Street of Minarets Dhafer Youssef

• 1 Street of Minarets 08:57
• 2 Bal d’âme 04:19
• 3 SharQ Serenade ("SharQ” Suite) 04:39
• 4 Funky SharQ (“SharQ” Suite) 04:04
• 5 Flying Dervish Intro (“Omar Khayyam” Suite) 04:02
• 6 Flying Dervish (”Omar Khayyam” Suite) 06:01
• 7 Flying Dervish Outro (”Omar Khayyam” Suite) 02:18
• 8 Sudra Funk 04:21
• 9 Whirling in the Air 03:48
• 10 Spinning Hermit 06:08
• 11 Herbie’s Dance 04:52
• 12 Ondes of Chakras 06:17
• Total Runtime 59:46

Info for Street of Minarets

Combination of the Eastern sound with the Western? Oud master, vocalist and composer Dhafer Youssef is at the vanguard of a movement in contemporary music that brings East and West together. He is building bridges between different music. As one of the most inventive oud players, he has freed the instrument from its traditional role and brought it into jazz.

Dhafer Youssef has played with musicians around the globe, including Herbie Hancock, Husnu Senlendirici and Zakir Hussain. He won the prestigious Dutch Edison Award and BBC Music Awards twice. His high-pitched muezzin voice and voluptuous oud earned him notice at the Echo Jazz. As a figure in the contemporary jazz fusion scene, his music's strange and fascinating beauty is a journey through East and West dialogue.

On his forthcoming album, Street of Minarets, Dhafer offers a gift for the dreamers, the lovers, the fighters, and the obscure. What was once an unfinished project that he felt was missing the soul his music usually has, overcoming obstacles of anxiety and vocal surgery during the pandemic would go on to rekindle his eternal love of music and provide him with the motivation he needed to rewrite and rearrange the record. The result is a relatable journey of sufferings and successes, ultimately spotlighting Dhafer’s inspiring resilience. ​​​​​​​

Dhafer Youssef, oud, vocals
Herbie Hancock, piano
Marcus Miller, bass
Nguyên Lê, guitar
Rakesh Chaurasia, flute
Adriano Dos Santos Tenori, percussion
Dave Holland, double bass
Vinnie Colaiuta, drums
Ambrose Akinmusire, trumpet

Dhafer Youssef
Born in 1967 in Teboulba, Tunesia, cosmopolitan composer, singer and oud player Dhafer Youssef has been living and working in Europe since 1990. With his deeply affecting vocal style, a straight approach on the oud, charming Arab-coloured compositions, spacey electric lounge vibes and a variety of fusion sounds, he is among today's shooting stars on the electronical/world music scene. World beat magazine Songlines read: "This man is pushing the roots-digital envelope like no-one else can."

Dhafer Youssef recorded two previous CDs in 1993 and 1996 before he started his collaboration with ENJA. Over the years he has been working with Iva Bittova, Mino Cinelu, Tom Cora, Paolo Fresu, Renaud Garcia-Fons, Jamey Haddad, Patrice Heral, Dieter Ilg, Nguyên Lê, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Sainkho Namchylak, Wolfgang Puschnig, Deepak Ram, Carlo Rizzo, Linda Sharrock, Markus Stockhausen, Jatinder Thakur, Arto Tuncboyacian and other great individual improvisers influenced by world music concepts. He always kept finding new soundscapes to go with his intense vocals and his poetic oud playing and finally started adding electric and digital sounds. With the support of Nils Petter Molvaer, Bill Laswell, Doug Wimbish, Eivind Aarset, Bugge Wesseltoft, Rune Arnesen and others, Dhafer Youssef has become one of the most imaginative artists on the crossroads of electronic, acoustic and ambient musics.

Rooted in Islamic traditions, Dhafer's singing is dignified with an aura of spirituality. The Guardian read: "Every time Youssef opens his mouth we are treated to a soaring sound that seems to echo back through the centuries (…) evoking images of dark and ancient temples." When his dark, haunting baritone voice leaps into a hair-raising falsetto, listeners feel "the earth move" below their feet. As an inventive oud player and composer, Dhafer Youssef creates original music both majestic and refined. "Youssef's oud sometimes evokes Bert Jansch's mournful brand of scary folk, at other times it takes on the measured bombast of heavy metal," Time Out read.

Taking world/jazz fusion into electronic trance music with trip-hop elements, Dhafer Youssef is at the core of current cutting-edge trends heading for a bright future. Says the Evening Standard: "No question about it, Dhafer Youssef is a major new voice."

This album contains no booklet.