Dhafer Youssef : Digital Proficiency

18 Nov 2004
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

This is the review of the first Dhafer Youssef’s gig I went in 2004…
今夜Dhafer Youssefのコンサートに行くのですが、初めて聞いたのは2004年でした。

On a lucky night, you know from the first note that the concert will take you to a world you’d never seen before. The evening with Dhafer Youssef was one of those experiences. The rich, deep sound of his oud opened up a vast dessert landscape in front of me. Then his soaring voice gave you wings of your own and the journey began.
Digital Proficiency is the Tunisia-born musician’s third album, a collaboration with Norwegian musicians, such Eivind Aarset on electric guitar. The electric sound moves us forward, while Youssef’s voice is reaching out for the sky. The drum beats by Rune Arnessen often left behind the familiar rhythms, such as 4/4 , and moved on to a more complicated, yet natural flow…
East meets West, some may call their performance. But as the journey continued, I realized it was wrong. As my mind flew over the desserts, suddenly Mongolian fields appeared, with the sounds reminded me of a Chinese composer, Tan Dun (Music director of the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Then arrived the sound of Japanese Shakuhachi flute – out of the trumpet, played by Arve Henriksen. Not that I felt nostalgia towards the traditional sound of my country. My joy was at hearing that, if a trumpet could be a Shakuhachi, East and West are not two separate cultures.. Once Youssef put everything on one, huge landscape, he made us realize how artificial the boundaries on maps are. What divides East or West, or countries, became invisible, and our minds could travel on the Silk Road, without a passport control.
In the current international situation, being an Arab often puts Youssef in the political spotlight. He didn’t make any political statement during his concert, but after the evening you would see the world differently, with a bigger and wider view. For someone who confronts the boundaries between East and West on a daily bases, it was a very emotional and touching experience.