The Visions of Sidi Jilali project is inspired by Moroccon trans music which contributes to spiritual and rhythmic music. Othman El Kheloufi combines his tenor saxophone, modular synthesizer and an effect pedal with two drums.
He draws inspiration from the North-African musical tradition of the Jilala Sufi brotherhood. In this new creation, the idea isn’t to make Jilala music, but rather this tradition serves as a gateway to the various trance music of the region, where the spirituality and the sacred is relocating from the religious to the profane. The music and its performance are thought of here as a ritual, where the challenge isn’t to have religious beliefs as baggage, but to penetrate a profane space with multiple visions, hence the name of this creation which recalls a plurality of visions opening up a wide imagination. Everyone can identify with the trance state, but everyone enters it in their own way. In this concert, Othman El Kheloufi’s objective is to see and feel a spirituality outside of religious institutions, a spirituality that invites the public to rethink the sacred, while reconciling the ancestral with the contemporary.
Othman El Kheloufi – tenorsax
Richard Monségu – drums
Pham Trong-Hieu – drums