#sanam

The album was recorded in various parts in Beirut, Byblos and Paris, and its ancient timbres come filtered through very modern instrumentation and production. If you blocked out Chamoun’s transfixing voice—and why on earth would you do that—the music might sound like vaguely Arab-slanted surf-rock-jazz, clean and twangy and propulsive. But her singing, which ululates slightly in the long notes, makes even rock-forward “Hadikat Al Ams” sound rooted in Beirut’s storied, violent past.

The album nods to pan-Arabic tradition in its lyrics, too, adapted from Omar Khayyam, the Mamluk poet Ibn Nubata, Imam Ali (an early Caliph of Arabia) and the contemporary Lebanese writer Paul Chaoul. “Hamam,” a song drawn from Egyptian folk music, is especially powerful in the way it balances the depth and resonance of the past with explosive rock energy. Chamoun wails in free-form cascades, as drums surge and guitars twitter, tapping into a wild primal force. The music simmers around her, pulsing with suppressed tension until, about halfway through, it kicks to life, hard knocks of drums, chaotic spurts of guitar and synth banging against the solitary splendor of vocal lament. “Harik” brings this fractious energy even further up in the mix, a racket of drumming punctuated by Chamoun’s frenzied gasps for breath. Yes, it resolves in a slithery, middle eastern scaled chant, but the drums pound, the guitars twitch in a sound that’s half stadium rock, half souk.

You might wish to know more about the words Chamoun is singing—a quick google search revealed little about the original materials—but you get the sense. Struggle, heartache, war, hunger, injustice, it’s all there in the tone of her voice and the way the band comes battering into behind her to protest.