The Return of Cheb i Sabbah

interview by Tom Chandler

Tom Chandler: My Moroccan friend who works with me thinks the CD is wonderful.

Cheb I Sabbah: Wow. Thank you.

TC: Why did you go back to North African music after all this time with Indian music?

CiS: Aha. Well one fact is that I am from Algeria. Eventually, I would get back there. The way it started is that a few years ago I produced a concert with Cheba Zahounia, in San Francisco, and also Cheb Hasni, who was murdered later on. When I did that show, I went to the studio with Zahounia and did two songs. And so I have that sitting all those years, and finally, after two albums with Indian and Pakistani musicians, it felt that this was the right thing to do. And with 9/11 and the Arab whatever it is, positive-negative, I thought it would be timely. It's mostly Algerian and from Morocco with one song in Hebrew, from the Yemenite tradition. It's actually the song that made Ofra Haza famous. Also it was sampled by Eric B and Rakim. And Ofra Haza passed away, and it was, as far as we know, the first middle eastern sample in hip hop. And then I had the chance to meet this singer who is exactly like Ofra Haza. In other words, she's of Yemenite descent. I redid that song with her.

TC: What's your recording process?

CiS: I went to Morocco, and finding a studio was very hard in Marrakech.

TC: What's the technology like over there? Is it modern?

CiS: I found an engineer that was Austrian, but living in Marrakech. He had a small room with very clean, very good equipment, including Pro-Tools. We needed at least two rooms to separate. He lived in a typical Moroccan house with all the rooms arranged around a court yard. So we ran long cables to the second room, and to communicate we had two very cheap video cameras and two old TVs! Some of those ladies, they were like, wow! They were on television, you know?

TC: So what you do is you go in and record the musicians first, and then you produce around them. You don’t have the beat first, or something like that.

CiS: Not on this album. On Shri Durga I did that. I had the beat and then they could play particular ragas over the beat. But on this one, you know, it's folk music, and trance music and they start at a certain tempo, and ten minutes later, the tempo has doubled or tripled! They never heard of a click track! I just asked them to do what they normally do. Then I go home and I listen and I go hmmm, what are we gonna do with this? But I have really first class engineer, a genius with any kind and every kind of music software.

TC: You don't do the actual editing?

CiS: Well, I produce, I direct, I compose, but I don't click the mouse. I spend so much time spinning, there's no way I could have spent all the time to learn! If you don't do it every day, you're just not fast enough. I work with engineers, and if they're too slow, it's not going to work. It's so tedious and so tremendous.

TC: Was there a reason why you gravitated towards using female singers? Was that a conscious decision, or did it happen naturally?

CiS: I feel that there is somewhat a misconception in the West of the Arab woman. Kind of like, oh poor Arab woman. Wearing the veil and all that. It might be true in Muslim countries, which aren't necessarily Arab. Those women, they sing, they dance, and they might wear a veil on the street, but when they come into the recording studio and we're all men, they take off their veil. On the other hand, everything is kind of decided by men, and we need more wisdom or at least a message from women that I don't think we hear enough. It ties in with the whole ancestry of Berbers, of Jews in North Africa, who were there way before Arabs and Islam. It touches on all that through the music.

TC: Do you envision being able to bring some of these people?

CiS: Yeah, I'm working on trying to bring B'net Marrakech for a few shows. Money is a headache. We want them to make some money. Visa is a headache. The group Hazarat, I don't think they have any identification. Passport? Forget it. I doubt they even have a piece of I.D. They don't drive. Birth certificates? They've never left Marrakech, basically. At some point, there might be some help. I brought back the recording, and had five out of eight groups listen to the record. It was very beautiful, it was all filmed, and it might eventually be a documentary. Somebody in Morocco might say, hey, let's give them passports, and you'll have them in two days. There might be that one person.

TC: Do you think this CD will get exposure in Morocco and Algeria?

CiS: I'm sure it'll be pirated before it comes out here! (laughing)

TC: I just wonder if the modernization of the music would be well received or would it be too much of a stretch for people who are used to listening to that music in its original form.

CiS: It's the same kind of bridge that Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan had to cross when he did stuff with Michael Brook. And Bally Sagoo.

TC: I have no idea how Nusrat's westernized albums were received in Pakistan.

CiS: It's half and half. You're always going to have people that hate it, but there will also be people that think it's great because it exposes their greatest singers. And the young people, they like the modern thing. I try to be as respectful as I can, by keeping what was given to me, and adding just enough. The musicians liked it, that heard it so far. Nadia, she cried. She came with all her musicians to hear it. And she's heavy duty classical Algerian music. The Moroccans liked it, wherever we played it.