“An Involuntary Movement Of The Hips”
Yakir Sasson talks about Quarter To Africa and infusing jazz with Middle Eastern flavors
My first exposure to Yakir Sasson’s band, Quarter To Africa, was this clip from the extraordinary video series, Indie City, filmed live in Mahane Yehuda (also known as the Shuk, which is a bazaar, or outdoor marketplace) in central Jerusalem. The band’s vibe is infectious and earthy—they also have great hair—and blends North African and Middle Eastern feels with a heavy Western-leaning funk sensibility.
Sasson, whose primary instrument is saxophone—he also plays guitar, trumpet, flute, and other instruments, too—co-founded Quarter To Africa as a duo in 2014 with Elyasaf Bashari on oud, guitar, and bass. Their emphasis is on what they call “ethno-jazz/involuntary hip movement,” but with a taste of psychedelia and the occasional Hendrix cover. The group has since expanded to a seven-piece ensemble, and has collaborated with a who’s-who of Israeli talent like Ester Rada, Yossie Fine, Avishai Cohen, and others. They’ve toured major festivals throughout Europe and the Far East, and released their second full-length album, Falafel Pop, in June 2020. Pandemic be damned.
But despite those multicultural, groove-centric bonafides, Sasson started his musical journey as a bebop-playing jazz head. He earned a bachelors in music from the Jerusalem Academy of Music, and followed that up with a year in New York City, walking the city’s streets, exploring the local jazz scene, and soaking up the vibes of his heroes. But as enamored with jazz as he was, ultimately, it wasn’t his true calling.
“After my time in New York, I realized I never can be a real jazz player,” Sasson says in our interview below. “I studied jazz and I play a lot of it, but my roots are more Middle Eastern. Even up until today, I play jazz, but I am always looking to mix jazz with funk or with Arabic music—with all these styles that are in me.”
Sasson hasn’t abandoned the genre, however, and his side project, Jaffa Jazz, is one place where he utilizes those chops. The group’s uniqueness is that the heads—or lead melodies—are classic Israeli songs, or what he calls “Israeli standards.” He’s taken those tunes, reworked them, and reimagined them in a context of 1950s-era jazz-style blowing.
Sasson has other outlets, too, which include sideman gigs with a wide array of Israeli artists, plus his first solo project that’s due out this spring. “During the pandemic, I finally started recording my solo project, which is music I sing and play,” he says. “It’s a bit different from Quarter To Africa’s music, and comes from a different place from within.”
I spoke with Sasson from his studio in Jaffa. We talked about Quarter To Africa’s organic fusion of Eastern and Western harmonies and grooves, his embrace of the musics he grew up with, the rise in popularity of Mizrahi and spiritual-feeling music in Israel, and the difficulties he sometimes encounters trying to explain laidback intuitive feels to other musicians.
When did you start playing saxophone?
I started playing the saxophone when I was 10, or something like that. In the beginning, I didn’t know the jazz style, I just wanted to play music. My father had a wedding band, so I was exposed to music—as well as some folklore music—and that’s where everything starts.
What instrument does your father play?
He’s a singer and he was the band leader. After I grew up, I realized what he was doing. He used to sing and I used to work with him. Not as a musician, but to help him and to run the sound system.
When did you start playing jazz and getting into other types of music?
I started playing the saxophone, and two years later my teacher exposed me to Charlie Parker. I remember the first time I listened to him. I thought, “Oh wow, I don’t know what this is, but this is what I want to play. This is how one should play the saxophone.” I fell in love. I wanted to be a jazz musician. I dug in and learned the languages called bebop and hard bop. After I did the army—I did regular army, I did not serve as a musician—I got into the music academy in Jerusalem. I graduated with a bachelors degree. I wanted to take music seriously and I realized that I needed to learn. After growing up in Tiberius—in my high school, I was the only saxophone player, and I was the saxophone player who was also the best guitarist. It was funny, because there were not too many musicians around me. But after that, when I moved to Jerusalem, I was exposed to real musicians, which was something I wasn’t used to.
Did you move to New York City after college?
After college, I moved to New York. In my mind I thought, I have to see what it is. How it feels. The real thing. I wanted to be a jazz musician, and I went to New York to see the source for all my heroes. New York was the place. I moved there. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I wanted to breathe the air there. It was a special experience for me. I went there alone, without any program or school, and tried to find myself. I wanted to play at jam sessions, somehow make a living, get to know other musicians, and learn.
Where did you live?
Where not? I started in Harlem and then Soho, West Harlem, Bushwick, Washington Heights—I was in something like six places. I was there for just one year and switched a lot of places.
A year later, after you returned to Israel, is that when you joined the Apples?
Yes. I joined the Apples on the baritone sax, which was a saxophone that I had never played before. When I came back to Israel, I had friends in the Apples and they told me, “We are looking for a new baritone player. Do you think you can hold the baritone?” I said, “Yes.” It was funny. I found a baritone sax and I started to exercise with that instrument. I dig that instrument. It gives me a lot of skills and experiences. I record with it, and I also use it with Quarter To Africa. I don’t play gigs with the baritone sax, but we use it a lot in the studio. It makes the horn section fatter.
The Apples were a Western-sounding band. What was your role? Did you do a lot of the arrangements and songwriting for that group?
When I joined the band, they had three albums out already, and with me we did another three or four. I started to do the arrangements and to bring in some compositions. I learned a lot of important lessons for the future with that band, too. I got to experience playing gigs all over the world, touring, working in studios, and creating. The Apples were a very good school.
Unlike the Apples, Quarter To Africa uses a lot of Middle Eastern and African grooves.
Yes, and that’s on purpose. For me, that’s what my soul wanted to play. These things were things I had imagined before, but with Quarter To Africa, I finally had the partner to do it. Elyasaf [Bashari, the oud player] is someone who understands me very well. Even though we come from different worlds of studying music, the main source is there, and that was the thing that enabled our vision to [materialize].
Is oud Elyasaf’s main instrument?
His main instrument is oud, but he also plays guitar and bass. It’s like the same with me, my main instrument is saxophone, but I also play guitar, flute, and trumpet. We are both multi-instrumentalists.
He seems to approach the oud like a guitar player would.
I agree, which is unique. There is the classic attitude of the oud, which is very nice and I have a lot of respect for it, but in Quarter To Africa, we’re looking for something that has a little more bite. Treating the oud as if it’s a guitar gives it some sparks.
Do you match the non-Western tones played on the oud on your sax?
Yes, there some other fingerings I studied, and I can play the quarter tones on the saxophone.
Have you studied the makam systems?
Yes, and I am still studying them. I didn’t study it in college, but I do learn from friends who play that music professionally. I play with them, and I ask them about it all the time. But it’s also in my ears, and it was there from the day I was born. Arabic and folklore music was always around me.
Is that because you grew up in the Middle East?
Growing up in the Middle East, and also my father had a wedding band. They played Moroccan and Iraqi and Persian and Egyptian music. My ear is very familiar with it, which is something I realized—after I my time in New York, I realized I never can be a real jazz player. That music is not my source like it is with a real American. For an American, that is the music they grew up with. I studied jazz and I play a lot of it, but my roots are more Middle Eastern. Even up until today, I play jazz, but I am always looking to mix jazz with funk or with Arabic music—with all these styles that are in me.
How do you use the Arabic makams? Do you play them traditionally, or do you use them like modes and scales and improvise off them like a jazz player would?
It is a good question. When I practice, I play it traditionally. A makam is not a scale, it’s a place. It’s an area that you are in. For example, now you are in the Bayat area, or you are in the Ajam area, or the Ras area [Bayat, Ajam, and Ras are different names of makams]. These areas are environments that you bring to the listener by the notes that you play, but it’s not scales. You go from target to target. It’s like a live composition that you create to improvise, and there are different rules to do it.
Do you use those rules with Quarter To Africa, or are you more loose with it?
Like every musician, we have our licks and our schticks. When I play, a jazz musician will listen to me and say, “Ah, he knows how to play jazz, but it’s also something else.” An Arab musician will listen and say, “He knows Arabic music, but it is something else, too.” There’s a thin [veil]. You sound convincing in the different styles, but ultimately, it’s your style. That’s what I am looking for all of my life. The compositions for Quarter To Africa, too, they can include elements of afrobeat and Arab music and funk, but ultimately, it’s the signature—or sound—of Quarter To Africa.
You’ll use Middle Eastern rhythms, too. For example, on a song like “Chaser” (from the album, Falafel Pop), what are you doing there?
That’s 6/8. “Chaser” is one of the first Quarter To Africa compositions. In the beginning, we booked gigs, but didn’t yet have all our songs. We needed to play the gigs to put the first leg in the water, so “Chaser” was what we did when there was silence. We played it and it lifted up the audience. We finally made a song out of it. It’s based on Moroccan music, and that’s the Moroccan groove.
Rhythmically, are you incorporating the different rhythms and feels you grew up with?
Exactly. It’s based on that. Part of the work is teaching the musicians [in our band] how to feel these kinds of swing or groove—to feel it the way that we feel it—that was the challenge and it’s still the challenge. Our song, “the Layback,” speaks about this issue. What is the layback? It’s about laying back in the music, or laying back on the beat. However, if you lay back too much, then you’re not on the beat. That is an issue between the musicians. You lean, but don’t do it like you are high or you drank a bottle of whiskey, there is a hot spot [or specific way to feel it].
Part of what you do, the fusing of different Eastern and Western styles—not to mention the growing popularity of Mizrahi music in Israel—is a big trend these days. Why do you think that’s happening?
It’s becoming a global world, and not just in Israel. There is room for different kinds of music and that makes me happy. I feel that Quarter To Africa is something of a pioneering band in Israel in that it gave other bands confidence to do their thing. It’s very beautiful to hear, but it is still not mainstream. But it has its place in the world, and that’s nice. We go to Japan and people sing our songs. In Hungary, at festivals, people sing with us. In Kazakstan or in Gibraltar, too—[our following is] more global than just in Israel—but of course, we want to be bigger here as well.
You also have a song, “Gam ki Elech,” which takes its lyrics from the Book of Psalms. That spiritual vibe seems to be big in Israel these days, too.
I think there are waves with people, which are constantly going forward and then coming back. Spirituality is another one of these wave, and it’s a natural thing. Sometimes it’s less spiritual and sometimes it goes back. I’ve noticed in the last few years, the spiritual things are rising up. Singers like Hanan Ben Ari, Ishay Ribo, and Shai Tsabari. When you bring something for the soul, it’s for the soul, and people connect to that. That is what I believe.
What’s the story with your group, Jaffa Jazz? To me, it sounds like it’s traditional jazz, except that the heads are Israeli songs.
Yes, that’s what it is. That was my idea. It was an old dream. I wanted to be a jazz musician—and when I was in New York I recorded a jazz album that I never did anything with—but with Jaffa Jazz, that is my dream. I collected the Israeli standards that I love—I call them standards—and I decided to do them in a jazz style, exactly like how they did it in 1950s America. Back then, the jazz musicians took the pop music of the day and played it in a jazz style. That was my main idea, to take a song, say, by Yossi Banai, and to play it like Sonny Rollins used to play it.
How do the chord changes differ from those used in American jazz?
I think it's more the structures. If you have training with chords, you can play whatever you want over it. In my opinion, you don’t have to play them, or you can make a change in the harmony.You can just play the simple harmony, or play whatever you want to play over it—within the rules of course—and it is going to sound like the real thing.
Is that band still happening? Are you planing more gigs for after Corona?
I hope so, but to tell the truth, jazz is not the most popular music in the world. I keep that project on a low flame, but I still work on it. I am also working on another, personal project. I sing and play, but those are my songs, and not Quarter To Africa songs. That’s what I am working on now, it’s as a side project to Quarter To Africa. I am recording my solo album.
When is the expected release date?
With God’s help, in a few months. I am going to do some singles. I have it already. I have the structure and all the basics.
Do you record everything at your studio in Jaffa?
I’ve had my studio in Jaffa for many years. It’s a great place and it’s where everything starts: Quarter To Africa, Jaffa Jazz, and all my projects happen here. We rehearse here and I have everything I need for creating and working on music. It is where we record all our Quarter To Africa music. I produce it here and do everything.
Do you bring in clients or is it just for your music and projects? Like could I record there?
You can. Do you want to record a song?
I’d love to.
So come [laughs].
From The Archives: #ICYMI: The Jewish Musicians Of The Maghreb
Historian Chris Silver talks about his efforts preserving the legacy of North Africa’s Jewish musicians and recordings.
Salim Halali – Je t’appartiens (tango)
Go here to read the complete interview with Chris Silver and also to scroll through a selected roundup of important mid-twentieth century North African Jewish recordings.
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