| Rabih Abou-KhalilFor many artists living in the present period of increasingly manifest global cultural change, the stimulating effect on communication exerted by various facets of multiculturalism, the allure of the exotic, has long since become a routine part of everyday "frontline experience". This, in turn, has taken the image of what is "typically" Oriental, French or American – black or white – to absurd lengths. The abrupt split from the traditional homogenous cultural unit does not necessarily incur deracination; it can also represent both the possibility of an encounter and an opportunity to assess one’s own powers of judgement.
The musician and composer Rabih Abou-Khalil grew up in the cosmopolitan climate of Beirut in the sixties and seventies. As a child he learned to play the oud, the Arab short-neck lute which in the Arab world is the instrument of composition, enjoying the same overall popularity as do guitar and piano together in ours. The civil war in Lebanon forced Abou-Khalil to leave his country in 1978. He first studied classical flute at the Academy of Music in Munich under Professor Walther Theurer. This analytical preoccupation with the European classical tradition equipped him to also appreciate traditional Arab music from a theoretical perspective, opening his eyes to the possibility of operating simultaneously within divergent systems of musical coordinates. Yet while Abou-Khalil pursues his own approach, not clinging to established patterns of musical form, content and purpose, the aesthetic contours of his work nonetheless reflect Arab musical culture. Steering clear of a pathos-laden "Götterdämmerung" or the triviality of a Punch and Judy show, his compositions trace the meandering course of oriental tales, orbit in spiralling paths and take surprising turns which themselves culminate in resolutions of an equally surprising character.
Whereas most Arab instrumentalists are content to imitate human voice techniques, Abou-Khalil has set out to explore new ways of playing Arab instrumental music. Yet he does not fall into the trap of letting virtuosity become an end in itself: his desire to excel always takes second place to his innovative impulse and thirst to explore uncharted musical terrain. The audacious configuration of supposedly incongruous instruments and the apparently antagonistic clash of diverse musical styles might, on cursory inspection, seem quite arbitrary, but is in fact the result of a carefully considered concept on Abou-Khalil’s part. He brings together open-minded musicians from various cultural backgrounds who draw inspiration from their shared intuitive response to the challenge posed by interpreting Abou-Khalil’s music. In whatever line-up he chooses to perform his compositions, his works have been repeatedly fêted by rapturous audiences at festivals the world over, be it in Montreal, New York, Paris, Damascus or Taiwan.
Seen against the background of jazz’s current tendency towards expansiveness, Abou-Khalil’s compositions are singularly unusual in that, though based on an unfamilar system, they offer soloists a suitable framework in which to shape and elaborate their own ideas and inject them with very distinct rhythmical excitement. This synthesis of individuality and shared community – the classical ideal of jazz music – produces a musical texture capable of inventing unusual strategies to achieve an astonishingly succinct and artistically refreshing idiom.
As a composer and an instrumentalist, Rabih Abou-Khalil has already acquired a high reputation. This is not just because he might be regarded as being ahead of his time – but more importantly because his creative radius extends far beyond conventional notions of musicality. His diverse works all have one thing in common: they came about as the unmistakable stylistic phenomena of an intrepid act of overstepping borders, and elude all conventional categories. Abou-Khalil’s music thrives on creative encounters, not on exoticism. Emerging from a combination of quite diverse cultural elements, his work can be identified as highly individual and intensely coherent. This is neither a chimera nor some hybrid freak of nature – half-hare, half-duck –, but something which is very alive and very beautiful, the equivalent of a "blue camel". | Discography
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