AVAN DOZI

REUNION
 Nadav Haber (or – as he likes to refer to his
AVAN DOZI musical alter-ego – Avan Dozi) became fascinated
with Blues and Swing, when still a teenager. In

REUNION the late 1980s he acted as a co-editor of Blues

Review. His exposure to Ethiopian musical
concepts left a deep mark on his artistic
endeavors. Although the Blues has never left
him, his ingenious blend of East European,
1. Undercurrents (4’36’’) Middle Eastern and African rhythms and
2. Dimensions (5’59’’) melodies has reached maturation in a timeless,
cross-cultural sound. Free Jazz became his
3. That One Sound (5’12’’) natural choice of expression and, when asked, he
4. Preparations (5’28’’) defines his unique style as ‘Free World Music.’

5. A New Dawning (5’05’’) There are those moments when you stand in front of your
6. Morning Dew (4’52’’) CD rack and can’t decide what to listen to. Jazz would be too
demanding, you don’t really have the blues and you are not
7. Calling (5’50’’) into listening to strangers’ love laments in exotic languages
8. Reunion (5’22’’) that you don’t understand. You’re not particularly interested in
being transported to places – not to urban jungles, to North
9. The Takeover (6’10’’) African deserts or, to Levantine villages. Your tastes are too
sophisticated for Bushman or Pygmy music, but it is their
10. Release (6’06’’) primacy that you are craving for. You are hungry for pure and
functional music that can address your basic human drives,
and not for Apollonian, culturally tainted esthetic stuff.
Something neutral, that is, minimally subservient to style and
difficult to ascribe to any genre. Primordial music, without
All tracks composed and played by
lyrics, because what you want is older than language. You
Nadav Haber want to immerse in a world that only abstract figures carved
(tenor and soprano saxophone, clarinet, flute, in rock, Dionysiac dances and the rhythm that guides the
washint, guitar, krar, bass, keyboard, thumb dancers can evoke. A territory never before depicted on maps,
piano, Brazilian drum, darbouka, shakers) but constantly renewing its soundscapes between our ears.
I’d recommend Avan Dozi’s Reunion for such moments.
Despite being primal, the music in this collection is spiced with
Ethiopian, African American, Oriental, North African and many
. other, unidentified flavors. However, these are not ‘concepts’ –
Produced by IFIRAR Multimedia, Switzerland they become crystalized only when the music demands them.
Recorded at iLab Studios, CH-8050 Zürich
The artist only obeys to the demand and lets the music invent
Cover art and liner notes by George F. Steiner
itself.
© 2019 Nadav Haber & IFIRAR | All rights reserved
1. Undercurrents starts as a reflection on a Tigrinya musician’s
remark, namely, that Amhara artists restrict themselves to
limited and short melodic lines when accompanying Tigrinya
rhythms. Avan Dozi (AD), who is familiar with Ethiopian musical
traditions, decided to make an experiment and create longer
melodic lines that would overcome the limitations experienced
by non-Tigrinya musicians. Without knowing it, he was
overtaken by the emerging melody and, forgetting that he was
only running an experiment, yielded to the sudden urge to hear
how flute and clarinet would sound together. Having steadied
the beat, melodic lines that were longer than those he was
usually playing with Tigrinya rhythms materialized out of
nowhere. After recording the melodies, AD recalls hearing an
ascending and deafening spiral of notes that led to a tension
that could not be tempered without introducing a second
clarinet. After distributing the tension between the two
instruments, it gradually gave way to a relaxed and melodic
dialogue between them. So, from about 02:30, the music
becomes ‘stabilized’ and the clarinets and flutes ‘ride’ the
rhythm smoothly to conclusion.
2. Dimensions is also the outcome of an experiment. The artist
remembers that, while listening to Australian Aboriginal music,
the pentatonic scale sounded too elaborate. He thought that
the music could be distilled to only 3 notes, which would confer
it more substance. However, the pentatonic scale kept on
returning, the spirit evoked by the music could not be ‘reigned
in’. In order to appease it, an unrestricted melody line was let
to emerge, which was captured with saxophones. The first
saxophone solo is a response to the three-note melody and, the
second, to the pentatonic melody. However, after this
compromise, the music – or, rather, the spirit that was let out of
the bottle – became demanding and planted the sound of a
soprano in the musician’s mind which, in its turn, reset the
experiment to a new beginning. For a promising outcome of
this new beginning, the initial rhythmic setting had to be
slightly altered, in order to accommodate the two, apparently
antithetical parts of the song. However, there is an
indestructible entanglement between the melodic lines,
despite that they seem to be streaming from two parallel
dimensions.
3. That One Sound is the artist’s most personal piece in this
collection, which he finds bizarre, since the saxophone – his
first instrument of choice – is absent. It all started with an
innocent flute doodling. A melody began to slowly take
shape, a melody that awoke the creative ‘Avan Dozi’, the
musical alter-ego of the artist. The melody was laden with
good vibes and he decided to capture the feeling by
recording it, as heard in the opening line of this track.
Wanting to enjoy the experience to the maximum, he
devised a discrete rhythm line to fit the melody and added it.
The combined force of rhythm and melody catapulted him
into a different state of consciousness, one only known to
the shamans of the old. As he remembers, he reached
instinctively for his flute and waited for the emerging music
to ask for its sound. When the moment arrived, he obeyed
by playing random notes that just wanted to become
materialized. The experience was trance-like and the notes
that follow progressively build up ‘that one sound’, which you
can hear taking shape at 2:30 and fading away at 3:42. From
a state of potentiality, ‘that one sound’ collapses into an
almost touchable physical reality. After the climax, the music
itself comes back to our common state of consciousness and
the melody offers a welcome rest after the intense
experience. From my perspective, this track serves as the
best example for ‘neutral’, that is stylistically non-aligned
music, which comes from the world within, left unstained by
the world without.

4. Preparations, unlike the ‘neutral’ tracks in this album,

starts with a recognizably Ethiopian rhythm that the artist
could hear in his mind. After recording the drums, he felt
that the rhythm was committing enough and decided to
mold out of it a non-Ethiopian, but still fitting melody.
Listening to the recording, he waited patiently until he heard
with his inner ear the right progression. However, at 4:00 the
melody exhausts itself and becomes carried away by the
Ethiopian rhythm, to which it adapts naturally. In the
remaining part of the track, the music reorients itself and
becomes an almost traditional Amhara composition.
5. A New Dawning is the outcome of another flute doodling.
This time, the flute tried to adjust to a simple but insistent
beat. The artist remembers that a soundscape was slowly
emerging and decided to record the rhythm while he kept on
playing the melody on flute. The still flimsy soundscape
begged for a rhythmic support, which was provided by bass
and drums. Improvisations on the flute filled out the empty
spaces but also elevated the music to a level above the
potentials of a modest reed. This is when the tenor
saxophone comes in and plays the sounds that couldn’t be
covered by the flute. The tenor is providing such a rhythmic
elasticity that, by becoming free from the initial scale, the
saxophone explores the space between the notes which, in
its turn, shifts the melody to the troughs between the peaks
of the pulse. Such a polytonality led inevitably to a
polyrhythm that heralds a ‘new dawning’, the birth of a
parallel soundscape. At ‘dusk’, when all the acoustic
potentials are exhausted, the original soundscape, already
familiar from the opening notes of the track, returns and
fades away.
6. Morning Dew took shape while the musician was fooling
around – for fun’s sake – with a darbouka. Slowly, a well-
defined rhythm started to evolve. It carried the promise of
becoming an Oriental piece but adding Oriental scales to the
rhythm flattened it out. A pentatonic flute melody seemed to
match it better. The artist remembers feeling good with it for
some three minutes, but he noticed that the traditional flute
and tenor saxophone didn’t do justice to the demands of the
music. He corrected this by spicing it with the sounds of a
Bedouin shepherd’s metal pipe flute. The spicing begins at
3:50, as a modest rhythm that slowly grows to become a full-
fledged but, without a bass, only a gossamer – light as the
morning dew – melody. This carries the track to a natural
conclusion, when it evaporates into thin air, again, like the
morning dew.
7. Calling is the fruit of curiosity. Trying out a new clay
whistle and enjoying its sound, the artist wondered about
how could he place it in the ‘Avan Dozi soundscape’. This
made him play the same notes on the whistle and the
saxophone. To his disappointment, when compared to the
clay whistle, the sax sounded plain and harsh. He went on
probing the whistle, until an East African melody started to
take shape as if, called in by the conjuring sounds of the
instrument (which explains the title of the track). Although
the WaGogo* melody was in a different range, the clay
whistle accommodated it well within the empty spaces of its
own scale. Once the melody became stabilized, the African
scale took over. Interestingly, the echo of the clay whistle can
still be heard, long after the instrument stops playing. The
melody rides the mood created in the opening to conclusion,
when the whistle makes a short comeback and reminds the
listener that this musical adventure started as an exploration
of its potentials.

8. Reunion is a musical experiment in tension release. The

musician was at the time in a mood that only a dense
soprano could express. However, as he recalls, this was only
meant to introduce the tense feeling, with the hope that the
causalities of music would resolve it. The soprano conjures
up a physical sensation which is relentlessly emphasized by
the rhythm. The flute follows the dense soprano solo and
suspends the mood. The return of the soprano brings with it
a sense of relief and the sounds gradually settle in their
matching places. However, the tension may re-emerge at any
moment – the apparent release at the end of the track is not
a lasting state. The title of the track refers to this neutral
emotional ground where the varied moods conjured up in
this album meet and reach a compromise.

_______________
* The artist’s fascination with the music of the WaGogo people is the
guiding concept of one of his previous CDs, WaGogo Suite.
9. The Takeover opens with a guitar line to which, once it
becomes steady, bass and percussion are added. The bass
evolves naturally and brings forth the sounds that respond to
the demands of the still emerging melody. The flute enters
with a few hesitant notes that regroup themselves and start
echoing the guitar melody, to which they respond without
effort. Here, the tenor takes over and stabilizes the
sequences outlined by the flute. The melody is lifted to a
higher level where it only resembles the line introduced by
the flute. After the takeover, the sound of the tenor falls in
line with the bluesy guitar. However, these are not the blue
notes played on the banks of the Mississippi – instead, the
artist takes us on a journey to another river, the Niger.

10. Release was recorded on a hot desert day, inspired by

the fata morgana dancing on the horizon, where reality and
fantasy become one. The musician remembers that he didn’t
intend to use an Oriental scale. However, the opening
saxophone riff invoked it and the mood slowly asserted itself.
The instrumental support of the emerging melody is light and
airy, like the clothes worn on such a day. Its vibes move the
air and the music conjures up a cool breeze that, at the end
of the track, brings release.

The track-by-track notes above are based on the many

interviews and e-mail exchanges that I was privileged to have
with the artist. As a cognitive archaeologist, I am well-aware of
the relationship between rock art and music – which, together
with the first dancing steps and vocal utterances of our
ancestors, were part of an ancient ritual behavior that conjured
up the causal construct of reality that we inhabit. Music has
the power to create parallel worlds, but it also offers the
means to escape them. Music may alter our state of
consciousness and help us navigate the soundscapes of worlds
held together by unfamiliar causal orders. Avan Dozi, like a
spirit of these hidden places, takes possession of the artist. The
performer becomes the shaman who leads the ritual that
guides the listener through the acoustic mazes of this parallel
dimension.
—George F. Steiner, CISENP
(International Commission on the Intellectual
and Spiritual Expression of Non-literate Peoples)
© 2019 Nadav Haber & IFIRAR
All rights reserved | Unauthorized copying, hiring, lending, public
performance and broadcasting of this record and booklet prohibited
Recorded, produced and printed in Switzerland