/gangalounge

http://www.youtube.com/gangalounge

http://www.last.fm/music/Ganga

http://www.ilike.com/artist/Ganga

http://www.gangamusic.info

http://www.bandbase.dk/ganga

http://www.reverbnation.com/ganga

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