Yemen Blues: a mesmerizing fusion of sound

The joy of hearing music like that of Yemen Blues, who performed as part of the Chutzpah Festival at Venue Club on February 24, is the thrilling feeling of being transported to somewhere far from the chilly night of Vancouver. Even better is the fact that Yemen Blues has the power to take its audience to not one, but many far away locales through its eclectic musical style that is drawn from any number of Middle Eastern, as well as North and West African traditions.

Yemen Blues was founded by vocalist Ravid Kahalani, himself an Israeli of Yemenite ancestry, and he finds his inspiration in both his own roots, and in the other genres of music that surrounded him as a child and continue to influence him today. Growing up, Kahalani heard traditional Yemenite chants at home and in synagogue; he learned to sing in Arabic, and then immersed himself in the many and colourful worlds of funk, blues, jazz, and West African soul. All this eventually lead him, and eight of his musician friends, to collaborate and to create the mesmerizing fusion of sound that is Yemen Blues.

Kahalani's band includes trumpet, trombone, flute, two percussionists, viola, cello, guitar and other strings, as well as a variety of other instruments - bazouki? A one stringed bass? - that I'm much less familiar with, and whose presence contributed to that warm feeling of being far from home. Though it was Kahalani's eerily hypnotic voice and his magnetic presence that wove the evening together into musical coherence, each musician is clearly fluent in many and diverse styles, and as a group, this band has a synergy and a nuanced flavour that draws you to it like an oasis of dynamism in the desert of the ordinary.

Moving smoothly from songs that sound like a lamenting Arabic wail to pieces that made me think I ought to have been in a dingy blues bar from years past, Yemen Blues proved their mastery over a number of styles, each one played with convincing detail and fluidity. In the course of the evening, I felt like I traveled to the Western Sahara, the Arabian Peninsula, stopped into Israel, Central Europe and landed at a funk and blues bar in the East Village. All the while, Kahalani's energy was infectious; he's a great dancer, and his band has its own kind of magic. As a whole, Yemen Blues channels a sound that is at once fresh, original and strikingly ancestral, as though they have bored into the soul of something much older than themselves, and brought that something delightfully alive.

Once the show was over, stepping back out into the cold Vancouver night was a bit of a shock; I had caravans and desert stuck in my head, and a day later, the music still rings in my ears. I can still almost smell a place far away.