Artist: The Peeni Waali All Stars Posse
Title: Shab Tab
Label: Mensch Music
Genre: oriental mishmash?
Translations of the lyrics & other info in farsi
YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiI38FbjnLI&feature=player_embedded
CD review by Dawoud Kringle
The Persian calligraphy on the cover of ShabTab (a Farsi word meaning “Firefly”) by The Peeni Waali All Stars Posse does absolutely nothing to prepare the listener for the music this CD contains. As the first notes of the first track fill your ears, some may ask themselves “What is it? Is it Persian or Arabic? Is it ‘world?’ Is it jazz or new age? What?” And the inevitable answer is that it doesn’t matter; it’s simply beautiful and ingenious music.
The Peeni Waali All Stars Posse is Kurdistan born composer/improviser Alan Kushan (self-built chromatic santur, vocals & lyrics), and Fizzè (piccolo, flutes, Hammond B3 organ, accordion, percussion, tones & shades etc.).
Guest musicians are Hubert Osterwalder (guitar), Rico Rodriguez (trombone), Steve Gregory (saxophones), Shirley Hoffmann (tuba & euphonium), Raphael Zweifel (cello), Pascal Cuche (kitchen utensils, milkpots), Andri de Bros (clarinet), Roland Schiltknecht (hackbrett), Paul Haag (alphorn), Barbara Dennerlein (Hammond B3), Morgan Fisher (keyboards), Tobias Morgenstern (accordion), and Fritz Ostwald (clarinet section). Kushan was born in Kurdestan, but is a Canadian/American citizen. Shirley is Canadian, the others are Swiss, Jamaican, German and English.
The first track “Mother of Life” is a hypnotic entreaty. The song creates a state suggestive of a dream of an idyllic foray through an indefinable fantasy world, in search of the embodiment of an anthropomorphized Divine feminine principle.
The title track “Shab Tab” has a masculine, muscular whimsy about it. The song is driven by an insistent tuba laying down tonic and dominant; which gives way to triads and occasional breaks. Somewhat like a festival gathering of men engaged in some quasi-violent, yet friendly and comradely game; while birds and butterflies flutter and glide in and out of the madness, and women in the distance looking on at the men who refuse to act their age. The whole track is fun in a reckless way.
Other highlights abound. “Widmung an HaFis” has a sad, reflective mood that gives way to an acceptance of lifes’s trials, and an optimistic assurance that all will be well. “Shaman reggae in Jah Pan (Fukushima Dub)” is a surreal dance that gives the impression of two different time signatures in a drunken arm wrestling match while the wizard of an unearthly carnival directs the resulting chaos into a focused attempt to open a space – time portal, and selling tickets to the “Other Side.” “Five Bells over Tokyo” eloquently creates the mood of the spiritual and ontological conflict of an ultra-modern urban sprawl amid an ancient culture that, despite the technocratic invasion, refuses to die. “Shabnam” lurches around with its strange accents and jagged harmonies like a child’s nightmare. “Buddah on the Frogs” begins with Kushan offering an indefinable eastern chant, while Fizzè and the others paint a backdrop of some extraterrestrial swamp wherein dwells unimaginable dangers and ancient guardians of incomprehensible wisdom. “Ridaan” is the only track that grooves. It’s excruciating like confronting some enraged man who demands retribution over an unknown wrong, while Osterwalder’s
guitar howls and weeps its laments in a language all its own.
And nothing prepares the listener for the closing track, a cover of Robert Wyatt’s “Mass Medium.” Yet, after it’s incongruous beginning, it quietly succumbs to the unpredictable hyper-dimensional essence of the whole collection.
The music (with the exceptions of “ShabTab” by Gijs Levelt & Alec Kopyt, and “Mass Medium” by Robert Wyatt) was composed by Kushan and Fizzè. All of the musicians in this project gave stellar performances. All are instrumentalists of the highest order.
ShabTab is the work of genius. It is the type of music that demands multiple listens. One cannot help but wonder where this music came from. The Persian feel to some of the music owes nothing to Persian music. The klezmer feel that constantly seeks to draw attention to itself does not resemble klezmer. There are jazz elements that are suggestive of some strange twist on Henry Threadgil, yet does not sound at all like Threadgil. It is all clearly coming from an absolutely original place; and takes the listener to places he/she cannot possibly expect.
This CD an experience nobody should be without.
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