Aleph Quintet

TRANSCRIPT

AKRAM:

So, I am Akram Ben Romdhane. I am from Tunisia, and I play oud with Aleph Quintet and other projects also. Now I live in Belgium, in Brussels. Before I was in Paris for six years also. And before I was in Tunisia. I played oud, I played violin also. The violin took me to get out of my country because I want to push playing of classical violin. So I studied in Paris and in Belgium classical violin, and I played oud from my childhood.

MARVIN

I'm Marvin Burlas and I come from France. I'm a violinist as well and I come from the south of France near Marseilles. I was studying the violin jazz in the Conservatory of Belgium in Brussels and then it was the meeting of Adkra and I was a in Belgium in Brussels. We were neighbors and we met there. We were, you have to imagine, we were living in, I don't know, 20 meters, a small studio and he was my neighbor and like he said, he was studying the classical violin and because the walls were thin, you know, so I heard him play. And sometimes he was playing Arabic music with the violin and I was studying the violin jazz and of course the jazz and the violin is all over the world and I'm really keen on the world music. So yeah, I heard him. and I was curious to meet him. So I knocked on the door and I met Akram.

AKRAM:

At the beginning, like just we should know each other, so we played together with the violin. And at this time, I had left my oud in Paris. And when I started to show Marvin some composition of mine, he said to me, "You should bring your oud." So this is the point to the beginning of this adventure and this history of the band.

So we just started playing together at night, parties, and with friends. And one time he said to me “We should have a band with this music, because we love this music.”

When we did this, the first album, there are a lot of journalists and interviews and you know when you play in the venues and festivals, the people like to categorize this music – Aleph music, world music or fusion or jazz. We think that it's just music.

Each musician of Aleph has his background, so it can be folkloric or traditional jazz, classic, flamenco, Spanish, all of these influences of music. And when we work in the music we don't think about that. Just we try that the music spokes us to our soul or our identity. So it's not a fusion like a calculated fusion, just we let the flow of the music. And when we work in our kitchen, when we rehearse... just the flow. And if that speaks to us, that's the right thing.

There are no categories. It's no difference. Just music, just human beings.

So to be an immigrant, yeah, the first thing, it's like we are different. If we zoom in the music and in the personality, it's the same thing – it's just music.

When I did my studies in classical music, it's not very known in Arab world and because it's not traditional music. But in my country, in Tunisia, there are a lot, a lot of people, musicians that want to do this music. But there's like a limit of education for classics, so I should go to Paris to get this education. But maybe in the classical world there are some vision that classical music is like Europe, occidental music. So yeah, in my studies and my beginning of with orchestra, sometimes – I don't want to like say generality – it's not – but sometimes sometimes, yeah, there are some people who say “You are Arab, You are from Africa, it's not our music. It will be so difficult to have a career in this type of music.” But for me, you know, if you have an objective and dream to realize, you cannot listen to this commentary. You should just do your your job, work, work and work until it really happens. So yeah, sometimes it can be difficult. But for me, it's because maybe I had a chance to, with all my friends in music, they're not like this.

But maybe the difficult thing for immigrants, music or other profession, is like the law. The loi. Also for African people, not European, so when you come to Europe, it's a lot of law that can block the... Yeah. Yeah. Every year you should have a permit, you should study, you should work. So there are a lot of things of law that it's not easy to just... my dream is to be a musician and to play music. So why all this kind of law? I just want to play. And yeah, it can sometimes, Marvin knows this very well because we used to share a flat, so, you know, really, this difficulty sometimes, like... but sometimes... I would like cry. After we had the rendezvous with the administration so I was like crying because I'm like... what should I do?

MARVIN:

I think it's unfair when I see this I just thinking about wow I'm lucky because I was born in the good good part of the Mediterranean Sea. It's unfair. It's unfair to see friends with lots of good things to share with other people. And to see friends like that in this kind of situation, crying, because – I've seen Akram cry a lot. He used to queue up, like, six hours before the meeting point, but at the meeting, "Oh, you don't have this paper? Okay, go home and come back again."

AKRAM:

It's a lot of stress, and it's every year. So, that's not me and now, 12 years, the same story as when you began, begin and begin. So now, I take the positive things of this story. This, I want to take the construct, construction, yeah, constructive things of this, the positive thing. So yeah, it's stress, but I can express this with my music. So it's – I have, with these things, I can have a story to tell with my music.

MARVIN:

I don't understand sometimes decisions. I don't understand why we don't have any feedback about decisions. When I see Akram studying , he was studying in Belgium, he's got... master degrees, so everything is working... and we are at the same point.

AKRAM:

So, we express this in our music, with Aleph, in the album Shapes of Science. There is a tune called "Okhua". "Okhua" – the fraternity. Friendship. And in Aleph, we are like brothers. "Okhua" is an Arab word that means like brotherhood.

AKRAM:

Yeah, brotherhood, fraternity. And with the band, with Aleph, we are like this. We are five musicians, but we share deep feelings of being together, and share a lot of things, music, and other things. So it expresses the ambience in Aleph's work. So yeah, it's the first tune I composed this tune, but we worked together in this tune and we arranged the tune so every musician took part. And he has his identity in this music. Yeah, it's expressed maybe the word that we'd like to live.

So no borders.

MARVIN:

No war, no borders.

AKRAM:

And yeah, just we share a lot of things. And then you should just make it in egalité good quality. and equality. So, "Achoa" is the first, and it expresses what we want to be.

MARVIN:

Yeah, that's why it's the album. is called "Shapes of Silence". You have to go back through yourself and you find your identity and through our music, we are looking for that.

AKRAM:

Every experience that you live, like you know, you have your bag – and from the day of your birth you begin to put something, something something – in until you're at the end of the life – the memories, the experience, the emotions – that this transforms every second, every second, with words, with thinking. And that's why the Shapes of Silence, the album of Aleph, is all of this. What passes in our mind it's not expressed with words or with activity, or I don't know, yeah, thinking, emotion, sentimental things, can be joy, can be trauma, can be fear. Your dialogue with yourself is what we try to express with this album. And do what you dream, what you dream to do, what you love to do, like human being.

And when you have conviction that you have a dream, and you want to go to the end of your life in this dream – and the music – it's so, so, so big and you cannot find the end of this land. And if you have a dream, there are no limits. You will discover there are no limits. So just keep going on.... and that's it.