Paul Simon called the German band Dissidenten the “true godfathers of ethno-beat.” Robert Christgau wrote disparagingly of them, “So German pop-rock isn’t your stein of beer? And Middle Eastern music still seems a little alien? Now imagine a fusion.”
I wrote of Dissidenten [this very minute] “What we have here is shallow world beat hokum that could use a good world beating.”
Dissidenten have traveled the globe releasing continent-spanning ethno-beat records in exotic locations with non-Western musicians, which is admirable. But the results have been uniform wherever they go—they invariably release dance music albums with local music flavoring, which might pass muster if the dance music didn’t always sound the same. Or the exotic trappings weren’t such a vapid collection of low-rent cliches.
This is easy-listening stuff for people whose idea of great fusion is Japan’s Hiroshima. Or, to stay closer to home, Weather Report. About whose 1980 album Night Passage, Christgau wrote, “At last it is revealed they want to be Henry Mancini.” With Dissidenten, that would be Henry Mancini on a dromedary.
Dissidenten got together as a band in India and have recorded albums in India, the Middle East, and North Africa, and while I won’t accuse them of cultural appropriation, I am prepared to say that they haven’t made the music of any of those places proud. Oh, and their 2000 album The Memories of the Waters is a “documentary opera” about the Danube River, so I’m guessing they haven’t made the lovely Danube proud either. In fact, I’m guessing it’s holding its wet blue head in shame.
Dissidenten co-founder Uve Müllrich (bass, oud, guitar, vocals) once made clear that the band’s goal was never to treat their non-Western music influences as an exotic merkin for Western pop structures. What they looked to achieve was an organic, equal dialogue between West and East, capable of transcending cultural boundaries. If by that they mean slumming on both ends, they’ve succeeded spectacularly.
What I will say is that much of the non-Western music on their records sounds clichéd, much in the same way their Euro-dance music sounds like been-there/done-that. I suppose you could call that an equal dialogue. What I will call it is a piss-poor way of making great music.
On 1984’s Sahara Elektrik—the band’s third—Müllrich is joined by Marlon Klein (drums, synthesizer, producer), Freido Josch (flute), and non-Westerners Cherif Lamroni (mandolincello, vocals), Mbark Chadili (vocals), and Mohammed Ayoubi (percussion, vocals), the latter three being members of Tangier’s sha’abi band Lem Chaheb. The album was recorded at the Palace of Abdesalam Akaaboune in Tangier with the help of a friend and ex-pat English writer Paul Bowles.
The palace is a popular destination—scenes from two James Bond films (The Living Daylights, Spectre) were filmed there. And it was in the palace that the Rolling Stones recorded “Continental Drift” (on 1989’s Steel Wheels) with the Master Musicians of Jajouka. It speaks volumes about Sahara Elektrik that “Continental Drift” is better than anything on it.
Seven songs, only one of them falling short of the five-minute mark. And all of them making me think of dance remixes of songs by English synth-pop bands in djellabas and toufouks. You get the native drum, drum, drum, the synthesizer, and chanted group vocals. You also get a wearying sameness between songs that go on and on, so that when something (anything) unusual happens, you’re agog with wonder.
Such is the case on the utterly predictable “El Mounadi (The Desert Life)”—which sounds like it came out of a can—when Müllrich plays a short electric guitar interlude, or, more interestingly, when someone comes in doing his vocal impersonation of a man falling off a cliff.
Or, unhappily, when “Shadows Go Arab” briefly morphs from the same old/same old to what could be a Phil Collins song. And Müllrich gets in touch with his inner Mark Knopfler. Kinda makes you want to do a belly dance. But wait—they all do.
“Casablanca (Wacha Wacha)”—not much to report. Very prominent vocals, very non-Western pop, and a flute that simply demands to be treated as a shallow instrument. It’s a long song, very perky—but then all of the songs on Sahara Elektrik are very perky, and shallow as mirages. The desert is dangerous. These songs are desserts and aren’t. Sometimes I begin to hallucinate and think I’m hearing an Irish flute. I even smell unwashed kilts.
“Inshallah” can, I think, be translated as “Duran Duran,” and makes me think of a German-Moroccan boy band that once took a course in World Music. Everything happens very fast, and by “everything” I mean “nothing,” unless you call the brief synthesizer something. There’s also this single, solitary electric guitar power chord that shows up on the scene like it’s in the wrong studio.
“Sahara Elektrik” sounded promising, but it’s a bore from its very Western opening, which could be to any one million-plus English pop songs. The vocals sound very Western as well, but (to Dissidenten’s credit) the song goes on long enough to build into a second-rate drone. The guitar that follows doesn’t sound like an ethnomusicologist’s dream either. And so it goes, on and on, and thanks to a cumulative hookah drip on the forehead leading to a second-rate case of hypnosis, I found it hard to shout “Dreck!” and turn it off. It took the flute solo to do that.
Which leaves us with Dissidenten’s big hit “Fata Morgana,” which became a popular dance number in Europe (particularly Spain and Italy) and, oddly enough, Canada, where BTO blew a big opportunity by failing to cover it. It scored biggest in Brazil after it was used in the 1987-88 telenovela Sassaricando.
Big dance beat gratis big dance drums, the ubiquitous chanted vocals only more of them (sounds like a hundred people are involved), usual exotic instrumentation ho-hum, and a flute that once again brings Eire to mind—”Fata Morgana”—which literally translated means “worse than Phish”—is the Energizer Bunny in a fez, but all of the frenetic banging the drum while turning in a mystical circle gets you nowhere. The only unique touch occurs when a guy emerges from the pack to do some talking, but that’s a very, very small recompense for listening to the song.
Look—people all over the globe like Dissidenten, but I (and I suspect most Americans and Brits) are dissidents. Everything sounds too much like a cliché, as if it were made by hacks for people accustomed to hackneyed stuff. The Sahara wasn’t built in a day—it actually took months!—but Sahara Elektrik sounds like it could have been.
But you know what? Listen to Sahara Elektrik enough times, and you could just begin to like it. Which is why I stopped listening to it and will never listen to it again.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D
