By Eric Ederer
Swing Hakim
By Swing Hakim
Independently produced, 2011
Coming across the newly released album “Swing Hakim” by the Chicago-based band of the same name is like being drawn unexpectedly into a fascinating conversation with an older gentleman in a prim white suit who turns out to be the black-sheep uncle your family has been quietly hoping you hadn’t heard of (something about a promiscuously undignified style of assimilation, perhaps). The stories on this all-instrumental album are told in a decidedly nostalgic register, but unlike some other such over-the-shoulder ventures (Pink Martini, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Leon Redbone) here not only is the scope quite broad – anything from Honolulu westward to Beirut between 1900-40 is fair game – but most of the tunes deliberately expose their cross-cultural underpinnings in a way that each constituent part is rarely allowed to.
This is also what makes the project a unique bit of Americana; the layers of blues, swing, klezmer, Balkan folk dance, manouche (“Gypsy”) jazz, and Hawaiian steel have had a century to get comfortable at the same weird American family reunion, but the surprise that is strangely no surprise here is what your charmingly ignored uncle brought in the form of chief hakim Rami Gabriel’s `ud, which he ably yields both in sophisticated mashriq-style taqâsîm and to weave equally nostalgic (and cross-cultural) moments from the late-Ottoman twilight composers – atyos Efendi, Yorgo Bacanos, Mýsýrlý Ýbrahim Efendi – into the mix. This new voice adds a fresh beauty and another level of cleverness to the “Americana” conversation, and does it with a completely-at-home attitude that allows the music to take interesting risks in a way that a mere timid attempt at assimilation would likely fumble.
While the overall old-school style of the album perfectly fits its classic cover tunes – hits by Duke Ellington, Ted Snyder, Dizzy Gillespie – it is also most welcoming to the eight original pieces debuted here, showing off the creative chops of the band’s core members, Rami Gabriel (‘ud, lead guitar), Stephen T. Asma (rhythm and slide guitar), and Brian Pardo (clarinet) – all Ph.D.-holding academics, by the way, hence the “hakim” backing up the swing. The whole project’s musicality is further shaped by hot-on-the scene Chicago musicians Gil Alexander (percussion), Steve Gibons (violin), and Alfonso Ponticelli (guitar), with Beau Sample and Joseph Spilberg alternately holding down the bass end.
Clever, funny, easy on the ear, a definite toe-tapper; if you enjoy any sort of early jazz you’ll certainly find much to like here, and the unabashed singing of the ‘ud throughout this album – especially when used as a tool for reclaiming chestnut orientalist titles such as “Caravan,” “Night in Tunisia,” and “The Sheik of Araby”– brings your black-sheep uncle in from the wilderness and sets him at the family table where his fascinating and strangely familiar tales always belonged.
This article appeared in Al Jadid Magazine, Vol. 17, No. 64, 2011.
Copyright © 2011 AL JADID MAGAZINE
