Majid Bekkas

Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic XVII: Gnawa World BluesCD / Vinyl / digitalMajid Bekkas guembri, oud & vocalsNguyên Lê guitar & backing vocalsHamid Drake drums Three continents, three musical world citizens. Morocco-born Majid Bekkas, Franco-Vietnamese Nguyên Lê and American Hamid Drake have combined their astonishing musicality, their origins and their global experiences to create a captivating live concert programme encompassing desert blues, Gnawa trance, Middle Eastern jazz, sixties rock and Far Eastern serenity. Voice, oud and guembri (bass lute)...electric guitar with a wide spectrum of shimmering timbres...a percussion arsenal between subtlety and physicality – these are the tools deployed here by three remarkable, world-class, globe-trotting protagonists... Majid Bekkas's innovations have cast a wholly new light onto the fascinating music and culture of the Gnawa minority in Morocco, and he has also worked with jazz greats such as Joachim Kühn, Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders, and, most recently, with the Magic Spirit Quartet, whose recordings for ACT have built a bridge between Nordic and African sound worlds. Among the very great guitarists of our time, Nguyên Lê stands out as one of the most exciting and individual personalities, having developed a unique style in which Southeast Asian melodies, complex jazz harmonies and highly virtuoso excursions into rock naturally co-exist. Chicago-born Hamid Drake, with his intuitive feel for many of the world’s percussion traditions and his background of varied collaborations from Don Cherry over Peter Brötzmann to Melba Moore, provides an improbably wide range of rhythmic impulses.The repertoire which the three performed so memorably on 10 November 2024 reflects a tremendous wealth of ideas which fuse and coalesce. The opening track ‘Gore Blues has a reflective blues melody played in unison by oud and voice over a strumming guitar... then we hear an animated, five-note ‘trialogue’ between lute, electric guitar and delicate cymbal work. Then, with ‘Mrahba’, the trio enters the realm of traditional Gnawa music: here are Lê and Drake creating a rocky, funky mood, while Bekkas’s powerful incantations over a rearing bass riff create a trance. ‘Boom Boom’ - in tribute to John Lee Hooker - gets going like a heavy, rolling, yet organic blues machine – the way in which Bekkas breaks away from his roots here is utterly astonishing. 'Ascending Dragon' offers a meditative interlude... thumb piano… a melody thoughtfully hummed, Nguyên Lê ornamenting the melodic line brilliantly. Then, as a high-spirited antidote to this, Bekkas, Lê and Drake interpret Jimi Hendrix's ‘Purple Haze’, initially very close to the original, before the new middle section recalls the guitar hero's journey to the Gnawa stronghold of Essaouira in July 1969. ‘Tair’ starts as a free oud improvisation, which then stimulates the interplay of the two string masters. And in the finale “Sidi Bouganga”, the trio ignites the joyful side of the Gnawa language with a hymn-like, exuberant tone.Three stellar musicians have drawn on their musical heritages – and created a celebration of human kinship which is breathtakingly alive. Credits: Recorded live at Philharmonie Berlin on November 10, 2024 Recorded, mixed and mastered by Klaus ScheuermannCover art by Mohamed Melehi © 1969 (untitled), Casablanca Art School © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

Brötzmann - Bekkas - Drake - Catching GhostsCD / Vinyl / digital Peter Brötzmann tenor saxophone & clarinet Majid Bekkas guembri & voice Hamid Drake drums & percussion The 2022 Jazzfest Berlin performance by revered, iconoclastic reedist Peter Brötzmann, Moroccan Gnaoua adept Majid Bekkas playing the two-stringed, camelskin-backed guembri, and Chicago-bred drummer Hamid Drake, documented as Catching Ghosts, is historic. It’s a return to performance by 81-year-old Brötzmann after pandemic years affected his health, and recalls his prior Gnaouan encounters, like The Catch of a Ghost (2019) with guembri master Maâlem Moukhtar Gania, and a 1996 meet with Maâlem Mahmoud Gania at Austria’s Music Unlimited Festival (Hamid there both times). It also is a triumph of musical universalism, made in the moment without even one rehearsal, proving that “free” spontaneous interactions can transcend cultural lines, still deriving power from age-old traditions. Improvising on incantations from Gnaoua liturgy, Brötzmann, Bekkas and Drake convey “Chalaba,” “Mawama,” “Hamchia” and “Balini” so directly a listener without Arabic or Berber gets the messages. Hear saxophone, clarinet and tárogató cries as summons and statements; feel drums awaken inner impulses; sense strings, plucked and strummed, tying it all together, and a voice stressing the songs’ immediacy. But make no mistake: The music’s vitality and credibility are earned by its players’ decades of practice, career-long study of heritage, and embrace the paradox that the past must be reinterpreted, anew. These Gnaouan chants have endured numerous modern Arabic adaptations, and jazz giants Ornette Coleman, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and Randy Weston have previously applied themselves to similar crossovers. But for Brötzmann, Europe’s exemplar of unfettered blowing, grapple with such material so deeply is to witness its greatest stretch yet, entering new territory. “My approach to these themes is get in and disturb them, so other things happen,” Brötzmann explains. “I’m not thinking about scales or harmonies. I follow Bekkas, and when he changes, I do something against it to make the music interesting to me. I believe the dialectic is a good way to make something new, coming from tension. I need that in any sort of playing. “From my youngest years I was interested in not doing what people said to do. I knew jazz history, and knew too I’m not a Black guy or American. I’m European, with my own background and arts education. I grew up after World War II, so it was natural to work against what was established. In the ‘60s we still fought leftovers from the Nazi times. Jazz has always been a peoples’ music, standing with the underdogs. With the rise again of nationalism -- which I did not think would happen in my lifetime -- we have to see that jazz stands for that again.” Majid Bekkas aligns himself with Brötzmann, championing a revival of the Gnaoua culture. Its origins trace to the historic uneasy integration of freed Black slaves into Moroccan Islamic society; the music, even given religious connotations, resembles American blues. Although educated in classical guitar at Rabat’s Conservatory of Music and Dance, Bekkas at a teen played pop “chaabi style” banjo, but shifted to guembri as instructed by Ba Houmane, a street drummer in his hometown, Sale. Founding the Gnaoua Blue Band in 1990, Bekka has steadily incorporated blues, jazz, fusion and pop elements, appearing with Joachim Kuhn and Klaus Doldinger’s band Passport among others, since 1996 being co-artistic director of Rabat’s Jazz au Chellah Festival. Brötzmann says, “I’ve played with the strongest American bassists, and to me the Moroccans do something just as complicated, with similar drive. Bekkas and Hamid have a good rhythmic understanding, and when Bekkas adds his voice, all is fine.” Drake’s contributions cannot be overstated. An equal in this trio and longtime partner with Brötzmann in such bands as the quartet Die Like a Dog and the Chicago Tentet, Hamid orchestrates the open format, making drama of metrical and timbral matters. Consequently, each track of Catching Ghosts tells its own story, clear to audiences anywhere attentive to gestures that signify though they are pre-linguistic. That suits Peter Brötzmann just fine. In response to reduced lung capacity resulting in part from smoking as a youth, Brötzmann says he has adjusted his signature projection. “I don’t have to play all high energy anymore,” says the German who shook up the jazz world in 1968 with his roaring album Machine Gun. “Now I’m more interested in dynamics and sound.” Those are tangible, if nearly ephemeral qualities. Seductive tools for Catching Ghosts. Credits: Recorded live at Berliner Festspiele / Jazzfest Berlin Haus der Berliner Festspiele, 04.11.2022 Produced by the artists

Various Artists - Magic Moments 13CD / digitalBest Jazzinfotainment: 16 tracks, 75 minutes of music in the Spirit of Jazz, including Nils Landgren & Jan Lundgren, Wolfgang Haffner,Ulf Wakenius, Solveig Slettahjell, Grégoire Maret, Vincent Peirani & Emile Parisien, Kadri Voorand, Viktoria Tolstoy, Jazzrausch Bigband.Credits: Compilation by Siggi Loch Mastered by Klaus Scheuermann

Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic X - East - WestCD / digital Majid Bekkas guembri & vocals Nguyên Lê e-guitar NES Nesrine vocals & cello Matthieu Saglio cello & vocals David Gadea percussion Black String Yoon Jeong Heo e-guitarGeomungo Jean Oh e-guitar Aram Lee / daegeum & yanggeum Min Wang Hwang ajaeng & janggu ‘East meets West’ was the central theme in the life of Nesuhi Ertegün (1917-1989). He grew up as the son of the Turkish Ambassador in Washington, and Nesuhi himself was to become an ambassador too: one of the most important producers and advocates that jazz has ever had. On the 30th anniversary of his death, Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic curator Siggi Loch dedicated an evening to commemorating this friend and mentor who had been like a father to him. For Nesuhi, jazz had no borders; this concert was a posthumous validation of the farsightedness of that vision. On the cultural world map, East-West today is synonymous with the tense relationship between Europe and Asia, between Occident and Orient. From the Renaissance to the present day, there have been repeated waves of enthusiasm for Eastern culture in the West. And for the hundred years or so that jazz has existed, it too has always tended to absorb elements from other cultures into its stylistic vocabulary. Conversely, artists from Eastern cultures have embraced jazz, fused it with their own traditions, revealing new and fascinating expressive possibilities. Black String, the South Korean quartet led by geomungo player Yoon Jeong Heo, takes a 1500-year old Korean musical tradition and brings it into the modern era and into jazz in way which is totally compelling artistically. NES Trio with charismatic singer/cellist Nesrine Belmokh has a distinctive sound drawn from the musical melting pot of the Mediterranean region. A special guest is the Moroccan oud and guembri player Majid Bekkas, who has often brought the Gnawa blues of his homeland into projects ranging from “folklore imaginaire” to avantgarde jazz. And providing the perfect East-West link is French-Vietnamese guitarist Nguyên Lê, whose go-between role combin-ing the worlds of jazz, rock and Asian folk music has been pio-neering. Together they celebrate a meeting of East and West. Nesui Ertegün would have been overjoyed. Credits: Recorded live in concert by Klaus Scheuermann at the Berlin Philharmonie (KMS), November 20, 2019 Mixed and mastered by Klaus Scheuermann Curated and produced by Siggi Loch Cover art by Philip Taaffe, Isfahan (2009), by courtesy of Jablonka Galerie Cologne

Majid Bekkas - Magic Spirit QuartetCD / digital Majid Bekkas vocals, guembri, oud & electric guitar Goran Kajfeš trumpet, electric trumpet & percussion Jesper Nordenström piano, organ, synthesizers & spinet piano Stefan Pasborg drums, percussion & tuned gongs Majid Bekkas and Magic Spirit Quartet blend North African Gnawa music with Scandinavian jazz, mysticism, and ambient sounds for a captivating musical journey.Credits: Recorded by Thomas Vang at The Village Recording Studio in Copenhagen, July 12 &13, 2018 and at Stureparken Studio, Stockholm Chaouki Gnaoua family, backing vocals and qarqabou on 01 & 03, recorded at MB Studio in Sale, Morocco Mixed by Johannes Berglund Mastered by Klaus Scheuermann Produced by Magic Spirit Quartet Cover art by Sonia Delaunay: Tango Magic City, 1913 © Pracusa 20190305

Joachim Kühn - Voodoo SenseCD / digital Joachim Kühn piano Majid Bekkas guembri, voc & kalimba (on 1), balafon (on 4) Ramon Lopez drums & percussion Special Guests: Archie Shepp tenor sax (on 1, 3 & 4) Kouassi Bessan Joseph talking drum & zinu congas (on 1, 2 &4), voc (on 2) Gouria Danielle percussion (on 1 & 4), vocals (on 2) Dally Jean Eric calabas (on 1) Gilles Ahadji jembe (on 1 & 4) Abdessadek Bounhar karkabou (on 1, 2 & 4) There are some jazz musicians who sound old when they are young. Joachim Kühn, the most eminent international pianist in the history of German jazz, has retained his childlike curiosity even at the age of 69, and that keeps him youthful. With his open-mindedness and his sense for the magic of music he is not only one of the greatest experimenters but also one of the most important integrative figures in jazz. Whether playing together with greats of classical jazz such as Stan Getz, Joe Henderson and Michael Brecker, with American and European members of the avant-garde such as Ornette Coleman, Michel Portal and his own brother Rolf Kühn, with world musicians like Rabih Abou-Khalil, young tearaways like Michael Wollny and Adam Baldych or even in a highly reputed Bach project with the St. Thomas Boys' Choir of Leipzig, whether performing solo or in a big band – Kühn loves surprising encounters. This love is reinforced by his new ACT album "Voodoo Sense", on which he once again acts as a catalyst, bringing together people and their music that had previously inhabited entirely different spheres and in doing so fusing together the past, present and future. On "Voodoo Sense" he revives an association that has spanned almost 50 years, ties it together with his current band, and then has both set off for new frontiers with young African musicians scouting the way. Kühn first experienced the saxophonist Archie Shepp live in 1967 in New York's Village Vanguard club. "The 'New Thing' that he and Coltrane introduced into jazz, especially rhythmically, was the expression of exactly what I was feeling, and reassured me that I was on the right track with my ideas," Kühn recalls. The paths of these kindred spirits, who both keep their music universal and open to influences – in Shepp's case even in an explicitly political sense – often crossed after that. In 2010 there was an extended collaboration as a duet, which culminated in the album "Wo!man" on Shepp's own Archieball label. It was a duet that critics showered with superlatives: London's iconic critic Geoffrey Winston spoke of an "intense musical masterclass", Hans-Jürgen Linke wrote in the Frankfurter Rundschau that this duet "is something like the original of an Afro-American late-Romanesque, sound-intensive, finely structured, eruptive culture of improvisation in a high-tension space between fast-paced presence and respectful retrospection." So what could have been more logical than to add Shepp to Kühn's "Wüstenjazz" trio with the Moroccan guembri, oud virtuoso and vocalist Majid Bekkas, and the Spanish percussionist and drummer Ramon Lopez. Especially as this acclaimed trio, in existence since 2003 and award-winning for its four ACT albums, "is what gives me the most and the top priority for the three of us," as Kühn notes. Furthermore, Kühn wanted to give "Voodoo Sense" a bigger scope, just as he had the previous Wüstenjazz projects. So Bekkas again put together a hand-picked team of African percussionists and singers in Danielle Gouria, Jean Eric Dally, Gilles Ahadji and Bounhar Abdessadek, led by the Talking Drum master Kouassi Bessan Joseph, who had already been part of "Out Of The Desert" in 2009 and now contributes his version of the African voodoo traditional "Gbalele" – a piece of music which ignited the spark of inspiration in Kühn for the title track. Already the intro to "Voodoo Sense" is a clear signal of things to come. A late Coltrane classic is put through its paces in "Kulu Se Mama". Juno Lewis, the New Orleans Creole phenomenon, drummer, teacher and innovative instrument maker, recorded it in a kind of session with Coltrane in 1965, and it then lent its name to one of his legendary Impulse albums. Kühn, Shepp and Co. breathe their own brand of new life into this milestone of jazz history: the profound original lyrics interpreted in extracts by Majid Bekkas and highly expressive, expansive solo improvisations join with the power of lumbering Afro-Arabic rhythms, giving rise to a new, trance-like jazz. The result is an astounding musical meditation, the likes of which have become rare today. Whether with archaic world music, the blues-imbued saxophone ballad "L'éternel Voyage" composed specifically for Shepp, with studies of pianistic harmony like "Crossing The Mirror" or thundering drama like the concluding "Firehorse", with the aid of his friends Kühn has taken yet another step forward in his quest for the magic of his own, one music – the "Voodoo Sense" as it were. Credits: Produced by the artists Executive Producer: Siggi Loch Recorded by Tarik Hilal at Sale Music Studio, Morocco, Dec. 26 - 28, 2011, Feb. 1 & April 15 2012; and at Studio Sextan, Malakoff (Paris), Feb. 16 (by Quentin Fleury) & Nov. 13 (by Vincent Mahey), 2012 Mixed by Walter Quintus Mastered by Klaus Scheuermann Cover art by Stanley Whitney "Moondog", 2011 / ACT Art Collection

"A bridge-building journey of sound that knows how to unite disparate styles such as blues, reggae, gnawa music, jazz, flamenco and classical music." - Jazzpodium

Joachim Kühn blends jazz with Moroccan, Benin, and Sahara Desert influences. A unique fusion of piano, guembri, tabla, and more.

Recorded and mixed at Zerkall Studio on December 17–19, 2006 by Walter Quintus Mastering by Klaus Scheuermann