In his teenage years, Ghazi Faisal Al-Mulaifi listened to stories from his grandfather, one of Kuwait’s last master pearl divers. Though the nation’s shift to an oil-based economy spelled an end to the pearl diving industry—Kuwait outlawed the practice in 1955—their music lives on thanks to the work of scholars and artists like Al-Mulaifi, himself an ethnomusicologist and jazz guitarist.
On Live in the Khaleej! (“Khaleej” refers to the Arabian Gulf), he heads the ensemble Boom.Diwan, which features Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra director Arturo O’Farrill in five pieces that emulate Kuwaiti cosmopolitanism by intertwining pearl-diving song styles, central African dance sounds, and broadly American jazz and blues. The album is rich with feeling and fully embodied knowledge. It is excellent jazz if you don’t know much about its roots and even better jazz if you do.
The” boom” of Boom.Diwan refers to a particularly important type of ship, one prominent enough to appear in the national emblem of Kuwait itself—a good symbol for working together, crucial in a jazz combo. “Diwan” is a transliteration of the name for the room of a house in which, among other things, Kuwaiti sailors would gather to play music, evoking a more intimate dimension of their lives. It’s a name that, like the band, understands the importance of not just repertoire but the whole performance in paying tribute to the divers and their daily travels and sacrifices.
Taken in this context, the opening track, “Ana Mashoof”, is especially haunting, ten minutes of mellow melancholy, sparse and stunning. Al-Mulaifi’s guitar flows into O’Farrill’s keys, stars shining in the water. Steady beats from Boom. Diwan’s Kuwaiti percussion line (Hamad Ben Hussein, Hamed Saeed, Abdullah Al-Mutairi, and Mohammad Al-Mudhafar) anchor each melodic swirl; Liany Mateo’s bass and Claude Cozens’ drums bubble up from the deep. Al-Mulaifi sings wistful lyrics, pointing out that there should be more to bind than separate us. It is a lament against a backdrop of inequity; in a more unified world, it could be a call for hope.
The music grows more rousing with “Muneera”, powered by the warmth of Congolese rhumba. Jasper Shogo Dutz’s clarinet is a particularly bold presence, climbing the keys and strings to an electrifying climax. Boom.Diwan ride this momentum easily into whirling “Blue”, a piece that swings like a ballroom tune but wails like hard rock. “Compay Doug” starts with O’Farrill scattering piano chords in empty space but soon comes together in a high-intensity frenzy of squealing guitar and clattering low end. The record ends with “Utviklingssang”, a mournful tribute to the late jazz pioneer Carla Bley.
For Live in the Khaleej!, Ghazi Al-Mulaifi brings his careful research to life with the help of his capable compatriots. This is gorgeous, deeply personal work that, like the music of the Kuwaiti pearl divers, emerges from encounters between performers with diverse backgrounds and expertise. It’s music, first and foremost, and it’s also scholarship more powerful for how it works emotionally. It is communication between musicians, between cultures, between times, and between performers and audiences, beautifully done.