Osloob Hayati

In their musical creation Osloob and Naïssam Jalal present an unusual combination: electrifying hip-hop – rap with heady flights of melody from the flute. The beats and rhyming lyrics of Palestinian rapper, beatmaker and beatboxer Osloob blend perfectly with the improvisations of Franco-Syrian flautist Naïssam Jalal. The result is a dialogue between two musicians with a seemingly perfect understanding of each other: Osloob the rhyming wordsmith delivers his verses, while Naïssam Jalal, creatively accompanying the MC’s beats, “raps” with her flute. The result is an excitingly bold and precise intermixture of sounds. Their project title, « Al Akhareen », means « others » in Arabic.

RFI
« With her new opus Osloob Hayati « My way of life », the French-Syrian flutist revolutionizes the boundaries of jazz by offering her nomadic style with her quintet Rythms of Resistance. A journey without borders whose objective is to open minds. »

L’Humanité
« Naïssam Jalal release an album that stands out for the strength of its musical construction and its message. With her fertile breath, she magnificently links maqams, African pentatonic scales, jazz improvisation and the beatbox technique created by Afro-American rap. »

RFI
« The French-Syrian flutist and composer blows the infinite rhythms of her resistance, as much musical as political. Her language is free, with a rare finesse and a nomadic depth. It is reinvented in contact with her musicians and her audience, at each concert. »

Radio Nova
« Naïssam Jalal, lady flute on the groove, has criss-crossed the Middle East, but it is on the Parisian stages that she became well-knowed (and appreciated), grooving with her flute in the jazz, oriental and afro galaxies, where she excels. An enterprising and intrepid soloist, with a group of young jazz wolves and much more… »

Jazz News
« Naïssam Jalal evokes a current resistance. It is played in the patio of our global and hyper-connected houses. Songs of tolerance, her music – committed, beautiful, courageous, improvised – sounds like a bulwark against the religious fanaticism and security withdrawal that tear apart our daily lives. »

Télérama
« Rebellious with virtuoso assaults from her transverse flute and her nay flute, this groover prefers breaks in rhythm, lightly touched themes and the suspense of improvisation. »

Jazz Magazine
« The young Syrian-born flutist Naïssam Jalal is the most impressive at the head of her own ensemble, the cosmopolitan Rhythms of Resistance. Naïssam creates a music in her image: mixed and combative, which fuses compositions of great melodic richness, undulating grooves, precious harmonies referring to the music of the Middle East and a certain modal lyricism evoking as much as the nomadic music of Don Cherry and the obsessive mystical jazz of John Coltrane.

Citizen Jazz
« Naïssam Jalal’s flute is straightforward, we can recognize her sincerity no matter how intense the musicians play.  »

Sun Ship
« With this first album under her name, Naïssam Jalal signs a master stroke, because her album will suit both traditional music lovers and those who like to mix them up. Between two worlds, between two musics, in this interval, this syncopation where everything is possible and everything is created. »