Guest
New album 'Jarak Qaribak' out June 9th, preorder/pre-save: Celebrated singer, musician and producer Dudu Tassa teams up with award-winning composer and guitarist Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead, The Smile) for new album ‘Jarak Qaribak’, bringing together vocalists and musicians from throughout the Middle East for a very special album of cross-border collaborations. “Jarak Qaribak” translates, more or less, as “Your Neighbour Is Your Friend”. It’s an expansive, inclusive sentiment. The songs on the album, and the singers, are drawn from all over the Middle East – and, in keeping with the theme established by the album’s title, each singer takes a turn at a tune from a country other than their own. Jonny says that his somewhat incongruous benchmark when assembling the tracks on “Jarak Qaribak” was “trying to imagine what Kraftwerk would have done if they’d been in Cairo in the 1970s”. Though Dudu says that he scrutinised every lyric as carefully as he could for even the vaguest hint of a political subtext, and insists – accurately – that “Jarak Qaribak” is an album of classic love songs, the romance and heartbreak they chronicle exclusively personal, neither Dudu nor Jonny are naïve enough to believe that nobody will project their own political prejudices onto this project, favourably or otherwise. “We didn’t want,” says Jonny, “to make out that we’re making any political point, but I do understand that as soon as you do anything in that part of the world it becomes political, even if it’s just artistic. Actually, possibly especially if it’s artistic.” Dudu, however, believes that it would have been an act of bad faith to make “Jarak Qaribak” any other way. “Israel,” he notes, “is a small country between all those countries, so we’re very influenced by those cultures and by that music. And a lot of us in Israel – like my family – are descended from people who came here from elsewhere in the Middle East, so everything gets mixed up.” “It’s a letter in a bottle, thrown into the ocean,” he decides. “Who will get it, who will hear it, I don’t know. But someone will love it.” Filmed Live at the Hamam in October 2022 Musicians: Dudu Tassa - Vocals, Guitar, Bass Jonny Greenwood - Bass, Guitar, Drum Machine Ariel Qassis - Qanun Yaniv Taichman - Oud Ben Dagovitch - Riq Oded Aloni - Darbuka Sefi Zisling - Cornet Yuval Peleg - Trumpet Maayan Milo - Trombone Tamar Shawki, Ariel Qassis, Dema Kablan, Jameel Faris - Backing Vocals Jarak Qaribak Team: Production Company: Davidson Artists Management Batel Pipano - Production Manager Roy Berkovich - DOP Roi Habany, Yaniv Vaknin, Ram Tsizling, Aviv Meseznik, Rami Katzav - Videographers Roy Biberman - Grip Yoav Osterreicher - Stage Manager Dana Tkatch, Elad Kalai, Dana Hazan, Yaniv Kalai - Space & Light Design and Execution Ram Tsizling - Lighting Ilan Harush - Recording Roy Langley - Recording Assistant Ben Essev - Guitar Tech Shai C Sivan - Mixing & Mastering Almog Maimoni - Editor Ilan Azoulay - Colourist Raz Danon - Stylist Marina Eskenazi - Makeup Idan Barir - Translation Management: Or Davidson, Brian Message #DuduTassa #JonnyGreenwood #JarakQaribak
