Top Khat
BEN THOMPSON describes a unique, apt ensemble
Although I have never chewed the leaves of the flowering plant khat, I can testify to the addictive qualities of the band of the same name, having been lucky enough to see them rock a packed house at Dalston’s Cafe Oto. “A stimulant causing greater sociability, excitement and mild euphoria” would be a reasonable descriptive starting point for El Khat’s urgent, surging reboot of music from a far-off ancestral homeland they are not at liberty to visit, but the playful DIY filter they apply to their olde world source material gives it a genuinely psychedelic twist.
If you look up ‘El Khat’ on YouTube, one of the first things you’ll come across is a combined travelogue and instructional video dubbed an “objects collecting tour,” in which frontman Eyal el Wahab tours the streets of Jaffa (the original Arabic name for part of what is now the metropolis of Tel Aviv) picking up the raw materials (plastic bottles, wire etc) for the home-made instruments which give the band’s melodious clatter some of its bespoke character. Now based in Berlin, the core El Khat trio of multi-instrumentalist el Wahab, percussionist Lotan Yaish and organist Yefet Hasan are introduced by the former as “Arab Jews whose families were forced to leave Yemen”. And if their music sounds like an attempt to wrestle some sense from the carnage which has beset their corner of the world, that’s probably because that’s exactly what it is.
“It all started back in 2017”, el Wahab has explained, “when I received a beautiful compilation record of Yemeni tunes [the Dust to Digital label’s Qat, Coffee & Qambus: Raw 45s from Yemen]. Those were very old and low quality recordings. Songs that were performed with one person singing along with the Oud or accompanied with a Darbuka, sometimes singing accompanied only with a metal plate. But nothing was missing, the soul was there. I first started making instruments as a mission of recreating sounds of the Yemeni street, focusing on using only what’s around you… finding usefulness in every thrown out thing to make music”.
When El Khat talk about “the ability to create music from what used to be a piece of junk”, that seems like it could be both a practical strategy and also a metaphor for making the best of difficult circumstances. And their current third album, Mute, addresses the “constant muting of the other” for which both Israel and the band’s new adopted homeland of Germany have become notorious. Hear them make a joyful noise at The Piper on Monday 14 October, with support from spry avant-gardener Anthony Moore and free-jazz debutants PIP.
Piper, 14 October.Tickets £10 + bkg on Dice or £12.50 OTD.
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