Live music really comes to a screeching halt in Berlin during August. Lots of locals leave town, which can make it a very place to be, but, alas, I’m also going to be out of town for much of the month. Yes, it’s time for this newsletter’s summer pause, which means the listings below cover the next three weeks. The next edition of Nowhere Street will run on Monday, August 18. As I prepare for upcoming travel I’ve been feverishly trying to clear my plate of assignments, which means the first part of this week’s edition is almost as sparse as the recommended shows list. My apologies. But I’ll be back to full strength before you know it.
Iraqi Maqam Master Hamid Al-Saadi’s First New Recording in 26 Years
It’s hard for me to believe that it was seventeen years ago when I first heard the music of Amir ElSaffar, who grew up in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. He had just released his stunning debut album Two Rivers, which delivered one of the most rigorous and inventive stylistic marriages I’d ever heard, melding jazz and Iraqi maqam. I wrote a feature in the Chicago Reader in advance of a performance that presaged ElSaffar’s large ensemble projects. ElSaffar, who started out as an acclaimed jazz trumpeter, is Iraqi-American but it took him years to develop an interest in the music of his ancestral land. Yet once he did, nothing could stop him. As the story recounts, he traveled to Baghdad a year prior to the US invasion to study the ancient form, hoping to interpret the form on trumpet before ultimately turning his attention to voice and santur, an Iraqi hammer dulcimer. As the military build-up mounted, however, he eventually fled, spending time in Jordan, Syria, and the UK to advance his studies.
When I interviewed him back in 2008 we didn’t discuss his mentors, but eventually I became aware of Hamid Al-Saadi, whom he met in London in 2003, long exiled from his homeland. Five years later ElSaffar organized a US tour for the remarkable musician, which is where I first encountered him. I wrote a preview for the Chicago concert they played at the Old Town School of Folk Music in February of 2013, but, alas, the website of the Chicago Reader has fallen into a sorry state, with loads of content missing, including this preview. As memorable as the concert was I hadn’t thought about Al-Saadi until recently; ElSaffar recently launched his own label Maqām Records, initiated with the release of Maqam Al-Iraq this past Friday, a stunning collection from the vocalist supported by Saafafir, the long running traditional ensemble founded by ElSaffar’s sister Dena, a long-time practitioner of Iraqi maqam, on joza and violin, with Tim Moore on percussion, and Amir on santur and vocals. It is the first new recording by Al-Saadi since 1999.
Crippling sanctions imposed after the 1991 invasion of Iraq led the Baghdad native to relocate to London in 1999, although he eventually returned in 2006. Encouraged by the 2013 tour ElSaffar put together, the maqam master immigrated to the US in 2018, settling in New York, a fact I was totally unaware of until reading the press materials for the new recording. While maqam generally refers to a complex set of modes and melodies in traditional Arabic music, Iraqi maqam is something different, a sacrosanct repertoire, and Al-Saadi is one of its greatest living practitioners—that rare artist who has fully internalized all 56 maqams in the repertoire when he was only his mid-20s. I don’t have the knowledge to meaningfully assess his talent in a larger context, but I can say his singing is sublime. His ability to improvise melodic flourishes while hewing to the precise structures is clear. Al-Saadi’s voice is muscular yet agile, and he imbues key phrases with a spare melismatic treatment that suggests he’s on the verge of breaking into tears, although he always snaps right back. The double album contains four maqams, each of which is fused with a brief, concluding pesteh, a popular melody that often enlists the rest of the ensemble for communal singing. Below you can check out “Maqam Al Sa’idi Hijaz / Habibi Rah wa Ma Janeh.”
Editrix Deliver Another Facet of Wendy Eisenberg’s Prismatic Sound World
I’ve written previously about the stylistic mobility of guitarist Wendy Eisenberg, a musician who veers nonchalantly between free improvisation, post-bop, singer-songwriter terrain, and indie rock. Eisenberg loves the full spectrum of music and can’t be held back by gatekeepers. One of their projects that I haven’t followed too closely is the rock trio Editrix, which began before they moved to New York, but something clicked for me with the group’s new album The Big E (Joyful Noise). The precise, somewhat mathy din Eisenberg crafts with bassist Steve Cameron and drummer Josh Daniel isn’t something I have a lot of interest in or time for these days, but as my interest in the guitarist continues to blossom I couldn’t help but give it a spin. I’m glad I did. As much as I remain a massive fan of the Minutemen, I have retained a skepticism for bands in their wake messing with similar templates, and the busy, prog-ish attack of Editrix certainly aligns with that sound. The trio nails that aesthetic, and it gives Eisenberg plenty of space to shred.
But what I’ve found riveting about the new album are the intricate melodies Eisenberg sings. On song after song they unabashedly situate gorgeous, elaborate melodic schemes over the most bruising indie rock tropes. Editrix is super tight, and the head-banging joy of a tune like “The Jackhammer” is self-evident, although I honestly don’t find it that interesting or exciting. But I love how Eisenberg doesn’t give a shit about devoting some of their most elegant, unusually proportioned, indelible melodies within these angular workouts, whether it’s the almost weightless, sweet-toned tunefulness that drifts between the lumbering grooves of “No” or the keening, wispy melody in the skittering “Real Fire,” with its off-kilter disco references—the cadence of its chorus keeps reminding of “Ring My Bell,” answering the dreamy, “Rapture”-ish phrasing in the verse. Check it out below. I suppose I might be letting my admiration for Eisenberg distort my aesthetic preferences, but I have really fallen for this record. Sue me.
Recommended Shows in Berlin For the Next Two Weeks
July 30: Ben Lehmann, double bass, Martial Frenzel, drums, Christof Thewes, trombone, and Nikolaus Neuser, trumpet, 8 PM, Alter Schwede, Schwedenstraße 11A, 13357 Berlin
July 31: Ahmedou Ahmed Lowla; Sophye Soliveau, 7 PM, Schlueterhof, Humboldt Forum, Museumsinsel, 10178 Berlin
August 1: Osees; Shannon Lay, 8 PM, Festaal Kreuzberg, Am Flutgraben 2, 12435 Berlin
August 2: Boukman Experyans; Jowee Omicil, 7 PM, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin
August 3: Burning Spear, 8 PM, Festaal Kreuzberg, Am Flutgraben 2, 12435 Berlin
August 3: Ahmedou Ahmed Lowla, 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
August 5: Ustad Noor Bakhsh, 8 PM, Galiläakirche, Rigaer Str. 9, 10247 Berlin
August 7: Etran de L’Aïr; Charif Megarbane, 7 PM, Schlueterhof, Humboldt Forum, Museumsinsel, 10178 Berlin
August 7: Tobias Delius, tenor saxophone, clarinet, Camila Nebbia, tenor saxophone, Jonas Westergaard, double bass, and Nathan Ott, drums, 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115, 12043 Berlin
August 8: Elaine Howley; Erwan Keravec; Marc Melià, 8 PM, KINDL, Am Sudhaus 3, 12053 Berlin
August 15: Daniel Erdmann,saxophone, Johannes Fink, double bass, and Michael Griener, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin
August 16: Marie Kruttli, piano, Jeremy Viner, tenor saxophone, and Devin Gray, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin