Nar

Singer Christiane Karam draws on both her Lebanese and Armenian heritage to deliver a richly textured and multilayered album that taps into traditional Arabic, Balkan, contemporary jazz, folk and Western classical music. Performing here with a quintet that includes Grammy award-winning Japanese-born percussionist Keita Ogawa (Snarky Puppy), Karam’s mellifluous vocals are delivered in five languages: Arabic, Armenian, Bulgarian, English and French. Resourceful to say the least, she also plays tupan and bendir drums and even throws in a little self-penned poetry for good measure too.

Though she’s lived in the US since the late 90s, where she’s on the faculty of Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music, Karam remains impassioned by the ongoing, and seemingly inexorable, plight of her native Lebanon. It’s a country that has suffered more than most over the last few decades, even by Middle Eastern standards. The title-track, ‘Nar’ (from the Arabic for ‘Hellfire’), is a dissonant yet captivating 12-and-a-half-minute-long lament on the 2020 ammonium nitrate explosion in the Port of Beirut which killed over 200 people and rendered a further 300,000 homeless. All 13 songs manage to pull off the feat of being emotive, melancholic and reflective, while not straying into indulgent self-pity. This is a complex yet highly enjoyable album that treats its subject matter with intelligence, respect and virtuosic musicality.