UP YOUR STREET

With an urban sound that spins along the musical dial, taking cues from everything it hears, the Streetmusic Arabe practitioners are proof positive of the joys of mixing music and cultures, writes Jim Carroll

When it comes to the sound of the street, the Streetmusic Arabe tour covers a lot of ground. An innovative and intriguing soundclash involving cutting-edge DJs, Middle-Eastern hip-hop, rejigged traditional Arabic songs and a Moroccan band who have made hypnotic sounds and created socio-political waves for over 30 years, this is a tour you don't experience on the streets every day of the week.

Backed by the English Arts Council's Contemporary Music Network, the Streetmusic Arabe shebang brings a melting pot of sounds to Belfast later this month for a show during the city's annual festival. On their own, each of the acts, from DJ/rupture and his Nettle project to Moroccan giants Nass El Ghiwane and hip-hop adventurer Clotaire K, provide exceptional sonic thrills. Together, it's a package tour to whet the appetite.

Joining the dots between the four acts is a notion about street music, which is more about where you're at than where you're from. An urban sound which spins along the musical dial, taking cues from everything it hears, the Streetmusic Arabe practitioners are proof positive of the joys of mixing sounds and cultures. Whether it's Clotaire K blending hip-hop's idioms with his Lebanese or Egyptian heritage, or Nass El Ghiwane's timeless synergy of old and new, each act shows that trying to define street music as simply being one sound or another is a waste of time. On this tour, you'll find that street music is as diverse and varied as the people on those same streets.

Of the Streetmusic Arabe acts, it's Nass El Ghiwane who come with the most chequered and fascinating history. In many ways as much the Moroccan Tinariwen as "the Rolling Stones of Africa" (as dubbed by Martin Scorsese, who used their music on the score for The Last Temptation of Christ), the band emerged from a shabby area of Casablanca in the late 1960s to quickly become local heroes.

Down through the years, they have updated and reworked traditional Moroccan songs, mixing Sufi chants and Berber poetry with hypnotic grooves. Despite death, political hassle, bans, inner-band strife and musical differences, the band, if not all of the original members, still survive to cut a dash.

At first glance, there's little to connect these mystical Moroccan music-makers with Boston-born, Madrid-based turntablist Jace Clayton. As DJ/rupture, Clayton's eye is on the fusion you get from boldly mashing, mating and tweaking dancehall, Arabic vocals, soul divas and many rough and tough grooves together on three decks.

Working with such labels as Kid606's Tigerbeat6 (which just released his Special Gunpowder début) or throwing down widescreen, expressive mix-CDs like Gold Teeth Thief and Minesweeper Suite, Rupture's world-view is magpie-like, occasionally provocative and ultra-modern.

There is another side to Clayton, though, and that comes with Nettle, his collaborative project which traces the outlines you get from placing abstract electronica alongside Arabic folk tradition. Rather than just scratching his chin, Clayton has created an ambient sound which crackles in tune with an urban streetscape which is becoming more and more the norm across Europe, a place where East and West meet, often in abject bewilderment.

Nettle's Build a Fort, Set That on Fire album takes Timbaland to Tangiers, and you can only marvel at what emerges from the clash. A strangely beguiling cross-cultural affair, Nettle live feature Clayton on sampler duties with live violin, oud and percussion.

The final berth on the Streetmusic Arabe bus houses Clotaire K, a DJ who is based in France but whose music owes as much to his family's Lebanese roots as to the sounds which came rolling out of Brooklyn and the Bronx in the late 1970s. What he creates is a new strain of hip-hop, which sweeps along with mystical chants and heavy-duty strings, a sound where a politically charged passion for Middle Eastern tarab music is every bit as important as an adherence to hip-hop's dictates.

There's a raw, searing, honest emotion to Clotaire's work (best seen on his Lebanese début), and it's these qualities which have led the likes of Natacha Atlas, Asian Dub Foundation and Cypress Hill to collaborate with him.

A blur of sounds and experiences - we need more outings like this to make us sit up and take note. Lets hope this finely-tuned selection of rabble-rousers and musical pirates is not the last to come this way.

The Streetmusic Arabe tour is at Mandela Hall, Belfast on Friday, October 29th as part of the Belfast Festival (www.belfastfestival.com). Clotaire K also plays Crawdaddy, Dublin on Sunday, October 31st