Amir ElSaffar
Crisis
(PI Recordings)

“OUT of the ashes emerges a sound. Overtones, harmonising, becoming many. Intangible threads of humanity, too delicate to be broken or destroyed, emanating from a shared, infinite past that is our present.”

Such is the description by the Iraqi-American trumpeter born and raised in Chicago, Amir ElSaffar, of his Crisis Suite, composed in 2013 following a year living in Egypt and Lebanon with Syrian musicians who had been in the heart of civil conflict and destruction, and first performed at the 2013 Newport Jazz Festival.

ElSaffar’s virtuoso musicianship is founded upon his dedication to the Iraqi maqam tradition and his proud devotion to Arabic culture, under ferocious attack in the nations of his roots.

As its defender he is not only a profoundly original trumpet improviser, but is also a powerful vocalist and player of the santour, an Iranian dulcimer struck by mallets.

He has blown with jazz and blues bands, in classical orchestras conducted by Boulez and Barenboim, and is musical curator of New York’s Alwan for the Arts and director of the Middle Eastern ensemble at Columbia University in New York.

With him on the Crisis Suite is saxophonist Ole Mathisen, drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Carlo DeRosa, with Tareq Abboushi on the buzuq (a long-necked lute) and percussionist Zafer Tawil on the lute-like oud.

A deep, deep volley of Waits’s drums rampages through the firestorming opening of From the Ashes, before ElSaffa sings the elegiac words of the early 19th century Iraqi poet, Abdul Ghafar al Akhras: “Oh, doves of the thicket, sing joyously / Time gave us its gift of many pleasures / Now it is taking back that which it has given.”

The Great Dictator follows, with a resonating buzuq solo by Abboushi and Mathison’s powerful horn a fiery commentary contrasting with the poised and burnished solo trumpet of Taqsim Saba, a blues influenced maqam of loss and grieving, blown with an earthen wilfulness by ElSaffar.

The track called El Shaab is a praisesong to the people and their resistance to oppression. DeRosa’s bass digs into their spirit and the strings of Tawil and Abboushi tell their story before ElSaffar’s defiant and transcendant horn.

The track called Love Poem is ElSaffar’s musical adaptation of the 12th century Sufi poem by the mystic Ibn Arabi.

When you contemplate his words in a jazz context: “The loved ones of my heart, where are they? / How long, how long was I seeking them / And how often did I beg to be united with them?” you think of the great Leroy Carr’s Indianapolis blues, How Long Blues transposed to the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates.

ElSaffar’s trumpet curls with grace around the melody, Abboushi’s buzuq vibrates behind ElSaffar’s imploring voice and Mathison’s soprano saxophone obbligatos respond alluringly, creating an Iraqi-American syncretism of unique beauty.

Flyover Iraq is rhythmic and sauntering. DeRosa’s bass jumps below ElSaffar’s dancing horn.

It leads to the nearly 14 minutes of Tipping Point, a sonic picture of an air raid, prompted by a siren depiction by the oud and expressed by the trumpet’s open and anguished voice and the stress and tautness of Mathison’s tribulating saxophone, with Tawil’s hand drums swirling under the torment of the buzuq. This is “shock and awe” relived as music.

The epilogue is Aneen (Weeping), an echo of ElSaffar’s Two Rivers Suite, recorded on a previous album in 2007, reflecting upon the 1258 invasion and massacre of Baghdad by Genghis Khan’s grandson Hulagu’s ransacking armies.

The horns cry out and sob above the drums’ grieving march, and as you listen you realise that within these sounds are the mourning voices of millions in now times Iraq and Syria, their pain but also their boldness that their culture and history can never be taken from them.

Strange perhaps that such a message should come from a studio in New York, from a nation whose bombs and drones defiled them, but true and real nevertheless.