Disco Dal’ona by TootArd
For the past few years, I’ve not been up to date with new music for many years, and now mostly rely on music shared by people I know that catch my attention.
Recently, I came across an Arab synth disco track titled Disco Dalton by TootArd on Instagram shared by Sreeraj Jyothish on Instagram. You can listen to/buy the complete song here.
A gentle dance track about dancing and partying, and meeting someone that reminds them of their homeland. I love the following lyrics which won’t sound as poetic if translated to English, but it’s about partying with feelings of loving and yearning, seeing someone who’s warmness reminds them of the warmth of their country, and seeing someone whose eyes have the same colour as the soil of their homeland.
علي صوت الموسيقى
السهرة الليلة حنونة
شو جاي عبالي
هالحلوة لقبالي
هواها دافي
يذكرني بهوا بلادي
الوطن غالي ترابه من لون عيونها
و يا نيالي حبايب لو حبونا
It’s the first time I hear of the band TootArd / توت أرض (toot’ard). This afternoon, I spent some time learning about the band, two brothers, Hasan and Rami Nakhleh from the Golan Heights.
Beginning in 2010, TootArd played all over the Golan Heights, then travelled further, to Jerusalem, Palestine and beyond.
“We gigged a lot. But by 2014 we felt it was becoming a loop, and we all wanted to change things in our lives. We just needed to stop. I moved to Europe, first to Berlin, then to Bern. Others went elsewhere. But when we’d all go home, we’d get together and perform a concert in our village.”
Two years passed, and the band members missed the spark of working with each other. The time was right to pick up the reins.“My brother Rami, who plays drums in the band, and I had been preparing things. We had new material that we thought was different, that said something unique. Everyone came together and we recorded the album in four months. We all have more life experience now. The music is fresher. We feel we’ve moved ahead.”
via https://tootard-glitterbeat.bandcamp.com/album/laissez-passer
They’ve released 3 albums so far, Nuri Andaburi (2011), Laissez Passer (2017) and Migrant Birds (2020). You can listen to them below.
Over the years they’ve gained popularity and toured in many cities outside the Arab region:
“There are around 22 Arab countries, and we’ve only been able to make it to four of them so far…But we haven’t been able to tour anywhere else in the region because all we have are laissez passers. It’s a crazy situation. But next year I can become a Swiss citizen. For the first time in my life, I’ll have a proper passport.”
via https://tootard-glitterbeat.bandcamp.com/album/migrant-birds
Nuri Andaburi (2011)
Laissez Passer (2017)
I do not exist on an ID card
A string and a piece of wood are my gunpowder
A Laissez Passer. Let him pass. That’s the document the stateless carry. It’s all that those from the occupied Golan Heights possess. Since 1967 the area has been part of Israel, but the inhabitants aren’t Israelis. They don’t have any citizenship. They don’t have passports. Just a Laissez Passer. And for the members of TootArd who all grew up in the village of Majdal Shams in the Golan, it’s a very apt name for their new album.
“Laissez passers are special situation papers,” explains singer and guitarist Hasan Nakhleh. “It took us a while to realise the effect. We’re permanent residents in Israel, but not citizens. We have no travel documents. When we travel we need the laissez passer. With no nationality, we’re officially ‘undefined.’”
But in statelessness, the five-piece has discovered musical freedom. TootArd grew up understanding that borders are something imposed by governments, lines that only exist on a map. On a disc, in concert, they can go wherever their imagination carries them. They carry their citizenship inside.
Migrant Birds (2020)
This inventive duo of brothers from the Golan Heights – Hasan and Rami Nakhleh – return with an infectious re-imagining of their sound. Jammed full of pop hooks and quarter-tone melodic lines, “Migrant Birds” unleashes a disco whirlwind that pays homage to the Middle Eastern dancefloor scenes of the 80’s. Retro funky meets hi-sheen contemporary.
It’s 1980. You’re in a disco, maybe in Beirut or Cairo, almost anywhere in the Middle East, lost in the colours and the lights, overwhelmed by the sound of drum machines and keyboards. It’s heady, it’s beautiful…but those days are long gone; maybe they were only ever just a fantasy. Real or not, they provide the inspiration for Migrant Birds, the new synth-powered album from TootArd that takes them to the dancefloor, about as far from the spare, guitar-driven desert blues of their highly touted Glitterbeat debut Laissez Passer, as it’s possible to go.
“After that record, Rami and I started listening to different things, dance music and old disco,” explains keyboard player and guitarist Hasan Nakhleh. “When we were little, we had compilations of 80s hits that we played over and over. We didn’t know the artists, but we knew all the melodies and harmonies. A lot of that was dance music. Back then, our family had an Arabic synthesizer with the quarter-tones, called a PSR-62, Oriental Model that I loved to play as a kid. My family still has a similar one. I bought an Oriental and began messing around. That was how Migrant Birds was born.”
I’m enjoying their music, reminds me of Egyptian and Lebanese variety shows from the 1970s-1990s and Arab weddings. Hope I get to see TootArd live some day.