IN STEREO

We do the classical Arabic music, or the classical arrangements, let’s say. It’s a school for the [Arabic] scale. We have eight scales. And these eight scales, we can use them in different music. [With] keyboard, bass, electric guitars and drums, and vocals as well. Many bands, they’re using these scales for electronic music as well, for techno, for dub. So we do care about changing: changing the rhythms but not the melody. It’s important to keep the melody. It’s a traditional thing. You can’t change it. You can change the arrangement, that’s ‘legal’, I mean, for me. So you take the lyrics and the melody, and you do [a new] arrangement. Because everyone knows this melody. For 400, 500 years people have been dancing to this melody. For sure, people care about the rhythm [too] – the rhythm is a very touchy thing for people, I think. But right now you can change the rhythm, with the same feeling of the melody.

So that’s not different. The whole arrangement will be different, but we use the same scale. I sing in Arabic as well; I sing the Arabic scale. But in a different [way]. Like, it’s our age, it’s our century, so not to be these people who are stuck in this place that they want to do just classical Arabic music. I think it’s happening everywhere. It’s happening in Europe, in America – the music’s changing, I think, right now. So it’s another step of the century, or thinking. When you rearrange things, you give it life again, right? So you use the same language that people have known for hundreds of years, and maybe the same melody, but you’re doing a new arrangement for your century. So you’re mixing, between history – of your place, your country, your street, your everything – with a new kind of music that people aren’t used to. – Ahmad