About Us

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Wood and skins; strings and vibrations.

Driss El Maloumi wanted this encounter to be a certain promiscuity, an intimacy that should lead to openness and freedom.

Knowing that a man, like a culture, is never made of only one essence, the musician gathered several woods, several tense skins, several sounds, several colours.

In the center: the oud, “the wood” in Arabic (al-ud); at its side percussions of various origins. The musician is made of his heritage, his tradition, but also of his learning through transmission. It is in him like the heart in the center of the tree, the first essence. The one that cannot be denied, that gives the perfume its first fragrance, the one that frames the branch and will shape the genealogy. But the musician is also made of successive strata, like these rings of the tree which roll up one on the other over the years, giving him his age over the soul.

These layers are superimposed, protecting the heart while turning outwards, protected in turn by the sapwood first, then the bark. The visible side, the fragility, the side that absorbs, that rubs against the others, and vice versa. The bark receives the softness of the breezes and the fury of the bad weather, it sees the days melting under the seasons.

It takes the marks of time, which itself is translated internally by the beating of the heart.

Driss El Maloumi knows that he is made of this heritage and this permeability. He loves tradition, its structure, its strength, its dignity. But he needs to let his oud satisfy his greed. This need to go and see if he can also vibrate outside the imprints of the tradition. This desire to know how he will react to the contact of an Iranian zarb or a percussion from Madagascar.

Can he find the freedom to let go while respecting just as greedily what has been transmitted to him, but giving free rein to the possibilities of exchanges and adventures. Adventures already rich on the paths taken by Driss El Maloumi with Jordi Savall, with 3MA (Ballaké Sissoko and Rajery), with Paolo Fresu, Armand Amar, Debashish Bhattacharya, Montserrat Figueiras …

The knowledge he has accumulated in his practice of the oud has allowed him to get involved in these encounters. Today, he wishes to bring back all the spices gleaned from these magnificent experiences and see how the oud will diffuse them in trio with the help of percussions. All while respecting a notion of space…