Customer Reviews

Exile

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With this wonderful album Atzmon establishes his role as a musician who is involved in what goes on in the world, and is not afraid to express himself.
The music on this CD is not political - it is rather a beautiful combination of Arab music, East-European jewish music, and Balkan music - all soaked with Jazz sensibility. Atzmon Clarinet playing is simply amazing - his tone on this small instrument is as big as a tenor sax. Atzmon's saxophone playing - here he plays alto and soprano - is highly original, with welcome traces of Coltrane influences. Everything here is top quality - the Palestinian singers (Reem Kelani and Dhafer Youssef), the Gypsy guitar and violin players, and Atzmon's quartet that provide the Jazzy linking glue throughout.
But Atzmon goes further than that, and states that the CD is dedicated to the Palestinian right of return. This is part of the package, he insists.
Atzmon's attitude elevates the role of the musician from a mere entertainer to that of a leader, realizing that the moral commitment of the musician should not be less than that of a writer, painter, sculpturer, or any other true artist.
This is a breakthrough CD both musically and conceptually. It should be heard by every serious person.

This album is a musical prayer for the Palestinian Right of Return. It features a Palestinian woman singer Reem Kelani whose voice is incredible, singing side to side with the best jazz flute and clarinet player of our time, Israeli expatriot Gilad Atzmon. It raises two simple questions regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestine: How is it that people who have suffered so much and for so long can inflict so much pain on the Other? How can Zionists, who are motivated by a genuine desire to return be so blind when it comes to the very similar Palestinian desire? The questions are posed musically, by taking haunting Hebrew folk melodies and changing them into songs about the Palestinian intifada. The tunes are vibrant, not sorrowful. It is a joyous jazzy mix of Klezmer and Arabian sound. "Exile" is a celebration of being a stranger in a land which is not one's own.

His music gets better and better ...especially for those of us who grew up with the music of Dexter Gordon, Coltrane, Parker, Kirk etc...Atzmon self-taught many lessons of past masters.
He reveals a spirit which synthesizes his own internal melodies with the world he came from and the larger world...a musician's musician.
How can one not mention the longing of people in diaspora and their experience of exile?...listening to this album particularly these musicians of EXILE?
How can one not talk about the deep places that Gilad's music evokes or the political issues related to EXILE... its causes.?
Problem is there are some who want that attention curtailed, but the grief and rage of this decades long brutal occupation goes disconnected in US msm as it whitewashes unending
Zionist cruelty. Despite the cruel backdrop this music/musician evokes, evolves and expands our world for the better.

I loved looking at the other reviewers moaning about this political issue or that offensive remark... Gilad's plan is working.

By that I mean, 'No, no offence to anyone, but people are entitled to their opinions, and hearing them gives us the bigger picture.' Anyone who rebukes that theory is 1 dimensional and weak willed. I listen to and talk with people from all creeds and colors, yet it never stains my overall opinions on anything. They may serve to open up new ideas and concepts... and that's the spirit of free speech!


On a musical level he is just as radical. He plays with the Blockheads, too, who are friends of mine, and its not hard to see why hes so good! I didn't know giants still walked the earth, but they dooooo...

To those who would call Gilad a shame to his country I say this;
Man speaks God laughs. You ought be ashamed to have so little care for the humanity of others, as they should be ashamed for their lack of humanity. Now that you are both the same in the eyes of god enjoy the wonderful music.
Burnie Metzen
Bend, Oregon

You are supposed to review music, nothing else. I am appaled by the fact that Amazon.com doesn't do a better job of checking the reviews before posting them online.

About the album: Gilad's strongest effort to-date. An awesome fusion between jazz and middle-eastern music. Gilad is a superb saxophonist, powerful yet melancholic and sometimes reminds me of Jan Garbarek. The rest of the band is energetic, tight and expressive. Too bad, I don't understand Arabic because the lyrics must be beautiful. Highly recommended for all ethno-jazz fans.

If true, that alone should vault it into 5-star territory. And I am very much tempted to give it the highest rating.

But.

Despite the admitted gloriousness of this music, there is something almost completely wrongheaded--not to say absurd--about this project. Gilad Atzmon, an alienated Israeli, someone who has abandoned the legitimacy of his country's Zionist project, has written a remarkable musical document whose intent, apparently, is to validate the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause.

Talk about weird.

Here's a man who grew up in modern-day Israel. And who rejects his country's project to protect itself from Arab--specifically, Palestinian--depredations. Instead, he has affirmed the supposedly legitimate Palestinian right-of-return, by analogy, one supposes, to the Israeli right-of-return. Very curious for a Jew raised in Israel.

Those who say that politics holds no legitimate place is music reviews miss the point. If a musician purposefully contextualizes his music in political terms, it must be engaged at that level. My own view, about 180 degrees opposite of Atzmon's, is that although the specifics of his politics are nonsensical, he nevertheless has struck upon something legitimate: the desire of oppressed peoples for a homeland of their own.

Thus, there is a glory, a substance, about this music, no matter how wrong-headed it is. One might legitimately draw an analogy between the music contained herein and, say, that of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Both arise out of profound alienation. Both effect a modality of profound elegiacism. Both score big musically and emotionally. That they proceed from false premises is perhaps less important than the fact that they bear witness to legitimate (albeit wrongly placed) sentiments.

Eminently listenable, sad/profound, wonderfully evocative on its own terms, this is music that anyone even faintly attracted to world jazz should at least become familiar with. Four-and-a-half stars, even though I am violently opposed to its specific and idiosyncratic point of view.

I beleive that Karin Hussain's review of this album was innapropriate. Music reviews are not the medium to express your own political opinions and biases.

There are some offensive assumptions being made here. It would be nice to embrace the uniting spirit of music and the example Mr. Atzmon makes here by including musicians of different backgrounds instead of making judgements about a political movement.