Karim Kadiri playing the Oud - courtesy of
www.2m.tv
Inside Rick's,
I met a couple of jazz musicians from Perpignan, in the south of France.
They had taken a leave of absence from their wives and kids to find work in
Marrakech and Casablanca. Their rapid-fire, chain-smoking
conversations brought me back to my days in Paris.
Incredibly, we knew someone in common. There was
a bass player I had met in Paris named Alfred, who turned out to be one of
their best friends, and also lived in Perpignan. Even more incredibly,
Alfred was coming through Casabanca to visit. I got to see him the
next day - it was totally crazy to see a good friend from a long time ago in
a far-off place like Casablanca.
The French guys also told me about a cool club called Le Batignole and I managed to drag Soshi
out with me one night. The bouncers wouldn't let us in because it was
a "private" club, so I asked where else we could go to see some "Music
Orientale", as Moroccans call music with a strong Arabic influence.
They looked at each other and said in French, "Well, there's one spot... but
you don't want to go there". "Yes, we do", I answered cheerfully.
We arrived at a small, dingy nightclub with the
menu posted on the outside in neon. Inside, there was a large, sweaty
man singing into a microphone with too much reverb. He had an
electrified 'oud, and there was a band including a violinist, a keyboardist
employing the very loud drum-machine built into his Triton, and a
percussionist no one could hear. A few new singers rotated in - first
a tall man, then a heavily-painted woman. The songs were the top hits
of Egyptian music from the 70's.
MUSIC
On my second or
third day in Casablanca I met Karim Kadiri. He was a friend of Hakim, the
club owner. Born in Casablanca, he moved to Philadelphia at age 20 and
wound up becoming the best salesman of all time for Volvo cars - they even flew
him out to Sweden and honored him in the Volvo museum
in Gothenburg. But he was also a keen musician, and taught himself to play
the 'oud, a teardrop-shaped lute, the ancestor of the modern guitar (in
fact, the word "lute", another of the guitar's ancestors and the technical term
for any chordophone with a neck, comes from the Arabic al-'oud).. He got
into the music scene, produced a few records, and met pianist Chick Corea along
the way. He formed a group called M'Oud-swing, a fusion between jazz and
Arab classical music. He lived happily with his American wife for a while,
but after they divorced he moved back to Casablanca. He had been back
about three months before we met.
The place was built by
Kathy Kriger, an American woman who had worked for
the US embassy and fallen in love with
Morocco. They have a regular pianist there
named Issam.. Seriously. As in, "Play it
again, Issam".
Karim's dual
cultural identity made him a very good person to approach with cultural
questions. He told me about
Rick's Cafe
Americain, a nightclub modeled after the cafe in the film,
"Casablanca". I went there one night and heard some pretty good jazz.
Here's a shot from their website ►►►►►
Karim was really into spiritual music - Sufi, Arab, late John Coltrane - or
whatever. When he talked about music he loved, he would say how much
it "destroyed" him - he saw music as a way to rise above the pain
of everyday existence.
On two occasions, I stopped by
his place to listen to some music. The first time he played me the work of
Mohamed Abdel-Wahab,
the "Gershwin of Arabic Music" - the one to elevate "Old-style" music to the
level of high art, employing innovations in orchestration, incorporating new
rhythms, and acknowledging other traditions such as tango and western
classical music. The second time we hung out, he played me some
Oum Kalthoum, who
is perhaps the most revered Arab performer of all time. She is sort of
the Ella Fitzgerald of Arab classical (although Karim likes to say she is a
little bit of Sarah Vaughn, too). He also hipped me to Jaques Brel and
Michel Legrand.
But the biggest
treat was sitting in on a
rehearsal with Karim on the 'oud and a young man named Marwane singing
Arabic love songs. They let me capture a few takes. Take a listen!
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