Healing Rituals

Album on March 31 2023!
In spite of all the reasons to be angry in this world of ours, Naïssam Jalal has chosen not to seethe, but to soothe. The flute player, composer and singer has relentlessly created music which taps into her instinctive strength. Healing Rituals could be considered as a formal climax – the quintessence of what the musician has been after. Her whispered art is a true ritual, drawing inspiration from traditional cultures and customs, especially the way they have been used throughout life to soothe and heal. The invisible realm is a recurring theme of Naïssam Jalal’s art, and one for which she was crowned in 2019 at the Victoires du Jazz. Her own reconnexion with the spiritual world lies at the root of these Healing Rituals, which bring together Egyptian, Moroccan and American traditions, aiming at collective grace.

« These imaginary healing rituals address the three imperatives of a suffering body: silence, trance and beauty. Silence for calm, cooling down and contemplation. Trance to forget pain and anxiety. Beauty that the spirit needs to feed itself in order to find hope and the desire to live in front of the ugliness of a suffering body. Healing Rituals is a quartet close to « chamber music » that embodies the modernity of these rituals. And yet they are in line with healing rituals from ancestral and often animistic traditions that inspired me to compose them. » Naïssam Jalal

Production: Fondation Royaumont / Les Couleurs du Son, a recipient of the Aide à la structuration from DRAC Ile-de-France. Co-produced by Points communs, nouvelle scène nationale Cergy-Pontoise / Val d’Oise I festival Sons d’hiver.  Created at the Festival de Royaumont on September 12, 2021