MASAA

Masaa, the multi-award-winning quartet around German-Lebanese singer Rabih Lahoud, is said to play "the most exciting ethno-jazz these days". However, forget the "ethno": the ensemble combines various influences with great stylistic elegance to create a modern world jazz that is just as at home in Beirut as it is in Berlin. With last year's album "Beit", Lahoud, quarter-tone trumpeter Marcus Rust, double-neck guitarist Reentko Dirks and percussionist Demian Kappenstein have made the leap into the absolute upper league. It is in no small part thanks to Rabih Lahoud's voice that they won the German Jazz Award in the "Vocal Album of the Year" category: A voice that simultaneously flatters and hurts. It carries you away, fulfills and exhausts you. Even those who don't understand a word of Arabic can savour its happiness, its pain and all its emotions.