RIM BANNA: "Revelation of Ecstasy and Rebellion"

Arranged and produced by Bugge Wesseltoft

Throughout the "Arab Spring", Rim Banna, the best-known voice of Palestine, has seen how the music she has created over the last ten years has become part of the revolution's "soundtrack". She has toured and held concerts in several of the countries where artists have mobilized the masses to overthrow regimes and presidents, especially in Tunisia and Egypt, where she has had many performances. Now Rim has searched back into the Pan-Arabic cultural heritage and composed her own music for classical Arabic poetry, which through time and space reflects the revolutionary spirit that permeates the atmosphere of the audiences she meets on a daily basis. The result is a fantastic new album, "Revelation of Ecstasy and Rebellion" which was released on 14 January, the second anniversary of the "Arab Spring".

A number of new musicians join Rim on her new album, including some Norwegians, including Eivind Aarseth, who plays guitars, as he has done on all the three preceding Rim Banna records, and Bugge Wesseltoft (piano, keyboards and programming), who has produced and arranged the album. He has put together a band that also includes Jihed Khmiri (percussion), Kays Zorrouk (oriental cello) and Mohamed Ben Salha (flute), from Tunis, and Ossama Bishara (kanoon) and Ramsis Kassis (oud) from Palestine. Indian-British Shrikant Shriram plays bass.

The new production has for the most part been recorded and produced in Norway (by Martin Abrahamsen and Bugge Wesseltoft), but some of the songs were recorded in Nazareth in Palestine and in the Ennejma Ezzahra palace in Tunis. Tunisian rapper Mr Kaz is also featured on one of the tracks. 

The poems on the album have been written by famous Sufi poets (Mansour Al Hallaj, Ibn Al Faredh, Rabeah Al Adawiyyah and Ibn Arabi) and more modern poets from the Arab world (Amara Omrani, Bader Shaker Al Sayyab, Mahmoud Darwish and Rashed Hussein).

Track list:

1. The absent one                                  

2. The hymn of the rain                         

3. Supply me with an excess of love

4. The trace of the butterfly

5. The taste of love

6. Don't increase his agony

7. Stranger in the gulf

8. Astonished by you and me

9. Two kinds of love

10. My heart tells me

11. The free man

12. The sun of love