Found in Translation V: Singing the spiritual

For the last edition of Found in Translation — Mada Masr’s collaborative series with Cairo Jazz Club, in which musicians are invited to musically interpret a text chosen by Mada’s editors — Cairo-based keyboardist and music producer Kubbara teamed up with a slew of musicians to take on US iconoclast Hunter S. Thompson’s famous “Wave Speech” from his roman-a-clef Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The title of the performance, “See the High,” a fragment from the passage’s closing sentence, served as a play on a ubiquitous element in Thompson’s writing: his experience with psychedelics.

For the fifth edition, which takes place this Tuesday at Cairo Jazz Club, Kubbara once again put together a musical formation to “translate” a new text. While the experience is set to be entirely different from the last one, this performance still has something in common with the previous edition (other than Kubbara himself). This time around, the text of choice is a three-part essay by Ahmed Shehab Eddine titled, “On Sufism and Hallucinogenic Drugs,” published by Mada Masr in March 2018. In the piece, the writer explores the intriguing parallels between the trances often experienced in Sufi practice, and those triggered by the use of hallucinogenic drugs.

“I wanted to do something in Arabic, because last time we worked on an English text, and I was hoping we could also do something more rhythmic, more intense, because, in Found in Translation IV, the music was super laid-back,” Kubbara tells Mada Masr. “The text we got this time was perfect because it gave us a chance to experiment with the tradition of Sufi chanting — which has a lot of emotion — and mix it in with several other influences — mostly the psychedelic rock of the 1970s, which is also very intense, in a different way.”

The theme also appealed to Kubbara because, to him, the practice of music itself is a spiritual quest capable of spurring physiological responses, like those described and examined in the text. “For a long time, the search for a higher meaning, in many cultures around the world, was linked to certain rituals where mind-altering substances were often used to transcend consciousness. These rituals would almost always involve music, of course,” he says. “Music, when I’m fully in it, is this transcendental experience.”

Kubbara enlisted the help of Alexandrian composer and musician Youssef Ragui on drums, Mohamed Mallawany of Ritza and Dokkan (who also took part in the last edition of the event) on bass guitar, and oudist and singer Essam Abdo as a vocalist. Kubbara himself will be working with altering vocals using multiple sound effects, rather than his usual focus on keys. The sound, he says, will be driven by the bass and the drums, but the vocals are still expected to play a central role.

“Essam was the perfect choice, because he is an avid reader of Sufi poetry, and he’s a poet himself, so he combined parts of the text with verses by Al-Hallaj and Abu Nawwas, among others,” he says. “I’m usually more into the music than the lyrics; I’m only concerned with the words insofar as how they contribute to the sonic image of the entire song, and this is why Essam’s presence was crucial.”

The main musical influence on the lyrics and the vocals, Kubbara says, is Tunisian singer, oudist and band leader Dhafer Youssef, while the music itself is largely inspired by a host of 70s rock bands, from Santana to Frank Zappa, as well as modern musicians who fuse jazz with rock and other musical elements, including John Zorn and Omar Rodriguez Lopez. “This is what I essentially had in mind: a rock show with electronic elements, with the vocalist leading. We tried to fit the text into that visualization,” he elaborates. “It worked out well because the musicians I’m working with are all great improvisers. We didn’t even plan — it just happened organically. We started playing during our first rehearsal and the ideas came out surprisingly structured.”

The performance will not be made up of separate songs; rather, Kubbara explains, it will take the form of a three-act structure (driven by the narrative of Abdo’s lyrics), each with “a long introduction followed by a build-up that ends in a climax.” Yet there will be “space for spontaneity,” a factor Kubbara says he values in live performances.

“There will definitely be room for improvisation within the main framework we’ve agreed on,” he says. “For instance, we can choose to stretch things out a bit, or maybe condense them — whatever the moment calls for.”

In the video below, we capture a glimpse of what Kubbara and the rest of the musicians have been cooking up in preparation for Found in Translation V: