Jerusalem In My Heart share stunning new track “Wa Ta’atalat Loughat Al Kalam Pt 3 & 4”

 
(Original photo by Hashem Al Madani & Akram Zaatari. Courtesy of the Arab Image Foundation. Re-photography and treatment by Charles-André Coderre)
Jerusalem In My Heart (JIMH) returns with a new track “Wa Ta’atalat Loughat Al Kalam Pt 3 & 4” taken from their forthcoming album Daqa’iq Tudaiq, the third full-length album from the Montréal-Beirut contemporary Arabic audio-visual duo.
 
About this particular piece, to reinterpret this cultural touchstone, originally composed by Mohammad Abdel Wahab, JIMH assembled a 15-piece orchestra in Beirut, enlisting the celebrated Montréal-Cairo musician/composer Sam Shalabi (Land Of Kush) as arranger and musical director for the session. Anchored by the stately hypnotic pace of plucked and percussive instruments (riq, santur, derbakeh, kanun), the piece unfolds with lush, languid, reverb-drenched manoeuvrings through virtuosic Maqam shifts (Oriental scales). JIMH’s Radwan Ghazi Moumneh’s melismatic lead vocals and electronic production sensibility pay homage to the genre’s documented historical recording traditions, while guiding things subtly and respectfully into new territories of sonic distortion and noised, artefact-laden transmission. The song’s original title (with lyrics penned in 1928 by the poet Ahmad Shawqi) translates as “Oh Neighbour Of The Valley”, but JIMH takes a different line from the original lyric as the new title for its orchestral-electronic re-interpretation. “Wa Ta’atalat Loughat Al Kalam” (“The Language Of Speech Has Broke Down”) is an expression of wordless love and transcendent communication between two lovers’ eyes in Shawqi’s poem; JIMH re-titles the song with this line, exploding the sentiment with more complexity, tragedy and socio-political meaning – also prefiguring the formal aesthetic ruptures JIMH bring to the piece itself. Daqa’iq Tudaiq is a masterful, mesmerising artistic statement and confirms Jerusalem In My Heart as one of the most engaged and forward-looking avant-Arabic projects at work in contemporary music today.

 
Returning to one of the previously shared tracks via Charles-André Coderre’s video for “Thahab, Mish Roujou’, Thahab”, it encapsulates the many fascinating strands at play in Daqa’iq Tudaiq.  Coderre is a leading practitioner of experimental analog filmmaking and his bespoke 16mm film treatments and live projections are a core component of Jerusalem In My Heart. For Daqa’iq Tudaiq, he has created a visual diary capturing the making of the album’s orchestral suite, shooting the 15 musicians assembled in Beirut during that recording session (a film to be screened at select engagements during JIMH’s forthcoming tour). Fragments of this 16mm footage – interspersed with archival images from the Arab Image Foundation which feature in the album artwork – are used in the “Thahab, Mish Roujou’, Thahab” video, offering a taste of Coderre’s unique film-processing techniques and cut-up/collage sensibility. We see a sequence of Beirut-based musicians filmed in living portraits, a subtle and abstract homage to indie artists at work in the Middle East, whose involvement was an essential political, cultural and economic act for Jerusalem In My Heart with this new album. Set to Radwan Ghazi Moumneh’s processed-vocal track – the title of which translates as “(The Act Of) Departing, Not Returning, Departing” – makes this an ode and testament of sorts to unsung artists tending the flames of modern-contemporary culture in a region of the world too often and abominably depicted in the West as barbaric and backward, and too often with real-world implications for the freedom of such artists to travel and collaborate otherwise, simply based on nationality.
 
CST137 • 180gLP / CD / DL
Release Date: 5 October 2018
FULL ALBUM INFO AND PREORDER LINK HERE
RIYL: Matar Mohammad, Pauline Oliveros,  Nadah El Shazly, Lucrecia Dalt, Arca, Chino Amobi, Fatima Al Qadiri, Tacita Dean, Stan Brakhage

 
Jerusalem In My Heart
Autumn 2018 Tour Dates, with new additions in Salford and Brighton
Oct 03 – Burdock, Toronto, ON 
Oct 04 – General Assembly, Ottawa, ON 
Oct 05 – PHI Centre, Montreal, QC 
Oct 12 – Pawilon, Poznan, PL 
Oct 13 – Spatif, Warsaw, PL 
Oct 16 – Re, Krakow, PL
Oct 19 – Zemlika Festival, Durbe, LT 
Nov 08 – Le Guess Who? Festival, Utretch, NL 
Nov 14 – Petit Bain, Paris, FR 
Nov 15 – Cafe Oto, London, UK 
Nov 16 – Eagle Inn, Salford, UK 
Nov 18 – Rose Hill Arts, Brighton, UK 

Nov 21 – Cinema Massimo, Torino, IT
Nov 23 – Arci Kroen, Verona, IT
Nov 24 – Transmissions Festival, Ravenna, IT
Nov 25 – MAT Laboratorio Urbano, Terlizzi, IT
Nov 30 – Ex Cinema Aramis, Milano, IT

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR IF HE DIES, IF IF IF IF IF IF
(Constellation • CST114 • September 2015)

 

“Daqa’iq Tudaiq is perhaps a revelation of sorrow that goes beyond all language – with JIMH provid- ing an articulate, angry and poetic voice for the mess we’re in.”
– NEW INTERNATIONALIST
 
“Suffice it to say that this collision of east and west arrives at the perfect time, hoping to raise the level of public discourse, building bridges as others build walls.” – A CLOSER LISTEN

Jerusalem In My Heart Official Site
Jerusalem In My Heart @ Constellation