Foto-© Herman Selleslags
Der belgisch-ägyptische (und libanesische) Sänger Tamino oder mit vollem Namen Tamino-Amir Moharam Fouad ist nicht nur der Enkel des ägyptischen Sänger und Filmstars Muharram Fouad, sondern hat sich mittlerweile einen eigenen Namen gemacht. Sein Debutalbum Amir, dass 2018 erschien, beschenkte uns mit wunderbaren Liedern wie Indigo Night, Cigar oder Habibi. Nach einer langen Pause und so gut wie keiner öffentlichen Kommunikation ist er nun aber seit Freitag mit seinem zweiten Studioalbum Sahar zurück. Das Album ist in seiner Wohnung in Antwerpen unter enger Zusammenarbeit mit Radiohead Bassist Colin Greenwood entstanden. Das Schlüsselinstrument auf Sahar ist die Oud, eine arabische Laute, die er unter Anleitung eines syrischen Geflüchteten zu spielen lernte. Für uns hat Tamino ein Track by Track zum neuen Album geschrieben!
Tamino live:
29.11.22 Köln, Gloria Theater – ausverkauft
30.11.22 Berlin, Metropol – ausverkauft
09.02.23 Düsseldorf, Zakk
10.02.23 München, Muffathalle
12.02.23 Hamburg, Uebel & Gefährlich
1. The Longing
I was practicing a sort of Flamenco style picking pattern on a nylon string guitar and messing around with these chords that I just couldn’t stop playing. To me they sounded very open and brought to mind the revealing image of curtains opening. I recorded a bit of the picking pattern on my phone, laid down the guitar, and kind of forgot about it. A couple of days later I woke up earlier than usual, my mind sort of in an in-between state, half dreaming, half awake. I listened back to the phone memo and very suddenly the first lyric and melody flowed out of me. I couldn’t even think between phrases. It kept coming. In the end I wrote all of the verses then and there while still lying in bed. These sort of writing experiences are very rare to me. When I picked up the guitar later that day and brought together the freshly written lyrics and melody with the hypnotic picking pattern I knew I had written the perfect opening track for the album.
I remember feeling a bit restless when the lyrics were pouring out of me. I had just been on tour for a couple of years, my life had changed drastically in comparison to my student life in Amsterdam, and I never really had the time to reflect on those changes and their consequences. Suddenly I was home from tour earlier than expected due to the pandemic and I felt like I perhaps had been too caught up in fear and perfectionism during that whole era and missed out on a lot of potentially meaningful experiences. Through my half awake slumber it felt like I was writing the song from the perspective of a spirit of the unknown who wanted to take me by the hand all along but whom I’ve perhaps subconsciously ignored.
At the time of writing I had just read about Jung’s theory of the shadow side. How we should always maintain a healthy balance with our shadow side and not act like it’s not there. I think there’s definitely some of this coming through in the lyrics too.
2. The Flame
Like many of my songs this one started as another guitar riff. I was playing in DADGAD tuning (capo 4, for those interested) and stumbled upon this rhythmically unusual riff. It had a lot of driving energy which I thought was cool, especially since it doesn’t happen that often that I naturally start playing something with a high energy. The double bass and oud instrumental riff came from a jam with Simon Beeckaert. He was playing the double bass and when I played the riff of The Flame he instinctively started playing the riff that ended up being the other main riff of the song. It reminded me of West African music which I thought was really cool. The interplay between the electronic 7/8 beat and the acoustic instruments produce an exciting tension. The big outro with the strings coming in gave me chills the first time I heard the orchestra playing it. Still does when I listen to the recording now.
3. You Don’t Own Me
When I was still living in Amsterdam I rented a bedroom at a friend’s house which had a piano in it. Every morning and evening before and after my lessons I would play. I always kept the silencing pedal on because our neighbors downstairs hated noise of any kind. Often they complained during the day which I thought was very silly, but sometimes when I played later in the evening I guess they had a point. When the first chords and melody arrived of ‘You Don’t Own Me’ I knew it was past a reasonable time to play but there was a big sense of urgency that made me sit down at the piano anyway. Only years later, funnily enough when I was visiting Amsterdam again (I didn’t live there anymore) I re-listened to the recording on my phone and started humming a melody for the verse and working on the first lyrics sitting in a hotel bar. To me the lyrics aren’t directed towards a specific person, group, or place of power. It’s more of an ode to Freedom and a stance to any form of oppression. I hope oppressed individuals and/or groups can find solace in a song like this.
I had just read ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’ by Viktor E. Frankl, which has become one of my favorite books, and of which these quotes came to mind when I was writing ‘You Don’t Own Me’:
“Even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.”
“Is this to say that suffering is indispensable to meaning? In no way. I only insist that meaning is available in spite of – nay, even through – suffering, provided that the suffering is unavoidable. If it is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove its cause, for unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic. If, on the other hand, one cannot change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his attitude.”
4. Fascination
Whenever I see a true sense of wonder in someone I’m fascinated by it. I myself don’t often notice the beauty or reason for poignancy around me unless someone points me towards it, which usually results in me muttering a forced “Oh wow”.
A sunset for example, will probably never move me to tears, but I have seen it do just that to others. Especially in relationships I have witnessed a difference in fascination with the world. These, on the surface, small differences make me wonder sometimes whether in the end we want different things in life.
Through this song however I end up realizing that of the few things that drive and move me, love is perhaps the biggest one. It’s this realization which makes me say: “I try not to understand”, meaning: I won’t try to understand why we stay together even if we are quite different. Perhaps it’s precisely those differences which make a bond more beautiful since you can learn to see through the other’s eyes.
5. Sunflower
I’ve always been fascinated with mythology and religious stories since I was a kid. When I wrote the chorus for this song the lyrics instantly came together with the melody: “Oh baby, don’t you notice me? So ready to lose everything for your love” It made me think of the Greek myth of Clytie who is transformed into a sunflower after staring too long at the sun, hoping to get Apollo’s attention. I saw a very clear image of a huge sunflower reaching into the clouds growing closer to the sun each day. At the bottom a little man in love, caring for her, watering the ground in which she stands and shielding her from heavy wind. She only looks at the sky so doesn’t notice him. Paradoxically the more he looks after her the further away from him she grows. Both of them are longing for the impossible yet fully dedicated to it.
I encountered Angèle, whose voice and work I’ve loved for a long time, on the road in Europe many times. We were always friendly but never really got to know each other. A year ago or so we spent some time together in the studio. I had recently written the beginnings of ‘Sunflower’ and played it briefly to her on the grand piano. She told me later the chorus was stuck in her head for weeks after. When I was recording the song during the ‘Sahar’ sessions I kept on thinking her voice would sound great on it. The story needed a voice for the character of the Sunflower and I couldn’t think of anyone better suiting than Angèle. The result is more than I could have hoped for. I’m honored that she joined me on this track.
6. The First Disciple
During the writing of the album I was practicing a lot of oud (Arabic lute). I have a great teacher in Antwerp, his name’s Tarek Alsayed, a brilliant Syrian musician who found refuge in Belgium. Largely thanks to him I was able to learn to play quite well over the last two years. ‘The First Disciple’ started as a melody on the oud which I kept coming back to every time I picked up the instrument. I looped the little melody and started playing chords over it with an old nylon string guitar. The sound of these two instruments together sounded so beautiful to me. After writing this track these two instruments combined became the core elements for a lot of the songs on the album. In a way writing this song, both lyrically and melodically, was a sort of transition into new territory. Concerning the lyrics: On the surface it’s a song directed towards a prophet-like figure, sung by his first disciple. When you look at the lyrics from a metaphysical point of view though, you could also interpret them as somebody singing to himself. The first disciple then being the pure, sincere, uncorrupted energy which makes you discover your passions and chase after them quite innocently. The prophet being your body with all its earthly flaws and desires, which gets distracted and corrupted as you grow into adulthood.
Long after I had written the song I read an article called ‘Kahlil Gibran and the Fall of the Prophet’ by John Dodge. I began to see a lot of connections between this article and my tune, we which was funny because I hadn’t been dwelling in Gibran’s world for some time. I’ve always been a huge fan of his work, especially of his most famous ‘The Prophet’, which was an important source of inspiration for my first album ‘Amir’. The first few times I read this book as a teenager I loved and believed every word in it. It seemed almost too wise and transcendent for one man to have written it. It made the writer seem like a prophet himself. As I grew older and read more about Gibran’s life I came to know that he wasn’t saint-like at all. In fact he often did the exact opposite of what he was preaching in his work. I still think it is one of the most beautiful works ever made though. Perhaps even more so, knowing that the writer himself was far from perfect. It therefore reminds me of a lot of pop culture, where we’ve made our own new prophets, worshiping at the altar of their art. Somehow believing them to be better than us. Perhaps it has as much to do with these prophets mystifying themselves as with their audiences wanting to see it in them? Kahlil Gibran could as much as myself be the prophet in my song ‘The First Disciple’. Both of us ‘sacrificed’ parts of ourselves for our work. For the very unholy motivation to be desired. Of course this is not the main reason behind my work. Nor will it have been the main one behind Gibran’s work. There is passion, beauty and sincerity to be found at the source. Art wouldn’t survive without it. Only, I would be fooling myself if I wouldn’t be honest about darker longings too.
Anyway, I think it’s important for every listener to have their own interpretation and/or personal meaning they can connect to a song. This one in particular brings up different questions, images, and thoughts every time I sing -or listen to- it, and I hope it has the same effect on others.
Side note: I love the recording and its process and feel like the band has lifted it to a whole other level. As with most songs on this record I hear every band member’s personality shining through in the music. When Colin Greenwood’s rousing bass line and Ruben Vanhoutte’s typical dark percussive drumming hit in one by one the track is moved into new sonical territory, (at parts even danceable? 🙂 ), while staying true to the song’s sober and narrative core. I feel like ‘The First Disciple’ sits at the heart of the album and is definitely one of my favorite tracks on there.
7. Cinnamon
When I moved to Amsterdam at age 17 I had big dreams of how I was going to live my life there. I was finally going to break out of my shell and become less shy. For the first year the opposite happened. Even though we share a language, the Dutch are really different from Flemish people. I underestimated the cultural differences strongly before living there. For example my first day at the conservatory I thought that everybody knew each other already since they were saying stuff to each other like: “Hey man! How was your vacation? You look good! Went some place exotic? etc.” I basically thought everyone knew each other already which wasn’t the case at all. They were just way more open and direct towards each other. I was the only Belgian person in my year and didn’t dare to speak for months. I couldn’t quite understand where this extreme shyness came from. Instead of hanging out with a lot of cool people I was smoking hasj by myself every night when I got home. The verses for ‘Cinnamon’ came during this period. I imagined a younger me with all his hopes and dreams of going to Amsterdam visiting the present me like a ghost. Seeing me waste my time smoking hasj all the time. I used cinnamon as a metaphor for hasj simply because I thought it sounded cool. In the process of writing ‘Sahar’ I was messing around with the chords of this old song and found some new love for it. I wrote a chorus for it which glued the verses together really nicely and decided to include it in our recordings. Colin and Ruben were messing around with a 909 drum computer in the studio which resulted in the groovy drumbeat of the choruses. I also really love Colin’s bass line and my acoustic guitar sound, which was recorded with a borrowed guitar from PJ’s neighbor which we tuned down to C# standard. To me the overall vibe of the song reminds me of being intoxicated on warm late summer nights.
8. Only Our Love
My drummer Ruben was jamming at my place when, in a moment of stillness, I started playing the chords on my baritone guitar to what would become ‘Only Our Love’. He immediately was drawn to them and said I should keep working on it. When he left I started writing the song. By midnight I had recorded a first demo. We recorded a studio version but decided to use the demo on the album in the end. There was something magical about it that we couldn’t recreate.
9. A Drop of Blood
I really wanted to write a song on the oud as a main accompanying instrument, just like my Egyptian grandfather (as well as my father) used to write and sing songs. It’s the only song on the album that I sort of pictured before I started writing it. I remember writing the first verses on a windy day looking out my window and seeing the trees in my street sway to the rhythm. To me on of the main themes of the lyrics is violence, or more specifically the relation between purposeful, perhaps even beautiful violence which we often see in nature and the completely unnecessary, awful violence which we mainly see humans act out to others.
The bigger underlying theme is faith, or the struggle with it. One doesn’t need to believe in an anthropomorphic god to believe in sacredness. God can be defined in many ways. Putting a child on this world (willingly) for example is an act of faith, whether people realize it or not. For one wouldn’t consciously put a child into a world they believed only to be evil. It is difficult though to keep paying attention to beauty. Your perception of mankind can be highly darkened by the atrocities we read and hear about daily, or of course when people have done awful things to you personally. Especially when stuff like that happens to you as a kid it leaves a tough mark. This song is a plea for faith. A willingness to see the good in this world, and in turn bring more good to it.
10. My Dearest Friend and Enemy
I wrote this song in the Ardennes, which is a beautiful rural area in Belgium. I don’t really feel like explaining the lyrics on this one. I sang and played guitar at the same time while recording. On most of the other tracks we recorded everything separately but for this one (and ‘A Drop of Blood’) I only seemed to get the right emotion when I played it as I would do on stage. Funny thing was that we had borrowed a beautiful 60’s Martin 0017 from a friend the day before for the recording of another song. The day after he was already on his way to the studio to come pick it up when we thought of giving ‘My Dearest Friend and Enemy’ another shot with this guitar. So we had about 30 minutes to get a good take. It was one of the best sounding acoustics I had ever played. We had tried to record this song many times already but I never seemed to get into the right ‘zone’. This time, with that amazing instrument in my hands it only took me two takes to get the right feeling. We didn’t really have more time anyway, maybe the urgency helped too. Listening back to the recording I knew it would be the perfect final track for the album.
