Group Doueh – Treeg Salaam
Powerful music often has as much imagery as a western novel. Zane Grey can fill your mind with every pockmark on the face of a mountain in Riders of the Purple Sage, just as Fucked Up can bring you to an abandoned building crumbling from the inside out with only a few chords. Group Doueh can show you Dakhal, Western Sahara in quick bright plucks of a tinidit (a lute-like instrument with a sound as sharp as a sandstorm).
It is almost impossible to separate this recording from the geography that gave it birth. Bashiri Touballi’s cadence rises and falls with the rolling dunes of the Sahara, and Haliba Jakani But it is the textural strength of Doueh’s guitar that powers the album. Doueh has the ability to turn the guitar into something more than an instrument, making it an extension of every boulder and broken-down car that disrupts the desolation of the Sahara.
Even the production gives you a sense of place: dusty cassettes being blasted through the speakers of an old pick-up truck.
The most stunning piece on the album is the nearly 20 minute psychedelic epic “Tazit Kalifa”. The Arabic chants easily cross the language barrier, and is not surprising that in a country with such cultural crossover Group Doueh are adept at expressing themselves no matter what language is being spoken.
You can order a copy from Forced Exposure or search through the sometimes intimidating world music section of your local record store. Treeg Salaam shines a well-deserved light on one of the most criminally overlooked regions in world music.
By Arthur Pascale
World in Stereo is a world music blog for the confused, intimidated, or frustrated. Profiling one album at a time and giving a straightforward presentation of artists outside the U.S.