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MUSIC: ARAM BAJAKIAN
PopMatters
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/145349-aram-bajakian-aram-bajakians-kef/
Aug 11 2011
The first track is quiet: calm guitars, a peaceful name, "The Pear
Tree", pastoral hush. The second track starts with strings grinding,
a violin being dragged and battered, the guitar transformed and
electric. The violin stabs the cello, the guitar bites the violin,
the violin screams, and everything snaps and rips, leaps and charges,
and there's sort of a lush violence here that carries over into the
rest of Kef, standing back sometimes, and sometimes coming forward.
"Raki' is harsh, but the heart of "Karasalama" is a production of a
folk dance, as neat as a set of dots. "Pineta" is simple, melodic, a
single guitar. "Shish" pranks along with a toddle of Dada midgets. The
album can be soft, but it never seems to be really resting, never
totally mellow. Every bit of quiet is followed by a sting. You learn
to anticipate the stings.
Aram Bajakian is a North American with an Armenian background, and the
"kef" in the title is a style of music that developed in the U.S.
among migrant Armenian communities-traditional music updated and
changed, played by bands at gatherings in halls and churches. The
word drives some Armenian-Americans into a spitting rage. "Kef is
a Turkish word meaning merriment (khrakhjank)," writes Dr. Henry
Astarjian in the Armenian Weekly. It "make[s] me feel like a matador
looking at the bull ready to charge". "This is to Armenian music,
what Chop suey is to Chinese Cuisine", writes one Amazon poster,
reviewing an album called My Heart for You: Kef Music from Armenia.
But Aram Bajakian's Kef is superb. The transition from smooth to
rough between the first two tracks is so brusque, it's clumsy, as if
someone has made a mistake and switched us over to the wrong playlist,
but once the point about calm verses harsh has been made, he proceeds
to experiment with it more cunningly. The quietude doesn't always
come from the folk music-the quick dance in "Karasalama" supersedes
a hum of postrock drone.
In its strongest moments, the album goes after its ideas with an
absence of restraint back-boned by a strong traditional structure, and
this absence of restraint seems to be driven by a mature seriousness,
as if it might say, "When you mean it, then there is no reason to
bother with the middle ground". The violin in "Raki" squeals, and the
electric guitar sounds drunk, but all of the instruments take a break
from their roaring and swoop down into a few seconds of Armenian jig,
grounding themselves on the earth of this clearing, before running
off again.
That's the album in a nutshell. If your typical kef really is as
chop suey-like as the Amazon poster says-I haven't heard it, I don't
know-then this is better-than, and genuinely deserves to be called
Aram Bajakian's Kef, not anybody else's, but his, clever and fearless.
PopMatters
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/145349-aram-bajakian-aram-bajakians-kef/
Aug 11 2011
The first track is quiet: calm guitars, a peaceful name, "The Pear
Tree", pastoral hush. The second track starts with strings grinding,
a violin being dragged and battered, the guitar transformed and
electric. The violin stabs the cello, the guitar bites the violin,
the violin screams, and everything snaps and rips, leaps and charges,
and there's sort of a lush violence here that carries over into the
rest of Kef, standing back sometimes, and sometimes coming forward.
"Raki' is harsh, but the heart of "Karasalama" is a production of a
folk dance, as neat as a set of dots. "Pineta" is simple, melodic, a
single guitar. "Shish" pranks along with a toddle of Dada midgets. The
album can be soft, but it never seems to be really resting, never
totally mellow. Every bit of quiet is followed by a sting. You learn
to anticipate the stings.
Aram Bajakian is a North American with an Armenian background, and the
"kef" in the title is a style of music that developed in the U.S.
among migrant Armenian communities-traditional music updated and
changed, played by bands at gatherings in halls and churches. The
word drives some Armenian-Americans into a spitting rage. "Kef is
a Turkish word meaning merriment (khrakhjank)," writes Dr. Henry
Astarjian in the Armenian Weekly. It "make[s] me feel like a matador
looking at the bull ready to charge". "This is to Armenian music,
what Chop suey is to Chinese Cuisine", writes one Amazon poster,
reviewing an album called My Heart for You: Kef Music from Armenia.
But Aram Bajakian's Kef is superb. The transition from smooth to
rough between the first two tracks is so brusque, it's clumsy, as if
someone has made a mistake and switched us over to the wrong playlist,
but once the point about calm verses harsh has been made, he proceeds
to experiment with it more cunningly. The quietude doesn't always
come from the folk music-the quick dance in "Karasalama" supersedes
a hum of postrock drone.
In its strongest moments, the album goes after its ideas with an
absence of restraint back-boned by a strong traditional structure, and
this absence of restraint seems to be driven by a mature seriousness,
as if it might say, "When you mean it, then there is no reason to
bother with the middle ground". The violin in "Raki" squeals, and the
electric guitar sounds drunk, but all of the instruments take a break
from their roaring and swoop down into a few seconds of Armenian jig,
grounding themselves on the earth of this clearing, before running
off again.
That's the album in a nutshell. If your typical kef really is as
chop suey-like as the Amazon poster says-I haven't heard it, I don't
know-then this is better-than, and genuinely deserves to be called
Aram Bajakian's Kef, not anybody else's, but his, clever and fearless.