Farah Kaddour & Marwan Tohme - Ghazel (Ruptured)

The Slow Music Movement
Jul 31
2 min read

Updated: Aug 1

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's July 27th Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

This is the cover for Farah Kaddour & Marwan Tohme's, Ghazel album on Ruptured Records. It shows orange roses on a light background, with the text Ghazel, Farah Kaddour, Marwan Tohme, and Arabic script, creating a warm, artistic mood.

Whilst in Lebanon it’s a good time to shine further light on the excellent Ruptured Records catalogue. The label is run by radio host and DJ Ziad Nawfal alongside sound engineer and studio owner Fadi Tabbal, who have been transmitting their many projects, as well music from alternative artists across the MENA region to the world since 2008. They’re a welcome antidote to the accepted notions of music from the region which are too often shaped by the Western music press, promoters and distributors, and which too often focus on more traditional sounds and tired fusions.

Although both Farah Kaddour and Marwan Tohme have boundary bashing form - both being members of the darker, experimental rock outfit SANAM, they’ve taken a break from melting minds to bring the traditional string sounds of the region into the twenty first century by fusing them with ambient electronica.

Kaddour is an accomplished buzuq player, whilst Tohme is adept at electronic trickery alongside being a useful guitarist, and this album, recorded between the Tunefork studio in Beirut and Tohme's home in the Lebanese mountains, is a perfect melting pot of rural, urban, traditional and innovative.

The opening track “Kayfa Taltaqi el-Qulub” translates as “How Hearts Meet” and is the perfect showcase for Kaddour’s evocative string work that leaves the regional setting for this recording in no doubt, as she serenades her homeland over a looped refrain and gradually encroaching, ultimately distracting electronic intervention that eventually realises it might have overstepped the mark and politely steps aside to wisely let the lady have her uninterrupted say once more.

The LP title track sees the pair intertwine acoustic instruments and celebrate their shared musical history, the buzuq and guitar making a good case for geo-politics to follow suit. Deeming they’ve just gone too traditional, “Bissi” introduces some looped percussion and uneasy effects as the tune creeps around Beirut’s shadier neighbourhoods late at night. “Wulidna Fil-Barzakh” (“We Were Born in Purgatory”) see the country’s tensions rise to the surface in a wave of dramatic synths and edgy electronics, the buzuq too romantic at heart to make an appearance during this slice of war-torn electronica. The album concludes with the more contemplative “Naghmat Al-Ra’i”; Kaddour musing about life, the notes given space to breathe and the listener time to contemplate them, whilst Tohme’s electronics first rumble, then rise in an agitated swarm to shatter the thoughtful mood before dissipating just as quickly to allow Kaddour to ride the low frequency pulse back to the safety of her home.