<body><div>​​<img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0aa5J8_0vTslMGo00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0aa5J8_0vTslMGo00" width="350" height="350" >El Khat - القاتBerlin, Germanyfollowmute El Khat - القات. 00:10 / 00:58“To be a European or American Jew has hardly been perceived as a contradiction, but to be an Arab Jew has been seen as a kind of logical paradox, even an ontological subversion,” wrote Iraq-born academic Ella Habiba Shohat in 1992. Amidst the cacophony of war in Palestine and the political silencing that has ensued, Berlin-based, Jaffa-raised Yemeni band El Khat embraces the contradictions of the Arab Jewish identity. Their latest album, mute, is a critique of reified ideologies that pit Arabness in diametric opposition to Jewishness, and have resulted in decades of violence and dispossession. Singing in Arabic and drawing from Yemeni musical idioms with makeshift “junkyard” instruments, El Khat’s music is the very sound of the “ontological subversion” to which Shohat refers, gesturing toward the potential for difference to become identity.Musically, El Khat wears their heritage on their sleeve. Freewheeling horn solos driven by layered frame drum rhythms, raw percussive textures, and melodies informed by Middle Eastern pop, all filtered through a DIY approach honed over half a decade in warehouses and junkyards. This isn’t just exoticized traditionalism or diasporic nostalgia, however. The quantized breakdowns at the conclusion of tracks like “Zafa : Talaatam” and “DJ Saadia” reveal an creative intertwining of digital processes with their compositions inspired by ’60s Yemeni records. In “Tabi Yamani,” El Khat let these tendencies come to the fore in a minimalist, polyrhythmic interlude that wouldn’t feel out of place in the intimacy of a Berlin techno club.El Khat are lyrically in dialogue with a rich tradition of Arab Jewish literature and critique. Anti-colonial Tunisian Jewish thinker Albert Memmi paints a rich portrait of the contradictions of his identity in his semi-autobiographical novel Pillar of Salt, sitting with the melancholy of being “a native in a colonial country, a Jew in an anti-Semitic universe, an African in a world dominated by Europe.” But while Memmi would harden that melancholy into an uncritical support of the Zionist project, El Khat envision a future beyond the battle lines of nationalism. “When you’re rising up your flag/ When you’re having fun/ Someone else is falling down,” they sing on “Intissar.” Other tracks hold onto hope for reconciliation, both in interpersonal relationships as well as geopolitical strife: “Forgiveness, forgiveness will create less mistakes/ Between us,” they sing on “Zafa.” As the war in Gaza continues and the impossibility of political solutions predicated on division becomes clear, El Khat’s mute is a sliver of light pointing towards the future.</div></body>

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“To be a European or American Jew has hardly been perceived as a contradiction, but to be an Arab Jew has been seen as a kind of logical paradox, even an ontological subversion,” wrote Iraq-born academic Ella Habiba Shohat in 1992. Amidst the cacophony of war in Palestine and the political silencing that has ensued, Berlin-based, Jaffa-raised Yemeni band El Khat embraces the contradictions of the Arab Jewish identity. Their latest album, mute, is a critique of reified ideologies that pit Arabness in diametric opposition to Jewishness, and have resulted in decades of violence and dispossession. Singing in Arabic and drawing from Yemeni musical idioms with makeshift “junkyard” instruments, El Khat’s music is the very sound of the “ontological subversion” to which Shohat refers, gesturing toward the potential for difference to become identity.

El Khat, “Mute”

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“To be a European or American Jew has hardly been perceived as a contradiction, but to be an Arab Jew has been seen as a kind of logical paradox, even an o

El Khat, “Mute”

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