Wallahi Le Zein! Wezin Jakwar & Guitar

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 21, 2011)
• Original Release Date: 2011
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Latitudes
• ASIN: B004ZF7G1W
  

By : Wallahi Le Zein! Wezin Jakwar ; Guitar (Artist)|Format:Audio CD
Price : $17.99

 

Wallahi Le Zein! Wezin Jakwar & Guitar

 

Customer Reviews

The classics of psychedelic rock are well known texts, and the search by hardcore music fanatics to find the unknowns have pretty much looked under every available rock. This collection however represents an unturned stone, and reveals a bounty of low-fi recordings of fuzzy intensity. While not "songs" in a conventional western sense, these are potent electric guitar explorations of sonic brilliance. You won't necessarily find them getting "stuck in your head" but you just might play the discs over and over and over, as I have. Very stripped dow, just guitar and some vocals, some hand claps, this is vibrant music indeed. It makes you realize that some of the most amazing music you've ever heard just might be some of the simplest. Not really "rock", but this collection rocks.

Powerful example of the wide range of music on the Mauritanian scene. Much of the stuff is mesmeric solo guitar, haunting and lonesome, a perfect antidote for those sick of the wimpy and depressing direction Western electric guitar has gone these last decades (for example, `indy' rock). Jakwar is a type of desert boogie which takes its name from the French Jaguar jet and reproduces its ferocity and power, bringing to mind the way Iggy Pop wanted to reproduce the sound of an old Ford Motor Plant in his early tunes. This is 2 Cs packed with wildly inventive circular riffs that explode into wailing crescendo, then drop back on a dime. Other cuts have stunning vocals, growly, passionate, then murmuring delicate, up and down and from side to side. The percussion work uses odd time-signatures (for example, 9/8), which makes the music all the more vibrant and alive.
We find here the original John Lee Hooker hypnosis, as well as a distorted jagged howl that almost resembles, say, the Germs or Can. Many of these guitarist soup up their instruments with phasers, giving a Djinn-voiced otherworldly sound. The whole thing has a rootless, nomadic feel, as if it could pick up and go anywhere and be welcomed. Sacred hospitality is also a law in music.
The up-front recording, no frills or slick anemia here, gives some impression of the excitement that a show with these musicians must generate. According to the superb accompanying booklet, the gigs last for hours and the giddy audiences need to be held back when things really start going. I can see why.
This brilliant collection is more proof of the supreme importance of Western Saharan music. Like Mali and Senegal, Mauritania is making some of the toughest and most beautiful music in the world.
Don't miss this. Every cut's a killer. `Deadly', as the old Aboriginal compliment goes.