Deena Abdelwahed ★★★★✩
Place and date: Auditori CaixaForum (23/II (2024)
CaixaForum's Dnit series brought the Tunisian Deena Abdelwahed; dj, producer, composer and singer, came to present her second album, Jbal Rras, together with compatriot Khalil Epi, another figure of the new electronic scene in North Africa. The title and cover of the album refer to an emblematic mountain of her country, which is a sign of identity that can be extended to the sound.
The marked political and conscientious nature of their work had a prologue in the form of a short film, a reminder of Radiohead's refusal to join the cultural boycott of Israel that led them to give a controversial concert in Tel Aviv in 2017.
Already getting into the matter, in the initial The key to the exit, some martial and dark rhythms combined with a melodic synthesizer of dabke resonances. In the next one, Each day, the prominence was taken by the lotar, an electrified and distorted Berber string instrument, which gave the song a psychedelic nuance, in contrast to some low and opaque beats, while he hummed a psalmody about the frustrations that lead to emigrate.
The microtones of Six as Oil gave it a sinuous and mysterious shape, later combined with some forceful breakbeats wrapped in some decisive visuals throughout the evening. A treated voice, half spoken poetry, talking about self-censorship, introduces the mood of a Complain in which lotar was once again essential. A wave of synthetic sounds and ramshackle beats serve to shelter the message of Violence for Free, about misogyny and comfort in female fraternity.
Awareness and danceable rhythms were the norm in what he said was his first concert for a seated audience, although Naive seems in its beginnings to be a sidereal abstraction, later converted into something similar to Middle Eastern folklore turned to techno. Finally, Pre Island, highlighting its successful transgression, by mixing Arabic groove of mechanical darbukas and rampant experimentation, to complain about how states fail in their obligations to their people.
