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Group Doueh, "Treeg Salaam"
This second compilation of Salmou "Doueh" Baamar's exquisite guitar playing is as enchanting as the previous one. Trawling through his recordings from the '90s has turned up more gems, some as expected and one particularly surprising extended guitar workout. Yet, his guitar playing is just one facet of this wonderful music; it is how his western-influenced style is fully integrated into Sahrawi folk music to create something truly unique.
Treeg Salaam follows on from where Group Doueh’s previous LP on Sublime Frequencies left off; “Min Binat Omum” features joyous call and response vocals driven by a persistent tbal beat and Baamar’s liquid guitar playing. Across the album, his hypnotic and The recording quality on most of the tracks are of a higher level than on Guitar Music from the Western Sahara, although a couple of them do sound like they were recorded at a party (for that definitive Sublime Frequencies sound). The ecstatic vibe of the music is infectious, the groove might be unusual but it is not hard before I am bopping along to the songs.
After such an electric ride, the 20 minute jam that takes up all of the second side is a completely different experience. At first I found “Tazit Kalifa” to be fairly dull after the frenzied power of the first side but after multiple listens, this is one monster of a track. The smoky atmosphere combined with the guitar, organ and percussion make Group Doueh into some kind of African Can (but no amount of world music scavenging could make Can sound this exotic). The music slowly weaves around the intermittent vocals, making me wish I could decipher the lyrics (although perhaps the mystery is better). By the time the needle lifts off the vinyl, I am so lost in the waves of sinuous rhythms that it feels like hours have passed.
Bearing in mind that all of the material is from 1996 and earlier, this is an incredibly fresh sounding record. With bands like Sun City Girls, Grails, and the aforementioned Can bringing in so many “foreign” influences into their music, it is great to hear the influences of western mainstream rock like Jimi Hendrix going the other way and being used in an interesting manner. Doueh’s playing is unmistakably African but hearing those shadows of the kind of guitar playing that I grew up listening to coming through such alien arrangements is electrifying.
This album is currently vinyl only so unfortunately no sound samples at this point in time, apologies!
