CLOTAIRE K: HIP-HOP, TARAB AND IDEOLOGY

Somewhere in The South Bank Centre, in that nuclear fallout shelter of corrugated concrete, you can find the Queen Elizabeth Hall. I don’t know exactly  where it is. I always loose my way in the complex of underpasses and spiral staircases.  Every time I visit, and get lost there, I grumble to myself, wondering why the country’s cultural institutions are housed in such an ugly, cold maze . Then I take another turn, or more likely, the same turn for the second  time.  On this occasion, I’m looking for Streetmusic: Arabe, an evening of artists taking their inspiration from both the Middle East and the West, channelling the spirit of Arab voices and noises. I get to the hall early, in time to watch a sound check with Clotaire K and his band. The French/Arabic rapper is joined on stage by a live drummer, an electric bassist, a live DJ on turntables, and another MC. He moves with the rhythm and attitude of someone spitting the sound of the streets.  He raps in French, sings in Arabic, speaks in English. Watch him take the stage, and you might think he was a typical rapper. Hear him speak, however, and he’s a different man altogether. He doesn’t own a car, he walks. He says  he lives “just like you or anyone else” in a Montpelier flat no bigger than his Queen Elizabeth Hall dressing room (it’s very small).  He speaks modestly, glances around  the room nervously. He fumbles constantly with everything he can reach on the table in front of him. Rolls a cigarette. Burns holes in his plastic cup. Arranges and rearranges everything on the table like pieces on a chess board. At one point, he flatly declares “My music is shit, basically. It’s bastard music.” He is clearly not a typical rapper, and his music is not typical hip-hop. Call it the illegitimate son of US rap and traditional Arabic vocals.

Of Lebanese and Egyptian parents, Clotaire K grew up in cities around Southern France, often in Arab ghettos. He was exposed to hip-hop from an early age: “I grew up in an environment where these beats are there for my body. It’s good to have these beats because they push me on the dance floor. This is what moves me.” Early American rap provided a platform for Clotaire K, something to move him, and to feed his appetite for expressive rhythms. He wanted to find the sound of the kids he grew up with, something common to his own mixed heritage and upbringing, and most importantly, something sincere. For many people, the idea of sincere rap is hard to swallow at a time when the genre is overwhelmed and uninspired. US hip-hop, he points out, has lost its message of rebellion and opposition. But he found that reworking hip-hop was the only way to communicate many complex perspectives simultaneously: “There’s something that’s quite interesting about hip-hop because you can express the raw things that you want to express…Just throw the truth on the table.” Hip-hop also occupies the unique position of recording urban, black American experiences. It deals with subjects that are familiar to any immigrant or minority population in the world’s inner-cities: racism, discrimination, violence. Let us not forget, too, the constructive aspects of the immigrant experience: dialogue, integration, and community.

If the route to Clotaire K’s music was to end there, he would remain unremarkable. But there is another side. He is distinguished by his dedication to Tarab, the enchanting vocals of classical Arabic music. ”For my spirit, my soul, the things you can’t touch, the emotion comes from the Oriental music.” His passion for the overflowing velvet chords and mesmerising wails of Tarab is far more than just a flavour to his music. It seems to be the inspiration and philosophy behind his entire musical career, and he reveres the form as “an eternal side of our culture.” His direct references to classical songs are limited to sampling melodies and alluding to famous lyrics, but the more esoteric traditions of Tarab resound throughout his album. The old masters (Clotaire K variously mentions Um Kalthoum, Fairuz, Farid Attrash, and Mohammad Abdlwahab) are narrators, handing down to us their stories of life’s intricacies through an irreplaceable mixture of lamentation and exaltation, and  with a melodic strain that carries us effortlessly away. The lyrics of Tarab have always been deceptively simple: thinly disguised metaphors and similes that often seem impossibly sincere to modern ears. But beneath them, there is another meaning that needs to be deciphered, often a message more sinister than the words themselves suggest. Clotaire K writes his rap with the same sensibility. “Sometimes I say things in political ways and maybe you have to decode the thing to understand what’s going on…people have to dig a little bit and then they know what it’s about.” His message is often political and always confrontational. It’s easy to forget amidst his impassioned tributes to classical music, but Clotaire K is essentially writing protest music: “People in the Middle East know that I say things that they want to hear and nobody says.”  His lyrics comment unapologetically on the contemporary culture of the Middle East. In his track “Moolook,” he criticises the materialism and vapid aspirations of Lebanon’s nouveau riche. “Lubnan” comments on his country’s violent past, equally condemning the invasion of 1982 and the country’s own murderous civil war. His lyrics describe a society that should be familiar to most of his listeners, one characterised by a phenomenal level of public apathy in the face of endemic political corruption. He refers to a Middle East rightly proud of its glorious heritage and yet virtually unconcerned with its contemporary decline. Crucially, his music tries to address these contradictions in a voice familiar to those who should be most concerned: the Arab youth. They are, after all, the people with the greatest capacity to make a difference. Ironically, they are also the ones who seem to care the least.  These are the listeners that Clotaire K wants to move, and to inspire. He makes it clear  that he wants his audience to not only appreciate the music, but to become more aware of where his songs are coming from, the history behind the sounds. His style can be read on a basic level, as a mixture of Arabic melodies and Western rhythms, or it can be read as a more involved analysis of his generation. This is a complexity missing from much of the Arab world’s contemporary musicians.

“My dream is that…one way or another things will change and people will get access to studios. Great singer, not just anyone who’s got money or a friend with a studio.” The current trend in the Middle East’s music industry is described by Clotaire K as “disposable pop”: good to listen to, fun to dance to, but undeniably missing the nuances of classical Arabic song-writing. There is something about the eternal qualities of these classical divas and princes that no longer exists, “I’m waiting for the next Fairuz and I don’t see it coming.” I ask why Clotaire K didn’t become a classical musician himself, rather than trying to revive Tarab indirectly through hip-hop. His answer is simple, “I’m not a great singer…it’s just one in a million, these people like Um Kalthoum or Fairuz, and it’s not me.”

© Saeed Taji Farouky 2006

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