Rocker Dudu Tassa teams up with Radiohead leader

Over the past three decades, Dudu Tassa has made a name for himself, here and around the world, for his kickass rock sounds. That often comes laced with a liberal sprinkling of sentiments from his familial Iraqi roots. Now he has teamed up with Jonny Greenwood, best known as the frontman of British rock band Radiohead, to produce an album called Jarak Qaribak.

The record is due out later this year with Tasa and Greenwood scheduled to unveil the new material at a local launch gig, at Hangar 11 in Tel Aviv, on September 14. Tickets went on sale on June 12.

The Arabic name of the record translates as something along the lines of “your neighbor is your relative” and Tasa says the new release contains classic love songs that express a mixture of romance and heartbreak. “The album is an accurate reflection of the emotion that resonates from each of its component parts – the songs, the artists behind them and the singers who perform them. They all come from different parts of the Middle East.”

That is certainly the case with Tassa, whose great-uncle and grandfather, Saleh and Daoud Al-Kuwaity were Kuwait-born musicians of Iraqi-Iranian ancestry, who became famous across the Arab world in the first half of the 20th century. They were pioneers of the modern classical music of Iraq and Kuwait. Their genes and spirit course through Tassa’s veins, and fuel much of his output.

Music about culture and roots

For Tassa, that is a natural avenue of artistic expression. “Israel is a small country nestled between Arab countries,” he notes. “We are influenced by their cultures and music. Many of us, like my family, are descendants of immigrants from around the Middle East. This is a record about people, humaneness, and about culture and roots.”

The rocker says he took an intentionally extraneous approach to the music and culture. "The singers on the album do not perform songs from their own nationality, rather songs from countries that are neighbors of their countries of origin."

That, says Tassa, is intended to convey an important sentiment. “That emphasizes the ability of music to blur boundaries inside us, and to dissipate fear of the unknown, fear that obscures so much beauty.”

The track-vocalist pairing list includes a song from Algeria sung by an Egyptian vocalist, a Lebanese chart performed by a singer from Ramallah in the Palestinian Autonomy, and a Yemenite song with a Baghdad-based vocalist. There is also a number from here which gets a rendition by a singer from Dubai. Tel Aviv-based Tassa will lead a Moroccan song.

For Tassa, Jarak Qaribak is, in a sense, a means of righting some of the wrongs of the past. “Ariel Kassis, a member of the band, sent me a lot of songs he found in the archives of the Arabic Broadcasting Authority [where the Al-Kuwaity brothers performed]. They are wonderful songs from titan artists who made aliyah and carried on creating in their language and their culture, just like my grandfather.”