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He is carrying on the tradition of
jazz guitar from Wes Montgomery to the present day while expanding
some musical boundaries, combining Afro-Mediterranean music with
a tradition well represented by jazz standards. His savvy original
composition catch listeners, while making groove and jam-oriented
music create a symbiotic affinity between the artist and the audience.
Mamdouh Bahri was born in Sfax, Tunisia,
and came to Montpellier, in the south of France, at the age of 25.
He grew up listening to the traditional music of Tunisia, where
he absorbed the Eastern strains into his music and started playing
Derbouka (hand drum percussion).
As a teenager, he listened to Jimi
Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton and B.B. King. When he got
his first guitar at eighteen, he started emulating their sounds
and performing with local bands, adding his own personal flair to
the popular songs of the seventies.
When he heard George Benson's "Weekend
in L.A." he got interested in jazz and started listening to the
work of Benson, Wes Montgomery, and Joe Pass, and later to Pat Martino,
which sparked a lifelong love of jazz.
In 1982, he moved to Montpellier and
was recruited by JAM (Jazz Action Montpellier) to teach music, and
played a key role in the development of the organization until 1991.
He became a very active musician and has kept an open musical mind,
listening to more jazz (Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis)
and learning to play straight-ahead jazz.
His first recording "Song for Sarah",
recorded in 1987, was post-bop funk-oriented.
In 1988, Mamdouh Bahri came up with
a unique way of propelling his Mediterranean heritage mixed with
the jazz and Blues.
From 1989 to 1993, he formed a quartet
with the pianist Horace Parlan which also included Italian bassist
Riccardo Del Fra and drummer Idris Muhammad from New Orleans. In
1991 they recorded the CD "From Tunisia with Love", live in Carthage.
In 1991 he moved to New York City and
joined the collective "The Spirit of Life Ensemble" led by Daoud
Williams, and performed with Talib Kibwe, Ted Curson, Michael Cochrane,
and Winard Harper, among others. He recorded seven albums with them,
using his distinctive playing and compositional skills to bring
freshness to the sound of the collective.
In 1993, he released his third album
"Nefta". The original tunes were influenced by a variety of musical
traditions including Middle Eastern, Jazz and North African music.
In 1998, he continued with an acoustic
album "African Flame" in trio (guitar, percussion & bass), exploring
and growing his music, transcending cultural, genre and language
barriers.
Now he is taking all these diverse
influences and styles and mixing them with jazz all over again
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France
Mamdouh Bahri "Tabarka", CD: JMA 0511-1 (2005)
Mamdouh Bahri "African Flame", CD: Aljazzira JC 55004 (1998)
Mamdouh Bahri "Nefta-les portes du désert", CD: ZZ 84110 MFA (1993)
Mamdouh Bahri "From Tunisia with Love", Live at Carthage, CD: RECD
025 (1992)
Mamdouh Bahri "Song for Sarah", K7: Aljazzira JK 55001 (1987)
USA/Japan
Spirit of Life Ensemble "Live au Duc", CD: RUP 100-12 (2002)
Spirit of Life Ensemble "Song for My Father", CD:
KICJ 361 (1998)
Spirit of Life Ensemble "Collage", CD: RUP 100-10
(1998)
Spirit of Life Ensemble "Live at Pori Jazz", CD:
RUP 100-9 (1997)
Spirit of Life Ensemble "Live! At the 5 Spot, NY",
CD: RUP 100-8 (1995)
Spirit of Life Ensemble "Feel the Spirit", CD:
RUP 100-4 (1994)
Spirit of Life Ensemble "Inspirations", CD: RUP
100-3 (1993)
...What was most impressive was the deft performance
at the guitar by Bahri. His astute finger work and fluency were
simply remarkable. What was pleasantly unique about the performance
was the tempo of the nature of the tunes. It was an interesting
mix of western and oriental music. Oriental, with the Middle Eastern
flavor it carried. Mamdouh Bahri's jazz was a genre by itself. While
jazz by all accounts, it was a unique confluence of the orient and
the occident. His performance catered to all tastes, those with
a flair for eastern music and those who are Western-orientated.
Despite it being jazz, there was no discord in between notes...
Anil Datta - The News, Karachi - November 27, 2006
It was one of the greatest evenings of music that
Alliance Francaise d'Islamabad is used to arrange. The performance
of Afro Caribbean Jazz, namely The Mamdouh Bahri Trio, got a great
and heartily appreciation by its music lover-audience on Wednesday
evening at NIC auditorium... Touching the heart and harmonious melody
has successfully portrayed "Autumn in Bloom" as it was the title
of the concert... A unique recognition of Mamdouh Bahri is an exceptional
way of propelling the Mediterranean heritage mixed with the jazz
and blues.
Tarik Zia - The Nation, Islamabad - November 16, 2006
The Mamdouh Bahri Trio renders the audience spellbound
with the Afro-Jazz music at concert in Islamabad... French jazz
band Mamdouh Bahri captivated the audience during their one-hour
performance at the NIC auditorium... The Tunisian-born guitarist,
Mamdouh charmed the guests with unabased demonstration of his Mediterranean
heritage, Afro-Asian jazz, blues and rock and unique combination
of traditional notes with new experiments. He also demonstrated
the extent to which African music had influenced jazz... There was
a lot of interplay and enquiries among the three musicians...
Jonaid Iqbal - Dawn, Islamabad - November 16, 2006
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Tracks from "Tabarka"
are featured on the "Fuse
This Jazz" program
Tabarka
Mus'Act / JMA Records
JMA 0511-1
Buy
the CD
Tracks
1. Blue Martine
2. Jéroboam
3. Ardjazzy
4. Tabarka
5. Nekriz
6. Slim in June
7. Barlot
8. Flying High
9. Asbayin
10. Idris in Tunisia
11. Éclair (bonus track)
Personnel:
Mamdouh Bahri (g)
Philippe Botta (ts & fl)
Bertrand Perrin (dr)
Bruno Schorp (b)
Timothy Hayward (as)
Let us not be afraid of a reuniting,
of associations and metaphors foreseen.
Straightaway, this jazz emerges
with a gentleness suggesting the languorous tempo of magic flying carpets,
of wisps of smoke, and inevitably (by inference) of Arabic motifs, and
certainly the sinuous motion of belly dancers that never stops delineating
infinity.
Unlike the obsolete and commercial
attempts that were once labeled "world music", this can make you believe
in some reinvention of "fusion", where the blending, the mixture, constitute
nearly four centuries - ever since the accident of history that introduced
involuntary immigrant workers to the New World - one of the axes of African-American
music.
Unlike some vaguely "exotic" productions,
the musical wish of Mamdouh Bahri is - if not by
birth then in any case by experience - at a crossroads of cultures, of
which he himself is a remarkable illustration.
The New York-based Spirit of Life
Ensemble and its percussionist leader Daoud David Williams were not mistaken
to have made this Tunisian guitarist one of their star guest soloists
for almost thirteen years. Woven and interlaced into the compositions
and improvisations of Mamdouh Bahri are recollections of various periods
of jazz and blues, the echoes of certain "gutbusters" assimilated by the
universe of rock'n'roll.
But there is also a current, flowing
just below the surface, of the masters of the oud, that eastern lute whose
crystalline nuances suffuse all Arabic music, certain inflections and
expressions that form a more or less conscious legacy of the great Arabic
voices. Still, no special translator is needed to move through Bahri's
world of sounds.
Whatever realm he enters the color
that passes through his fingertips to the forefront, whether the most
evident reference is Black and/or blue, Afro-American or Arab-Andalusian,
the power of the charm of this music is in the end based on the love of
dance and song - on the movement of the body.
Philippe Carles - Jazz Magazine Chief Editor
- Producer at France-Musiques, Co-Writer of "Dictionary of the Jazz" (Ed.
Laffont), and of "Free Jazz Black Power" (Folio/Gallimard) - (Translation
by Cynthia Hilts)
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