Jerusalem in My Heart :: Mo7it al-Mo7it (Constellation)

A heartfelt lament for a sick goat is performed, with Moumneh’s voice fraying at the edges before being carpeted with frazzled synths.

Founded by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, a Lebanese native raised in Oman and long resident in Montreal, who also spends several months a year in Beirut, Jerusalem in My Heart is an audio-visual project staged only once or twice a year since 2005, with as few as one and as many as thirty-five participants. Its current core consists of Moumneh, filmmaker Malena Szlam Salazar from Chile (who provides the cover art) and Parisian producer Jérémie Regnier.

Already boasting long experience as an engineer at Montreal’s Hotel2Tango recording studio, “home” of the likes of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion, Moumneh recently discovered Syrian wedding-singer tapes, recorded with tacky effects and busted speakers, “so distorted and [with] a lot of echo on everything.” Concerned that the first studio recording of this multifaceted enterprise might come of as something of a compromise, Moumneh had found the psychedelic flavour that gives Mo7it al-Mo7it that extra dimension the live show possessed. Original Arab song with its roots in melismatic tradition is combined with contemporary electronics, with the conflation of past and current generations further emphasized by the use of the colloquial, “mobile phone” Arabic used when text messaging in transcription of the track titles—the “7” in “Mo7it al-Mo7it,” for instance, pronounced like a hard “h.”

This exercise in a new, experimental Arabic music is simply amazing, and accomplished with little more than an analogue synthesizer, sequencer, an effects box and a couple of pedals. It bursts out in song which becomes sodden at the edges as voice and synthesizer overlap. On the first of two strictly acoustic instrumentals, Dina Cindric plays the virginal (purportedly on the banks of the Euphrates) accompanied by birdsong and Moumneh on the buzak, recorded on an iPhone at the home of a friend. As it lands softly and elegantly after almost ten minutes, a burbling synth sequence carries Moumneh´s voice back on waves of echo so massive the first note hasn’t died out before the next begins. Deep in the undertow, a single wind instrument rumbles like an entire orchestra.

A heartfelt lament for a sick goat is performed, with Moumneh’s voice fraying at the edges before being carpeted with frazzled synths. Sarah Pagé, said to be across the delta from Cindric on the banks of the Tigris, plays harp, recorded so meticulously you can hear every creak of its wooden frame. A joyous acoustic-electronic duet breaks off briefly to let Moumneh’s voice into “Amanem,” an invigorating finale running climbing emotional heights far beyond those any minaret could reach.

Mo7it al-Mo7it is available on Constellation.