When electric guitars and electronics collide with ancient cleansing rituals, something simply stunning happens! The Tunisian group Ifriqiyya Électrique catapults centuries old rites of raptuire into the 21st century, and will treat Šiška to its exciting music and excellent debut album, released via Glitterbeat Records, in October.
François R. Cambuzat, who has also worked with Lydia Lunch and Eugene S. Robinson (Oxbow), spent months wandering the Djerid desert in Tunisia, filming, recording, and working and composing with members of a community of former black slaves – a community whose members don’t battle their inner demons, but rather attempt to placate them for mutual benefit with cleansing Banga rituals of dance and music, possession and trance.
The musical shamans fused their rites, going back hundreds of years, with contemporary sounds, addressing their demons with electronics and guitars, and creating something truly unique – transcendental post-industrial music that echoes both traditional tribal chants and desert riffs, with a hint of Nine Inch Nails catharsis and even hip-hop elements. In the members’ own words, the need for forgetting oneself is the same all over the world, from Djerid to clubs on Ibiza or rock bars in Moscow.
Ifriqiyya Électrique captured its wild ceremony on its May debut Rûwâhîne, released by acclaimed Ljubljana-based world music label Glitterbeat Records. Reviewers have spared no praise when it comes to the album, but it’s the group’s concerts that are famed as a special delicacy. The band’s live show is fused with a screening of Cambuzat’s fascinating documentary, with the experience stunning the audience. In summer 2017, the group is heading out on its first tour of the West, including an appearance at WOMEX and at Danish Roskilde Festival, and in autumn, the fantastic experience is coming to Šiška. Demons, beware!
Organisation: Kino Šiška.
