KALOUSCH
Swedish-Moroccan group
The KALOUSCH orchestra was founded in Uppsala in 1991 as a fruit of the meeting of Abdelghani Najraoui from Marrakesh, Morocco and Roland Keijser from Mockfjärd, Sweden.
Through the years other members have shifted to some degree, but the core of the group has always consisted of Keijser and Najraoui.
KALOUSCH often perform as a duo, but for bigger events the group likes to expand itself into everything from a trio or quartet to an eight or nine piece band. At the first "ReOrient Festival" in Stockholm, KALOUSCH was the house band, and during the final evening there were suddenly no less than 14 known and unknown musicians on stage...
Periodically KALOUSCH has functioned as a veritable workshop for multi-cultural experiments, where amateurs and professionals of all ages and of many different nationalities have been able to exchange their experiences and to learn from each other.
Beside these world music improvisations the more stable core of the group has simultaneously devoted itself to a purposeful exploration of the more specific melodies and rhythms of certain ethnic traditions.
A basic theme in the many-coloured repertoire of KALOUSCH has all the time been the meeting of Moroccan and Swedish folk music. However, several other ingredients have also been added to the pot, for example generous amounts of Greek, Turkish and Indian sounds as well as heaping measures of Jazz and Blues.
During the last couple of years KALOUSCH has focused on Moroccon feast and ritual music. This particular direction - also present in the choice of stage attire - is to a high extent the result of a fruitful collaboration with Moroccan musicians, whom KALOUSCH has had the pleasure to perform with, both in Sweden and in Morocco. When performing with this enlarged Swedish-Moroccon ensemble the name in use is TBAL WAL GHAYTA ("Drum and Shawm").
KALOUSCH has appeared in all kinds of contexts - everything from reputable concert halls to simple scenes of street musicians. There has been a considerable number of gigs in bars, pubs, restaurants and various music clubs, as well as school concerts, art exhibitions, radio and TV broadcasts, workshops at music colleges and festival performances. Rather often festival managers have appreciated their unique capacity to act as a more or less ceremonial parade band.
Another speciality of KALOUSCH, often in the context of big outdoor festivals, is the ability to quickly find surprising spaces for spontaneous jam sessions beyond the big stages and any printed program.
This physical mobility and social flexibility is made possible not the least by KALOUSCH's consequent use of traditional accoustic instruments like various flutes, pipes, shawms and horns plus a rich selection of hand drums and other portable instruments. This unique supply: Ney, Qasba, Lira, Spilopipa, Bansuri, Ghayta, N'far, Näverlur, Kohorn, Digeridoo, Sälgflöjt, Kaval, Tbal, Ganga, Blekete, Ta'rija, Bendir, Kandira, Darabouka, Tara, Daff, Qarqaba, Sentir, etc. – sometimes supported by a Clarinet or a Saxophone – can, if the situation demands, be combined with a modern and less mobile PA system, but does also very well on its own, both indoors and outdoors.
The music of KALOUSCH is useful both for wild dancing and meditative listening, each performance is a celebration of both body and mind. Joy and grief, seriousness and joke, memories and dreams, clearness and chaos - all opposites are allowed to play with each other in the same yard.
The sources of inspiration are above all North African wedding and feast music and the trance rituals of certain Moroccan Sufi brotherhoods.
Dancing is of course an essential part of this totality, and sometimes KALOUSCH invites one or several special dancers to their appearances. It has also occured that a snake of the Boa Constrictor family has participated!
However, most often it is the audience itself that cannot resist moving body and mind when KALOUSCH is boiling over...
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