Ya Balad

Album review

Bachar Mar-Khalifé has always taken from every genre, dismantled them, and then tamed them. In 2013, with his second album Who’s Gonna Get the Ball from Behind… (which earned him a Qobuzism!), Bachar, the son of Marcel, the legendary lutenist from Lebanon – and Rami – the founder of Aufgang – launched his minimalist revolution, and was duly courted by labels. A treatise on liberty, a totally unclassifiable opus, a generic collage. In short, it is a streamlined disc that is as eclectic and impossible to cage as its author, who is a combined pianist, percussionist, and singer… With his third album, entitled Ya Balad (Ô pays), it seems that, like his predecessors on the InFiné label, Bachar Mar-Khalifé seeks to evoke the proximity of his lost Lebanese land, narrating the nostalgia that has connected him to his roots, and the drive that causes him to travel.  Combining piano, harpsichord, percussion, drums, synthesizers, keytar, and the flute that is so popular in the Middle East and the Maghreb, this opus, released in October 2015, attempts a reconciliation between its different musical backgrounds (between percussion and piano), and dedicates itself to the Arabic world in terms of its central expression. ‘I spent ten days in the studio’, says Mar-Khalifé, ‘in the region of La Borie, in France, with my friend the sound engineer Joachim Olaya. This studio was found in a garden of rare beauty, and was conducive to hermetic isolation.’ It seems that this same beauty emanates from Ya Balad, a veritable musical no man’s land which strengthens the artistic identity of its author, and imposes its originality strongly. © CM/Qobuz