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The global ALCHEMIST
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Vedic chants and African riffs spinning from his console make DJ Cheb i Sabbah a true world citizen.
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"NAMASKAR," IS his greeting. His shirt is saffron, his hair bunched on his head like a sadhu's, and a Ganesha, cut from red coral, is embedded in his largish ring. The deity's image also sits in his homepage and on most of his CD covers. "Mangal darshan," he says, by way of explanation. He loves Sanskrit and the Vedic culture and believes in the "Saraswathi civilisation". All this could sit comfortably on a hardboiled Hindu. But this is a 56-year-old Algerian Jew DJing in San Francisco, mixing and producing music that has large chunks of Carnatic and Hindustani classical, as well as bhajans, roping in musicians as big as Ustad Salamat Ali Khan, Ustad Sultan Khan, the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Shafqat Ali Khan, Trilok Gurtu, and the like.
So why is an African ("North African," he corrects me) so crazy about Indian classical music? "I think it's my feminine side. I was brought up by three mothers. Two were my mother's sisters — one couldn't have children and one wasn't married. I had to give a lot of kisses!"
Cheb i Sabbah (which translates as Young of the Morning), born in Algeria, raised in Paris, and who migrated to the United States, discovered music quite early in life. By 17, he was a DJ in the French capital and around the same time, he heard the Dagar brothers sing dhrupad. Not surprisingly, for someone who had grown up with malouf, the classical Andalusian music, he was hooked. Two of his uncles were exponents of malouf.
Malouf is a lot like Indian classical music and was quite popular in Algeria till the Islamists began their persecution. Even the traditions are remarkably like ours. As Mr. Sabbah says in an interview elsewhere: "... Everybody lived together, worked together, and created together, so you couldn't say one is Jewish, one is Muslim... It was the same kind of people with different religions working out this classical music."
And again: "The so-called tensions between Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent are similar to the so-called tensions between Muslims and Jews in the Arab world and of course (in Algeria)... Musicians ... have always played together and built bridges, not barriers. How many Muslims like Ustad Sultan Khan can sing ... to Radhe/Krishna based on Raag Kirvani?"
Cheb i Sabbah: `The sound is God.'
Jazz musician Don Cherry has been a big influence on him, and both would listen to traditional music from all over the world. As he puts it: "Sound is God. Nada Brahman." He has this favourite theory: "If you put 10 mystics in one room, they will eventually arrive at an understanding of the truth. But if you get members of 10 organised religions, you will end up with 10 nuclear wars." Purists would be shocked by his spinning of sacred music to suit the club dance floor. But the chain-smoking DJ argues: "I think the sacred and the profane are two sides of the same coin. Look at the three gunas: we need the rajas and tamas also, not just satvik!" It is not just Indian music that forms the bulk of his repertory. "Everybody's finding their own dance step to my music. In America, unlike India, people of all generations dance. I mix dance music for everyone — Arab, Persian, Indian. DJs are like editors. We listen to a lot of music and single out what we want."
Clearly, DJing gives him that high. "We have the pulse of the dance floor. It's like when you hear something beautiful, you can pass it on. You need to be a good listener. In the last 10 years, DJs have been recognised as musicians." He is at his console four nights a week ("That's a lot!") and for the past 13 years, Tuesdays find him spinning at Nickie's in San Francisco.
He is a world music producer also. "A producer is more neutral. A great artiste need not be a good producer." He helped one great artiste — Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan — organise his first concert around the San Francisco Bay area. "He had a few blessings, but not all of them. No health."
He recalls Abida Parveen, who has inherited Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's legacy, cancelling her performance three days before the show when the harmonium player suddenly died, shocking her troupe.
One of Mr. Sabbah's recent CDs, As Far As, is an engaging mix of world music, with predominantly African riffs. Our own Trilok Gurtu has a number, "Have We Lost Our Dream?" Another, Krishna Lila, is a compilation of nine bhajans, five in Carnatic style and the rest Hindustani. The accompanying beats are, well, interesting. Another, Shri Durga, is more classical, even making use of Ustad Sultan Khan's sarangi and vocals, besides Vedic chants "used with utmost respect". "Everything is closer than you think," he likes to say on his CD covers that he mostly designs himself.
Of course, he knows fellow Algerian musician Khalid, who won our hearts some years ago with the Rai number "Didi". Khalid also fled his native country as his music was regarded as subversive by the then repressive government. Mr. Sabbah, who helped organise Khalid's concert, which drew a crowd of 3,200 people, describes him as a generous and sensitive soul.
His future plans include a trip to Morocco in December and an album with "all women singers from the Arab world".
Mr. Sabbah, who had come here to spin at The Park, later turns up at i-bar. He begins with Raga Durga, then leaps to a Lagaan number, then to bhangra. Clearly, he has done his homework.
Log on to www/chebisabbah.com and www.sixdegreesrecords.com if you want to vibe with him.
SUGANDHI RAVINDRANATHAN
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