"Mul Sheshe" - Fantazia

• artist:
  Fantazia
• country:
  Algeria
• release year:
  2005
• formats:
  • CD (Compact Disc)
• record submitted by:
  Harmonia Mundi UK
• label:
  World Village

21st century roots music from Algeria, via Hackney
It's a long way from the heartland of Algeria's
Berber community to the urban sprawl of North East London, but maybe not as long as you'd think! It's a journey that Yazid Fentazi, oud player and principal songwriter with Fantazia, has taken and it's this journey and the dilemma that it brings (how to reconcile where you're from and where you are) which is a central theme running through much of this new album. Fantazia have always been both a quintessentially Algerian and quintessentially London band. Drawing on deep North African traditions, but combining them with the kind of contemporary Western sounds you can hear thumping out of doorways and car windows right across the capital.

The band's debut album The Lost Place (2000), was an attractively light and jazzy affair, whereas Mul Sheshe ('The Turbaned One') has a grittier more groove based feel, closer to their live sound. They've beefed things up instrumentally with new recruit trumpeter Andy Mellon and the album's producer Richard Bignell on keyboards and programming, plus guest
appearances from UK based master of the Syrian qanun zither Abdullah Chhadeh and respected jazz trumpet man Claude Deppa. Vocals have been added to the mix too, courtesy of Yazid and new boy Mourad Simba. The pair actually go back many years, to their teenage days in Algeria, when they performed together in a Western pop covers band. Maybe that's why Fantazia's mix of East and West, old and new, works so well. That Western pop sensibility hasn't just been grafted on as an afterthought, it comes naturally. Yazid knew Beatles songs before he knew the local music. But there's no watering down of the Algerian roots here. The album is awash with rhythms from all over the country (from Berber to Gnawa). It's just that they're likely to be overlaid with some funky horns, as though the
JBs have crashed a particularly wild party in London's North African enclave. A potent mix indeed.

There are stories here. Tales of loss, love, celebration, remembrance and displacement. Yazid left Algeria in the early 1990s when the problems began, making what had previously been a musical hotbed into a dangerous place for a musician, especially a Berber musician, to ply his trade. He came to London to find the freedom to express himself through music. This album is a street-smart celebration of that freedom.

Jamie Renton