HAMI HAMOO

Three musicians, united by their shared passion for African music, blend their influences to create a new danceable and cross-cultural groove. This original repertoire, with electronic and folk accents, is firmly oriented toward the African continent, seen from three different perspectives: that of a Burkinabe singer-guitarist Moussa Koita, a South Iranian percussionist-singer Habib Meftah and a French saxophonist Michaël Havard  who is passionate about vintage 70s Afro sounds.

With a Frenchman, an Iranian, and a Burkinabé, three Africas came together. Michael, originally a jazz saxophonist, embodies the Africa of Arat Kilo, a band rooted in the unique Ethiopian soul of the 1960s–70s. Habib comes from Bushehr, Iran’s gateway to Africa, once both a slave port and a trading stop with Zanzibar and Somalia. African rhythms and Arabic melodies still endure there, an exception in Persian lands. Moussa, the son of a griot, was born in Bobo-Dioulasso, in the same courtyard as Victor Démé, who gave him his start in a career that irresistibly led him to Paris, where he worked for years with producer Jean Lamoot.

They chose a simple method: each would bring compositions to be collectively reworked with the aim of blending their influences. None of the compositions seek purity. Influences bounce and swirl; singers Habib and Moussa never reproduce traditional melodies or usages. The independence of Bushehr’s music from the rest of Iran, the influences of French chanson or American music in West Africa, and the incredible power of Ethiopian soul-jazz reinvented through Parisian audacity — all combine to upend the notion of “music from home”.

Everything then intertwines — tenor sax and electric guitar, calabashes and electronic percussion, acoustic guitar and warped bass — in a collision of disparate elements that instantly find coherence. A proverbial expression in Bushehr’s distinctive Farsi gives the group its name: Hami Hamoo, meaning something like “more or less” – utterly unpredictable.