Ali Khattab
Sin País Nesma Music (46 mins)
Al-Andalus is a popular theme in the music of Arabic (especially North African) classical musicians. For more than 700 years, much of what is now Spain and Portugal was ruled under various Islamic caliphates, becoming renowned as the cultural centre of the Muslim world and attracting many visitors from the rest of Europe, creating the beginnings of Orientalism.
Ali Khattab is a flamenco guitarist from Egypt, and with Sin País, he aims to recreate the same atmosphere and passion that was experienced by those early Orientalists. Together with his group of Egyptian musicians, Khattab mixes flamenco and Arabic classical music together with a healthy amount of jazz, and it’s a project that produces mixed results. The album has some great tracks on it, but the band often tend to stray into ‘smooth’ territory, which robs the music of some of the excitement that is displayed elsewhere.
The stand-out areas of the album are those built upon the basis of the Egyptian music, with the flamenco and jazz working within the Arabic framework (such as the opener, 'Derviche'), rather than vice versa, which is where the music takes a turn towards the glossy and less interesting ('Alejandra').
This album lays promising groundwork for this fusion between flamenco and Arabic music, but in the end doesn’t quite deliver all it promises. Hopefully, this work can be built upon in further releases and result in some brilliant music. It’s not there yet though.