Some topical ‘fusion’ music blending Arab, urban Franch pop, and Montreal world music flavors….

The talented and lovely Lynda Thalie emigrated to Canada via Quebec via Montreal roughly about the same time I did, early in this century. Except while I came from the U.S. and made a living mostly via software development, she was a musician and dancer from Algeria. Her breakthrough CD — Sablier, french for ‘Hourglass’ — came on the scene about 2006. The “hit” release from it, getting lots of radio play in autos cruising down route 15 and plenty of exposure via local music clubs and Quebec’s then numerous annual music festivals, many devoted to so-called world music, was entitled “En Equilibre”. I recall getting jolted out of commuter complacency one morning enroute to a French immersion class.

The song begins with an electric oud riff weaving over an acoustic guitar ostinato oscillating to and fro between two chord roots, typical and suggestive of the Arabic urban fusion music then sweeping France. Soon that’s accompanied by a pulsing darbouka rhythm — those flat almost metallic Saharan desert finger strokes I love. But then her voice arrives, and she has a wonderful yet expressive vocal control which cuts through the background even at a restrained volume. The tune, in fact the entire CD album, has an autobiographical feel which describes the enhanced sense of self and graceful power one achieves, or notices in “the mirror”, after successfully navigating the stresses and novelties of emigrating to a foreign place. I love her lilting soaring lingering singing which accomplishes what it does without the need for excessive loudness. The entire album is quite tastefully engineered and features a top notch smallish assemblage of musicians. Thalie composed all of the songs and sings in English, French, and Arabic. The real treat came in her live shows in small venues, quite typical of what was on offer in the Montreal suburbs in those days. You get a sample of the visuals in the video as the singer incorporates some light baladi moves during her performance.

Nos chemins longent le temps, les été, les saisons
Frôlent d’autres murs, tant de murs et ces terres saintes
Au siècles emmuré …..
Sous le sable et l’oubli
Sous le sable et l’oubli
Au pied de chaque mur de l’isolement humain
Je ferai un collier, un collier de jasmin

Our paths run alongside time, the summers, the seasons
Brushing past other walls—so many walls—and these holy lands
Walled up within the centuries…
Beneath the sand and oblivion
Beneath the sand and oblivion
At the foot of every wall of human isolation
I shall make a necklace, a necklace of jasmine

A few other looks at her music follows. First a luscious ballad telling of the strange irredeemable homesickness one feels for a previous life and land… the realization that you can’t go home again. Also, a tune of hers from a subsequent CD a few years later, produced with a video filmed in Essouaria, Morocco around a desert dune buggy ralleye. Huh? This lady has a poetic soul, a being who lives to create, and feels deeply. I am glad we’ve crossed paths.

J′ai quitté mon pays,
J’ai quitté ma maison
ma vie, ma triste vie se traîne sans raison
J′ai quitté mon soleil, j’ai quitté ma mer bleue,
leurs souvenirs se réveille, et après mes yeux
soleil, soleil de mon pays perdu
des villes blanches que j’aimais
des gens que j′ai jadis connue
J′ai quitté un ami, je vois encore ses yeux
ses yeux mouillées de pluie, de la pluie de l’adieu,
je revois son sourire c′est pré de mon visage,
il faisait resplendir les soirs de mordulage

I left my country,
I left my home;
my life—my sad life—drags on without reason.
I left my sun, I left my blue sea;
memories of them awaken and rise before my eyes—
sun, sun of my lost land,
of the white cities I loved,
of the people I once knew.
I left a friend; I can still see his eyes,
his eyes wet with rain—the rain of farewell.
I see his smile again, close to my face;
it used to light up the evenings.

_______RS

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