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Show Date: Saturday 5/26/2007
Venue: Temple Bar, Santa Monica $15 @ 9:00 p.m.
Artist: Cheb i Sabbah
Album: La Ghriba - La Kahena Remixed
Release Date: June 2006
Label: Six Degrees Records
Cheb i Sabbah has been at the forefront of creating and popularizing something that has gone under many different names for over 40 years: global-beat, world music, ethnic fusion, transglobal electronica, and many other monnikers. Sabbah himself refers to these sounds as "outernational music" since he feels that music shouldn't be restricted by borders or national boundaries. Incorporating Northern African, Arabic, Central and South Asian sounds into trance, house, downtempo, and club mixes, Sabbah continually presents a new dish that is more than the sum of its parts.
The Temple Bar show will feature Cheb i Sabbah DJing while accompanied by musicians like Gingger Shankar on vocals and double violin, Satnam Ramgotra on tabla drum, Thavius Beck on electronics, and many more surprise guests. I've seen Cheb perform in venues as tiny as Nickie's Juke Joint in the Lower Haight in SF, to headlining transglobal music festivals. His performances really deliver - I've always seen some great performances and danced my ass off. If you've ever had any interest in music by Fun^Da^Mental, Bill Laswell, Transglobal Underground, Asian Dub Foundation, Talvni Singh, or Banca De Gaia, you should see Cheb i Sabbah, he's the guy that started it all.
In this performance Sabbah will probably be featuring tracks from his La Kahena release but since he'll be accompanied by several musicians onstage it might sound more like last Summer's release La Ghriba, the remix of La Kahena featuring versions by Transglobal Undergound, Gaurav Raina (from Midival Punditz), and Bill Laswell among others. Since this remix collection is essentially a collaborative effort between Sabbah and several other artists in this genre its essentially a sampler and a good introduction for anyone who wants to take a first step in investigating this type of music.
This weekend is an opportunity to check out an icon, or if you happen to go near Amoeba, getting this CD is a chance to check out the whole movement.
Cheb i Sabbah’s Alkher Illa Doffor (the Nectar Remix)
