ABAJI: ORIGINE ORIENTS
By David Honigmann

FT
November 6 2009 23:54

Origine Orients sees the Lebanese musician Abaji touring the Eastern
Mediterranean, singing in Turkish, Greek, French, Arabic and in his
grandfather’s Armenian.

But this is essentially an instrumentalist’s album: Abaji plays all
the instruments here, from a hybrid oud-guitar to a bamboo flute. All
mingle: ‘Menz Baba’, about his grandfather, has a strummed bouzouki
melody but hard on its heels follows ‘Hidden Soul’, with Armenia’s
characteristic mournful bass duduk; the bowed lyre of ‘Steppo’ chimes
with sequins tinkling around the hips of a dancer.