Transe - Stambeli Of Tunis
This project aims to temporarily revive the practice of Stambeli, the trance music of Tunisia that has origins in subsaharan Africa. After months of travel around Tunisia, in Morocco, and Mali, ElSaffar formed a team of 12 musicians, all of whom practice some version of a trance ritual music that goes back hundreds of years. These musicians rehearsed in Tunis for two weeks, then in October performed over six consecutive days on the streets of the old Medina of Tunis for the Dream City Festival. In 2020, Transe will travel to Europe, with performances in Amsterdam, Marseille, and Aix-en-Provence.
Here is a clip from rehearsals at the Stambeli Residency in September 2019:
Through a collective ritualistic practice open to participation and integration, this project strives to address the page of human history that is slavery and unequal power dynamics, by creating a unique space for meaningful interactions between peoples, beliefs, histories and aesthetics of sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, creating the conditions for collective healing and the reconstitution of lost connections.
“★★★★★…what ElSaffar is doing on Crisis is unique in music…from a political and historical vantage point, the task of narrating complex global events through instrumental music is more than challenging. ElSaffar has not only commendably told this personal and globally important story but has produced a masterpiece of a recording in doing so.” – Karl Ackermann, All About Jazz .
Two Rivers includes Nasheet Waits, one of the most dynamic drummers in jazz who is best known as a mainstay in Jason Moran’s Bandwagon; bassist Carlo DeRosa, whose CD Brain Dance achieved considerable acclaim; Tareq Abboushi on buzuq (long-necked lute) whose CD, Mumtastic, contains his own blend of jazz and Arabic forms; multi-instrumentalist and virtuoso Zafer Tawil, who is one of the most in-demand Arab musician in New York; and tenor saxophonist Ole Mathisen, a master of microtonal playing who contributes beautifully controlled and technically dazzling playing, serving as the perfect foil to ElSaffar on the front line.