His trademark, wide-octave voice: Who is Dhafer Youssef?

In many of the pieces, we feel like Youssef is singing an ode or will soon start reciting the adhan. We are right to feel this. Both Youssef's stories and the name of the album confirm what we hear and feel; His music is basically inspired by religious music. But what excites me most is how he masterfully built his current music on this foundation. There is a magnificent fusion rising in this ethnic infrastructure. It is possible to name his music with genres such as ethno-jazz, fusion, and world music, but to be honest, I do not care about genres and labels at all.

Dhafer Youssef was born in Téboulba (a small village of coastal Tunisia); his grandfather was a muezzin. He calls the radio "the most important school" for him. He developed an interest in jazz at an early age and clandestinely listened to it during his education at a Qur'anic school. He later left Tunisia to start a jazz career and has lived in Europe since 1990, usually in Paris or Vienna. He also works in avant-garde and world music where he has been nominated for awards.

What I hear does not sound forced or makeshift; The only criterion for me here is whether different influences are melted in a melting pot with technical mastery and heart and conveyed to the listener as a single and magnificent sound and feel. This is exactly what happens in Youssef's music and what fascinates us so much. A piece that he starts as if he were singing an ode or a religious work can suddenly flow like water with an effortless groove and turn into a jazz or world fusion.

Born in Tunisia in 1967. A life where he lived in poverty with his 7 siblings, but learned a lot. His life, spent between the mosque and the house in a small town called Teburca, located between the cities of Mahdia and Monastir on the coastline of Tunisia, was actually the key to the music he would perform like a divine invocation in the following years. All the doors of his life would be opened with this key from his childhood years.

That musical identity card is dominated by a rich mixture ranging from Tunisian moods to Arabic lyricism, from the Mediterranean breeze to the Qawwali tradition, from Sufi winds to Indian music. He briefly summarizes this card as Istanbul. It is in the middle of both sides, belongs to both sides, and is actually outside of both. Native to every climate he can reach with his voice exiled to places his voice cannot reach. So, let's record what he said in the context of his voice and the instrument, bracketing the oud that accompanies his original vocals:

"My vocal is an instrument that allows me to discover new sounds. The oud is an extension of my vocals. At the same time, my vocals are an extension of my oud. I am very sure that the vocal has an unlimited capacity. You need to work on it, just like other instruments."

Music is a long solace to him. A man who prefers singing as a cure even when he has a headache. Music "together" with its medicine, companion, and destiny. Even if he had stayed in Tunisia and never gone to Vienna, he would have found his own rhythm and continued to fly his melodies in the sky and long for the truth as a prayer. He would find a way. This is why he says "the path I take is more important than where I was born" when describing his own path. Seeing music as a form of prayer and eventually reaching God by climbing to the top with the miracle of sounds.

The position he wants to reach is somewhere between Muhammed Omran and Miles Davis. It is not an ambassador between the East and the West, but a river with a high flow rate, an exuberant and overflowing river. Not an ambassador, yes, but a messenger maybe. From the melodies that surround the poor houses in Tunisia until today; At the feet of his muezzin grandfather, in the divine choirs of the village he lives in, in his mother's kitchen, at friends' weddings, alone at home or at Cemal Reşit Rey's, he is always busy chasing the same melody, always singing the same song. The embroidery he embroidered with his oud on electronic infrastructures and the mode in which he rose with his voice, holding on to the last curtain of a transcendental state.

Yusuf always preferred to keep his musical pursuits in a long limitlessness, first in his hometown Tunisia, and then in Vienna, the cradle of notes. He always thought of his songs, his voice, and his lute together with the stars in the great sky of music. Of course, the collective works he was involved in and the joint projects he signed with his other musician friends had a part in this grand total. In fact, it means a lot that he doesn't want to be a bridge between East and West, but a musician looking for his way on this bridge. There is not a hierarchy, but a free interaction between the genres in the spectrum of his music.