"You know, I am just a little man, I want to introduce you my wife," France's Abd al Malik told the Holland Festival audience. Right he was, as his Moroccan wife Wallen was undoubtedly one of the queens of the French R&B world from 2001 to 2008. This set the tone, as the famed singer shone 18 years after releasing her hit song 'L'Olivier again on the Music Theatre stage.
The tender songs of Wallen, anagram for her real name Nawell Azzouz, skirt against lyrical poetry. She advocates tolerance, love, togetherness and peace. In 2001, she released her first album, A Force de Vivre, which earned her a nomination for les Victoires de la Musique, the French équivalent for the Grammy Awards. On her second album, Avoir la Vie Devant Soi, are the moving songs Donna et L'Olivier, which this performance by the artist duo at the Holland Festival is named after.
Musical manifesto
Young R&B and poetry lovers came in droves to the Muziekgebouw aan het IJ, this time to end the day festively at the HF Young evening. Artistic innovation and experimental design took centre stage. Al Malik kicked off the concert with two rock-solid rap songs, Soldat De Plomb and Gibraltar, mixing hip-hop and jazz. Video images, electrical technology and on-stage lighting installations reinforced his message. He was accompanied by a group of six band members, who played the drums, synthesiser and electric piano.
The pacifist singer duo Abd Al Malik and Wallen met at the turn of the millennium, when Al Malik had set up the rap community New African Poets along with his brother Bilal and his cousin Aïssa. Like-minded pan-African poets use their voices to convey moral messages. Conscious rappers, they call themselves, who set themselves apart from gangsta rap culture. They spent their youth on the frayed edges of society, the banlieus of Paris and Strasbourg, and seek justice, brotherhood and identity in their musical manifesto.
Attracted to Sufism
As a teenager, Al Malik lost his friends to heroin, murder and suicide; rattled and angry, he sought explanations about the meaning of life in On the Shortness of Life of the Seneca. When he was 16, he renounced being a professional drug dealer and put aside his guilt. He burned everything he had bought with unclean money and joined a Muslim sect. Later, he was drawn to Sufism, the mystical form of Islam that focuses on the purity of the soul. This faith reassured him as it seeks spiritual experience and knowledge.
From crossing the Mediterranean to living in Brazzaville in Congo and the French banlieus, Al Malik's writings are characterised by the use of a broad vocabulary and a vision of French society. In 2008, he was knighted in the French Order of Arts and Letters for his achievements in the field of art and literature in popular media. His musical prowess and intense wordsmithing were previously featured at the 2019 Holland Festival, with his successful poetic tale Le jeune noir à l'epée. Here, he refers to Pierre Puvis de Chavannes' painting highlighting identity in times of 19th-century globalisation.
Mon amour
"When he stares into space, I can see I can feel his pain," sings Wallen in the duet song mon amour. Wallen and Al Malik share a story of alienation and redemption through culture and know how to find each other in it. They have been married for 25 years and have four children. Their love is palpable on stage. In the exchange with the audience, it is also clear that their philosophy is love and poetry is their driving force. Beautiful texts and video images explain that Donna growing up too fast in the city, searching for her identity and craving love.
Other melodramatic songs from Wallen are about grief, guilt, empty pockets, wounded hearts and the search for identity and nationality.
The balance between the two artists was a bit skewed. I would have liked to have heard more from the conscious rapper Al Malik, because his words resonated with me more than those of Ramparts and because his change to Sufism intrigued me. Besides, Al Malik is very versatile and introspective, knew how to turn hard stories about his criminal behaviour into sensitive songs like Les Autres, or in M'effacer en Reflecting on racist police behaviour in the deprived neighbourhood Neuhof in Strasbourg.
L'Olivier
L'Olivier is the fruit of the couple's long-standing collaboration. Both children of immigrants, this work reflects on their jointly felt need for peace and justice and positivity in times of collective uncertainty. They call it a "personal, emotional roadmap" and sing as well as rap about exile and uprooting. The two voices fit together beautifully: the tenderness of Wallen and the powerful voice of Al Malik. Acquiring musical influences from different cultures from jazz, Spanish flamenco to Middle Eastern sounds, they created a Mediterranean atmosphere in which music played a unifying role. They drew inspiration from Lebanese diva Fairouz, who has the ability to unite people all over the world with her songs about love, loneliness and longing. Lyrics by poets and founders including Rumi, Aragon, René Char and Ibn Arabi through which they say they were shaped accompanied their own repertoire.
Unsurprisingly, the concert with L'Olivier close. 'Who knows where I am going? Who can tell me where my home is?' This lyrics resonate even today, especially in the current time of war. The olive tree is a symbol of peace and long life, and is considered sacred both in the Koran, the Bible and the Torah. This is what both artists, from different backgrounds, both grew up with.
They left the stage modestly and relieved. The praise they received for this song 18 years ago has not yet blown over. The audience wanted that to be known. And I too, have become a fan.
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