El Hal / The Feeling

Electric Jalaba comprises six accomplished musicians with an empathy that
feels telepathic and a groove that immerses. In Arabic, the mother tongue of
Moroccan-born singer and guimbri player Simo Lagnawi, a leading practitioner
of Gnawa music in Britain, they call this indefinable quality, “El Hal” – “The
feeling”.

“It’s the feeling that comes when we’re playing and totally forgetting where we
are,” says producer and bassist Olly Keen. “The feeling of being grabbed by the
music and lost in the groove.” ‘El Hal / The Feeling’ is the new third album from
Electric Jalaba and their first release in five years. It’s a multi-faceted work that
finds the band tighter than ever, deploying a vast cache of influences across nine
tracks improvised and developed in their south London studio then deftly
produced by Keen. Some tracks pay homage to the origins of Gnawa music,
whose repertoire of Arabic-language praise songs contains remnants of West
African dialects – Bambara from Mali, Fulani and Hausa from the Sahel region –
that point to a centuries-old migration.

“The trance-inducing effect of Gnawa was what hit us first. It was visceral, heart
stopping,” continues Olly, whose siblings – producer / keys player Henry Keen,
guitarist / multi-instrumentalist Nathaniel Keen and singer / multi-instrumentalist
Barnaby Keen – make up Electric Jalaba alongside revered Anglo-Italian kit
drummer Dave De Rose and Simo on vocals, krakeb and guimbri. “Simo
selected the chant from the traditional song suites and, as a band, we extended
these short pieces of ceremonial music and experimented with sound and
structure,” explains Olly. Tracks include the Juno-led dancefloor single ‘Cubaili
Ba’, ‘Agia Hausa’, a multi-layered wig-out that partly takes its inspiration from
Senegal’s fiercely percussive mbalax rhythms and ‘Daimla’, a gloriously dubby
ode to Allah and iconic maalems including the late Mahmoud Guinea. “There’s a
very strong rhythmic element within the band but because of our different
perspectives but the melodic components are really unique as well,” says Henry.
That feeling of being outside of yourself but totally within yourself at the same
time… That’s what all of us, collectively, are striving for.”