HUSET & Final Descent presents: El Khat (il/ye)

It creaks and rattles, the screws are loose, but it holds together and moves magnificently. It’s the sound of El Khat, an international deconstruction squad from Tel Aviv led by Eyal El Wahab, a son of the Yemeni Jewish diaspora on a mission to recover his roots.

Final Descent and HUSET are very excited to welcome the psychedelic junkyard experimentalists back to Copenhagen with their magnificent combination of traditional Yemeni music and punk ethos.

Scroll ned for dansk beskrivelse ↓

El Khat (il/ye)

Starting in 2019, El Khat began to hone their sound in garages and warehouses. Through experimenting with DIY homemade instruments as a means to live a minimalist philosophy, the three-piece has created an endless collection of Arabic tunes of Yemeni origin.

Detached from any land or flag, the driving force behind the group is their music and heritage rooted in Yemen. The constant division created by wars and migrations has pushed out an identity.

As undulatingly stimulating as the eponymous plant, El Khat mixes trash and tradition in a timely urban reclamation of a disenfranchised culture.

In the midst of these major life changes, El Khat bandleader, Eyal El Wahab, was presented with the LP ‘Qat, Coffee & Qambus: Raw 45s from Yemen’ full of traditional Yemeni music. He began learning Arabic. He had also been experimenting with carpentry and building instruments in his work studio. As part of this creative process and his desire for cultural inquiry, he began writing what would become the album Saadia Jefferson, using instruments built from whatever materials were available to him, often junk. The poverty and simplicity that exist in Yemen inspired these DIY inventions.

With two albums behind them and a third to be released in 2024, El Khat is constantly moving, sharing their art globally, mainly in the US and the EU.

Read more at finaldescent.org

Dansk

El Khat (il/ye)

Siden 2019 har El Khat udforsket og udvidet deres unikke musikalske univers, bestående af lige dele DIY-punk-æstetik og yemenitisk-arabisk traditionel musik. Resultatet er et psykedelisk, grænseudviskende musikalsk sprog, hvor traditioner refortolkes gennem hjemmebyggede instrumenter og skramlet minimalisme. Med rødder i Yemen er bandet vokset ud af udviskede landegrænser, og en tilværelse omringet af krig, migration og separation har resulteret i en identitet, som er så vidtforgrenet, som den er absolut unik.

El Khat er anført af multiinstrumentalist Eyal El Wahab, en yemenitisk jøde opvokset og bosat i Tel Aviv. Som barn lærte han sig selv at spille musik på hjemmebyggede instrumenter. Med sit sjældne talent blev han optaget som cellist i The Jerusalem Andalusian Orchestra uden at kunne læse en node, men hans verden blev vendt på hovedet, da han en dag fik stukket en LP i hånden med traditionel yemenitisk musik fra 1960’erne. Åbenbaringen fik ham til at kvitte orkestret og starte El Khat med missionen om at udforske sine egne rødder i musikken.

El Khat er, ligesom den stimulerende plante de har taget navn efter, et mildt berusende bekendtskab, som får dig til at glemme øjeblikket, sænke bekymringerne og bruse over af ekstase, når deres vuggende, medrivende neo-psykedelia først tager fat.

El Khat har tidligere udgivet to albums og er i 2024 aktuelle med deres tredje, som sender dem på turné rundt i USA og Europa, og heldigvis også til København.

Læs mere på finaldescent.org