New Music Blending Ancient and Modern Sounds from the Mediterranean and Beyond:

The music of the Brooklyn-based group Baklava Express suggests the soundtrack of an open-air Mediterranean market. It’s high-energy music that blends ancient and modern instruments. These are all original songs, but the rhythms and melodic lines may, at one moment, evoke Turkish, Greek, or Armenian traditions, and then, just as naturally, turn on a dime to reference Arab, Mizrahi and Sephardi folk music, or make discreet nods to jazz, flamenco, or rock. 

Notably, despite the complexities of such musical fusion, the band’s self-produced sophomore effort, Sabába, which will be released on April 17, has an organic, joyous, lived-in feel.

“For Dávka, our first album, released in 2023, we went into the studio after having only played a few gigs as a group," notes oud player and composer Josh Kaye. "I'm proud of how it came out. But for this recording, everyone’s been in the band for at least three years, so we’re playing music that we've performed hundreds of times. It not only sounds tighter, but we had much more freedom to improvise and make arrangements on the fly.” 

In music, fusion is an idea fraught with perils, especially when sourcing from such related but disparate ancient traditions. Push too hard and risk losing something essential to the tradition; stay too close to the mean, and you might turn your music into a replica of a museum piece.

“It's not something that I'm consciously thinking about,” says Kaye. “Anyone who knows these traditions can immediately hear them in the music, be it Arab, Turkish, or Armenian music. These are not traditional songs, but are very close.  I have a very good friend, an Arab musician who's pushing 80 at this point, really steeped in tradition, and he would tell me: ‘I can hear the Arab roots in your music -- but your music isn't Arab music.’ He wasn’t judgmental. He was stating a fact. He would tell me: ‘It's cool. Do your own thing.’ We are not a traditional music band. We play original music influenced by a variety of traditions.”

As a band, Baklava Express has a fluid lineup consisting of core members and a rotating cast of additional musicians who join in, budget and circumstances permitting. 

Sabába features Kaye on oud, the ancient pear-shaped string instrument prominent in Middle Eastern, North African, and Persian cultures and the parent of the European lute; Daisy Castro on violin and cello; Eren Erdogan on ney and kaval, flutes from both, ancient and modern traditions stretching geographically from Egypt to the Balkans; Lefteris Bournias, clarinet; James Lambrosse, guitar; James Robbins on bass, and Jeremy Smith on percussion. 

Their diverse backgrounds have expanded and enriched the overall sound of the music, underscores Kaye. "It’s something I really love about the band: each musician brings something personal, extra to the music." If, for instance, in "Adieu Henri," you hear unexpected palmas (flamenco clapping), credit Smith, an in-demand flamenco percussionist, notes Kaye.

Still, there is no question that the music of Baklava Express reflects Kaye’s personal story.

Born in London, he moved to the United States with his family when he was 13. “I consider myself a New Yorker at this point," he says. "As to how I arrived at this music, I'm Jewish, and that plays a pretty big part of my personal and musical identity. A pretty big influence on my music is the historical Jewish music I grew up with. My exposure to traditional Jewish music is almost entirely within the context of synagogue and religious ceremony. Even at parties, the songs are themselves religious. The Arab, Turkish, and Armenian influences come from secular contemporary music and party music.” 

There were also several musicians in Kaye’s family, including a grandmother who was “a really fantastic jazz piano player," her sister, a classical pianist, and a late uncle who was “a great guitar player." Kaye was listening to Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, and Benny Goodman when he was 8, which eventually led him to play jazz guitar. In time, Kaye’s love and talent for early jazz and swing led him to become a member of standout French guitarist Stephane Wrembel’s band, one of the world’s most prominent groups specializing in the music of Django Reinhardt. While leading Baklava Express, Kaye also continues to record and tour with Wrembel.

Picking up the oud was not an obvious development.

“I'd been a professional guitarist in New York for many years. Living in Brooklyn, in the community, I kept bumping into Arab music,” recalls Kaye. “And one day I was walking home from a gig in my neighborhood, and I walked past the barber shop of an Egyptian man. The shop was closed, but I could see he was in there with his friends, playing music on the oud. He saw me looking and waved me in. We talked, hung out, and I tried to play the oud, but I couldn't. But that night, on impulse, I bought one on Amazon. And that’s how I started. And I became totally fascinated and obsessed.” He found a community of musicians to play this music, mostly in Brooklyn, “and I started going to jams or to gigs and trying to watch and learn as much as I could.” After a couple of years of serious dedication, he started to get called for weddings, and parties. “And after developing a certain level of proficiency, I felt I could do something with it. I've always been a composer,” so the natural next step, he says, was writing new music using the oud as a songwriting tool.

For all the broad Mediterranean sourcing and musical references that might nod to ancient traditions, there is a down-to-earth, neighborhood feel to the songs, sometimes hidden in plain view in unexpected places. 

“White Sauce, Hot Sauce,” a highlight of the album, has “the clearest representation of Arab music. It's dedicated to a street cart, a halal cart in the neighborhood I used to live in, a mostly Arab neighborhood. The song is dedicated to that community, to the diaspora of Arabic-speaking people in Brooklyn. And again, those melodic conventions will be something that anyone who listens to Arab music will hear and say, 'Oh, this reminds me of Egyptian music, or Syrian music.'" 

Meanwhile, the lively "A Very Narrow Bridge" draws on the Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish musical tradition, but while the closing track, “Begin Again,” takes the listener on an unexpected turn. 

It starts as a ballad, and it has “a kind of modern Turkish sensibility” in the melody, outlines Kaye. “And then kind of halfway through, it becomes a slow rock song.” It’s a different -- but perhaps surprisingly familiar sound. “When I was starting to play guitar, I played rock, and even put out a metal EP in college,” says Kaye. “Heavy metal and rock are part of my aesthetic, too.”

At a time when our encounters and differences across cultural lines are so often framed by anger and mistrust, the music of Baklava Express suggests an open invitation to a shared space. That the songs have no lyrics (in part a nod to niggunim, a mystical Jewish musical tradition that features wordless singing), only expands the possibilities, Kaye suggests. 

“I feel that an instrumental song quite literally could mean anything to any person,” he elaborates. “I often say, jokingly, 'This song isn't about anything. It’s about whatever you'd like it to be about this time - because perhaps the next time you hear it, it will be about something else.' There are no limits. This music is about having a meeting place for everyone. I often don't say it out loud, but I hope it's obvious. I hope that organically it becomes a meeting place for anybody who wants to listen.”

Primary ensemble members include:

Josh Kaye – Oud/Composition 

Daisy Castro – Violin   

James Robbins – Bass 

Jeremy Smith – Percussion