El Khat, Ayal Senior

A homemade junkyard band led by multi-instrumentalist Eyal El Wahab. Named for the drug used so widely chewed across the Arab Peninsula, The band brings original compositions inspired by the music of the golden age in Aden, Yemen. El Wahab plays many instruments, like the dli and the Kearat that he constructed himself. It's something he started doing several years ago, using his skills to make music from the items people discard. A child of the Yemeni diaspora who's grown up in Tel Aviv Jaffa, Israel, it's a practice that harks back to the family homeland, where even rubbish can have become an instrument.

El Wahab has always been a man of invention. He talked his way into the Jerusalem Andalusian Orchestra as a cellist, self-taught from busking and unable to read music, learning the repertoire by ear as he went along, and picking up music theory. It gave him a strong foundation, but his world changed when he was given 'Qat, Coffee & Qambus: Raw 45s from Yemen' an LP of Yemeni traditional music from the 1960s. It came as an epiphany. He quit the orchestra, began building instruments and put together El Khat.

with Ayal Senior

Presented with support from Miles Nadal JCC
www.mnjcc.org