Luna Abu Nassar

Tiene 23 años pero compone como si su vida hubiera sido rasgada y cicatrizado como la de un octogenario. Acabo de leer sobre y ella y escuchado un par de canciones de su primer y único disco, pero merece la pena (y mucho) dedicarle la poco más de media hora de duración. Música en árabe y hebreo. Muy recomendable!!!

Luna Abu Nassar. Photo by Natisha Shpaner

Podéis escuchar el disco entero (y comprar, que són sólo 7 eurillos) en su página web.

Y para muestra...un botón

Y aquí os dejo el artículo que he leído sobre ella en el diario "Haartez", escrito por Ben Shalev y publicado el día 5 de Octubre.

Introducing musician Luna Abu Nassar, a bilingual acrobat

Acoustic and rock 'n' rolling, gentle and rough, Arabic and Hebrew - Luna Abu Nassar, like every superb artist, rises above these binary divisions in her brief but weighty debut album.

By Ben Shalev | Oct. 5, 2013 | 7:21 AM

True, Luna Abu Nassar’s wonderful debut album, “Asaper Lakh,” has not been officially released and isn’t even in record stores yet, but that is not a good excuse for the fact that a proper review of it hasn’t been published yet. Beauty like this ought to be announced as soon as possible.

There are many ways to explain why the new digital album by 23-year-old Abu Nassar − known ‏(to a few, perhaps‏) as a member of the excellent Jaffa-based hip-hop group System Ali − is such a work of art and a candidate for the list of best albums of the year.

Where to begin? Maybe from both the beginning and the end, from the first and final tracks of this Hebrew-Arabic album, which provides the lyrics in both languages. Abu Nassar creates a delicate and moving connection between the two extremes, and this connection strengthens the feeling that this album, despite its brevity ‏(half an hour in all‏) and minimalist tone, is a weighty work of art − in the good sense of the term.

The first song actually has two segments. It begins with a short instrumental piece, “Kan Ya Makan,” comprised of layers upon layers of music played by plucked strings, which you do not usually encounter on rock albums. Is it a harp we hear? Or maybe a kanun ‏(a traditional instrument, like a zither‏)? Perhaps both instruments together. It’s not important. The main thing is that Abu Nassar and her partner in creating the album, producer-arranger Dror Rotem, introduce the listener to a special, riveting world of sound, embodied at the outset of the title track and continuing to permeate it.

From a musical standpoint, “Asaper Lakh” is a gentle and fairly standard acoustic ballad, but its lyrics are jolting: This is actually a twisted lullaby that an emotionally unstable mother croons to her daughter, describing scary enemies, evil spirits and bad, nasty, lying people. It is a song that has a general relevance, but toward the end Abu Nassar inserts herself into it. The mother sings, in Hebrew: “My moon, close your eyes, do not fret, I will give you everything, but I don’t have, don’t have” − and then Abu Nassar switches to Arabic and the hypnotic sound of the kanun/harp, which now takes on a disturbing tone, and moves from the background to the forefront.

Leaping to the final track, “Boha,” it, too, is a quiet acoustic song, similar in spirit of “Asaper Lakh,” but it seems that this time − this is at least one possible interpretation − the daughter is the one addressing the mother ‏(also in Hebrew‏). “I would give you everything,” she says, and adds a few lines later: “Soon the moon will be gone, hold me tight before I run away from here, soon a full moon, wake up now, before I run away from here.” This time as well, when the vocalist and guitar fall silent, the sound of the kanun/harp is heard, quieter than ever. What a great way to close the circle that opened the album.

What the opening and closing songs do not reveal, despite their great beauty, is the musical depth of this album: It contains not only quiet acoustic songs, but also more intense and current musical dimensions. There’s the beat, for example. By the second song, “Mishwar,” the acoustic poignancy has dissipated and has been replaced by a broken-but-sweeping rhythmic pattern, which is achieved by combining Eastern percussion instruments and an electronic beat.

Thankfully, we are not talking about yet another young singer who thinks that a voice, an acoustic guitar and sincerity are sufficient ingredients for creating music that’s successful from the artistic point of view ‏(especially as Abu Nasser has a small voice, and her delivery, especially in Hebrew, could be better‏). The wounds she exposes on this album − and she exposes quite a bit, albeit in a delicate and implicit manner − are given appropriate expression in the music, as well. Not just in the dense and intense sounds in some of the songs, but also in Abu Nassar’s cyclical and haunted melodies, which induce a feeling of there being no way out. Acoustic and rock ‘n’ rolling, gentle and rough, Arabic and Hebrew − Abu Nassar, like every superb artist, rises above these binary divisions. She sings in one language and then switches to another, she scratches the guitar and then caresses it, and she makes all these transitions completely naturally.

Bilingual acrobat

A particularly interesting moment related to singing in both languages occurs at the opening of “Rakevet,” the best track on this digital album, in my opinion. Abu Nassar begins singing, and at first it is not clear she is singing Hebrew words. She rolls these words on her tongue like a bilingual acrobat. It is only a bit later when we realize it’s Hebrew. Abu Nassar sounds like the niece of Inbal Perlmuter there. Even before the first words of “Rakevet” are heard, something happened that made me want to hug Abu Nassar and her partner Rotem: There’s a guitar riff that opens the track − a repetitive bass note that descends by a half tone and then a full tone. God almighty, I thought. It is exactly like the opening of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by Iggy Pop and The Stooges − one of the greatest rock songs of all time. And then my thoughts automatically drifted to the late radio host/DJ Michal Niv, who played the Iggy & The Stooges song countless times and would probably have loved this track and indeed the whole album by Abu Nassar.

“Asaper Lakh” will catapult Abu Nassar into the awareness of many music lovers; actually, there are already signs of this. Next Wednesday, October 9, she will be performing at Ozen Bar in Tel Aviv. There will only be a sliver of a moon outside that night, but if the performance reflects the album in quality, a light will be shining brightly in the club.

For now, you can listen to and purchase “Asaper Lakh” on Abu Nassar’s bandcamp page ‏(http://lunaabunassar.bandcamp.com‏).