El Khat

In the organizer's words:

International Summer Festival 2024

Named after a stimulating plant, and at least as effective: the Israeli trance rock band EL KHAT updates the Yemeni folk of the 1960s on self-made instruments.

A Yemeni pop music record from the 1960s changed Eyal El Wahab's life: The self-taught musician from Tel Aviv's Jewish-Yemeni diaspora quit his job as a cellist with the Jerusalem Andalusian Orchestra to build instruments from found objects, just as they were played in Yemen in the 1960s, and founded the band El Khat. Their debut album "Saadia Jefferson" from 2019 was a funky-psychedelic update of traditional Yemeni songs and was praised as "brilliant" not only by music legend Gilles Peterson. Eyal El Wahab then founded The Yemeni Orchestra, a larger ensemble for the classical Yemeni repertoire, and released the follow-up album "Albat Alawi Op.99" with El Khat. THE WIRE described it as a "whirlwind in a workshop: a drumfire of crazy drums, booming basses and choral voices, accompanied by out-of-tune brass". At their concerts at the latest, it becomes clear why the band names itself after the stimulating, euphoric plant that is traditionally chewed in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula: El Khat produces frenetic evenings in which it transports the audience body and soul into ecstatic spheres.

Price information:

VVK 22 Euro / B.O. 25 Euro (reduced 50% with festival ticket)