Dhafer Youssef – Shiraz
Two years ago, Dhafer Youssef stunned the world with “Street of Minarets”, an album on which jazz icons such as Herbie Hancock and Marcus Miller joined the Tunisian oud virtuoso for a dizzying journey through fusion territory. It was grand, bombastic, and demanded attention. With “Shiraz”, his debut on the prestigious German label ACT Music, Youssef takes a radically different direction. Where its predecessor exploded outward, this album turns inward. The result is an intimate masterpiece that does not shine through originality or surprises, but through warmth, love, and musical sincerity.
The album is named after his wife, the Tunisian filmmaker Shiraz Fradi, to whom it is explicitly dedicated. It tells the story of their relationship, the tenderness, the turbulence, and the transformation they underwent together when Fradi was diagnosed with cancer. That personal weight seeps into every note. This is not music that seeks to impress; this is music that seeks to touch.
Youssef’s chameleon-like flexibility reveals itself here in full. Where “Street of Minarets” displayed his virtuosity and his ability to play with the greats of the world, “Shiraz” uncovers another side: the muezzin roots embedded deep in his DNA. Born in the Tunisian coastal town of Teboulba as the grandson of a muezzin, Youssef grew up with the Sufi tradition of Islamic singing. On this album, those roots come to the fore more prominently than ever before. His voice, that characteristic falsetto hovering between the earthly and the heavenly, is given all the space it needs to breathe. The album has an unmistakable ECM feel: open, spacious, contemplative. The production, with guitarist Nguyên Lê involved as mixer, allows silence to function as a full musical element. That is a daring choice in an era when many musicians fill every second out of fear of emptiness. Youssef and his band trust in the power of what is not played.
The band deserves special attention. The superstars are gone; in their place stands a young, multinational ensemble that sounds hungry and alert. The Spanish pianist Daniel García Diego, an ACT labelmate who made a name with his fusion of jazz and flamenco, proves an ideal sparring partner. The interplay between his piano and Youssef’s oud is nothing short of enchanting, two instruments from different worlds that find each other in a shared language of melody and emotion. In compositions such as “The Epistle of Love (Pt. 1)”, one hears echoes of the Spanish-Moorish tradition, a reminder of the centuries in which the cultures of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula were intertwined. García Diego carries that history into his playing, and it resonates beautifully with Youssef’s Arabic modalities.
The Austrian trumpeter Mario Rom, known from his trio Interzone, adds a European jazz sensibility without disturbing the delicate atmosphere. His playing is restrained where needed, expressive where possible. Bassist Swaéli Mbappé and drummer Tao Ehrlich form a rhythm section that supports without dominating. And then there is Nguyên Lê, the French-Vietnamese guitarist who has worked with Youssef since 2006. Their musical dialogue, heard on four tracks, is almost telepathic: two musicians finishing one another’s sentences without words. The suite-like structure of the album, with three-part and two-part compositions such as “The Epistle of Love” and “Eyeblink and Eternity”, gives the whole a nearly classical architecture. This is not a collection of isolated pieces but a through-composed journey. The richness lies in the details: an unexpected harmonic turn here, a moment of complete silence there, a melody returning in a new form.
Particularly moving is “Zakir Bhai Eternal Longing”, a two-part tribute to tabla legend Zakir Hussain, with whom Youssef recorded the album “Sounds of Mirrors” in 2018. Hussain died in December 2024, shortly after the recording of “Shiraz”. This makes the composition more than a musical statement; it is a farewell to a kindred spirit. At a time when authenticity and emotion have become rare commodities in music, Youssef delivers an album of feeling that we seldom hear anymore. “Shiraz” is tender and delicate, in every respect the counterpart to the bombast of “Street of Minarets”. It once again proves the versatility of this born musician and composer. As he once said in an interview with Maxazine: ‘Singing is for me like standing naked before my audience.’ On “Shiraz”, he stands more naked than ever. Just as with “Street of Minarets”, I quietly hope time will let this album grow into a perfect ten. For now, it is a solid nine, a score reflecting the rare combination of technical mastery and emotional depth Youssef achieves here. (9/10) (ACT Music)
