Club Clandestino: Lea Bertucci + Siti Muharam

Oceanen och Clandestino present: Lea Bertucci

Lea Bertucci

The American composer and ­multiinstrumentalist Lea Bertucci works with a combination of performance and multi-channel sound installations. Alto saxophone and bass clarinet are her go-to instruments, but flutes, organs, and field recordings also play important roles. Often sound itself is the object of her explorations: the agitated air that crashes in waves against our bodies. Like in Metal Aether, recorded in a former military base in France and consisting of pulsating sound patterns, drones and high frequency brass squalls.

In the spring of 2021 she released A Visible Length of Light, an album that emerged out of a turbulent year in the usa. The beauty of the ­American ­landscape – beaches, mountains and prairies – is reflected in the compositions. Is that the wind rushing across a deserted field, or the composer blowing ­tunelessly on a flute? But you can also hear the cities, desolate in lockdown, or as scenes for revolt and chaos. The feeling of alienation in one’s own native country hangs like a shadow over the music.

Siti Muharam

With lyrics out of the Quran, East African polyrhythms and Indian melodies, the taarab was a product of the international trade with spices and slaves on Zanzibar. For a long time it was the music of the ruling classes, performed exclusively by male musicians.

But at the beginning of the 20^th century, the taarab was revolutionised by the singer Siti Binti Saad. Her version was an improvisational music of popular appeal, with lyrics in both Arabic and ­Swahili. As the first female superstar of the genre (“siti” means “lady” in Arabic) she also paved the way for coming generations – one of them being her great granddaughter Siti Muharam.

While many contemporary artists swaddle their neo-taarab in thick layers of synth strings, she instead opts for a subtle rejuvenation of the old songs on her acclaimed album Siti of Unguja – which has been praised in international press and was named album of the year by Songlines. Her impassioned voice is accompanied by ­traditional percussion and virtuosic oud playing, but also by Western instruments like double bass and ­baritone saxophone. Lyrically her social ­criticism is poetically ornate, like in for example Kijiti, that unveils a story of a murder trial where the ­colonial power punished the witnesses instead of the killer.