AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Livestation arabic12/15/2023 All instruments are performed by Masri himself, (drums, Egyptian rababa, Azeri kamancheh, circuit bent electronics, keyboards, hammered dulcimer, and vocals). They both seem to him part of what's known in German as Fernweh, "a nostalgia for a place one's never been". For Masri, there isn't much difference between this form of exotic fantasy creation, and his own adolescence steeped in comic books and listening to bands like Voivod. This album is neither ironic nor some judgmental pronouncement. The sense of some lost Eden-like innocence of the interwar years permeated much of the media that was available to him growing up there. Additionally, his father's generation was one that saw their country transform from a post-agrarian trading society after WWII to a center of banking and finance within the span of a few decades. After moving to the US, his parents recreated this room in their home. Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and other western made Orientalist cultural artifacts not only had ubiquitous presence in the house, but also found their way onto TV shows and commercials. The sitting room, or salon, is common in Lebanese homes made specifically to host and entertain guests. The Arabic Room the title refers to is the sitting room in his family's house that was decked out in hyper orientalist exoticism, mashing together furniture, fixtures, paintings from all over the Arabic speaking world. Some of the tracks either refer to or were recorded in the actual physical spaces he grew up near, in Tripoli, Lebanon during the 1980s. The work accumulated intentions and guiding principles, and it became rather autobiographical in nature. Having an open timeframe, Julius Masri gave himself reasons to include all the instruments he obsessively picked up and learned over the years. It originally began as a documentation of extended drum techniques, but eventually morphed into a project of more ambitious scope. A critical meditation on variations of Orientalism practiced by Arabs themselves, as well as those who were born and raised within the diaspora.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |