Naïssam Jalal
Origin: France Syria
About us
A vertiginous flutist, vocalist and prolific composer, Naïssam Jalal shines through her ability to weave links between different musical cultures and aesthetic fields. Thanks to encounters, imaginations and memories, she presents a unique work with each new creation. She deconstructs boundaries and invents a singular language that invites us to open up to multiple horizons.
Naïssam Jalal has received prestigious awards, including the Grand Prix de l'Académie Charles Cros 2017, the Victoires du Jazz 2019 (+ 3 nominations), the Prix des Musiques d'ICI 2020 and the Premier Prix Jazz of the International Songwriting Competition 2022. In 2023, she was named Chevalière des Arts et des Lettres, and Femmes de Culture. Naïssam Jalal was also named one of the best flautists of the year by Jazz Magazine and Jazz News.
Leading 4 bands, Naïssam Jalal travels the world, sharing intimate and moving experiences with her audiences. Over the course of 9 albums, she has established herself as one of the leading figures on the contemporary jazz scene, unveiling a personal and vibrant musical universe that gives new meaning to the word freedom.
Born in Paris of Syrian parents, the musician's artistic development began at the age of 6, with a multitude of human and artistic encounters. At the age of 17, she discovered improvisation and left the conservatory after obtaining her CFEM. She joined various brass bands, including Tarace Boulba, with whom she toured France and Mali.
At the age of 19, Naïssam left to continue her apprenticeship at the Grand Institut de Musique Arabe in Damascus, where she studied the nay. Later, she moved to Cairo for a few years, where she enriched her playing with the greatest masters of classical Arab music, such as the great violinist Abdu Dagher, or Fathi Salama, with whom she performed in the most prestigious theaters. She helped create the groups El Dor El Awal and Bakash. Between musical training and self-discovery, these years of initiation in the noblest sense form the basis of today's artist.
Back in France, she accompanies Lebanese rapper Rayess Bek and Egyptian oud player Hazem Shaheen. In 2009, she released the album Aux Résistances by the duo Noun Ya, with whom she toured France, Syria, Japan, Lebanon and Tunisia.
From rap to contemporary jazz, from tango to afrobeat, Naïssam Jalal plays with everyone and every musical category. She has performed alongside the crème de la crème of African musicians on the Parisian scene (Cheikh Tidiane Seck, Mamani Keita, Abdoulaye Traore, Mohamed Diaby, Hilaire Penda, Moh Kouyaté, Hervé Samb) and the great names of French and international jazz (Hamid Drake, Michael Blake, Bojan Z, Sophia Domanchich, Claude Tchamitchian, Andy Emler, Médéric Collignon, Nelson Veras, Anne Paceo), Arab music (Noura Mint Seymali, Aziz Sahmaoui, Amazigh Kateb, Lena Shamamyan, Karim Ziad, Macadi Nahhas, Youssef Hbeish, Zied Zouari, Ahmad Alkhatib). She accompanies numerous international rappers such as Mike Ladd, Napoleon Maddox and the Palestinian rap group Katibeh 5, as well as Latin American artists such as Melingo. She also composes music for film (6 feature films), dance and theater.
In 2011, she created her Rhythms of Resistance quintet, which toured France and abroad, and produced two critically acclaimed albums: Osloob Hayati (2015) and Almot Wala Almazala (2016), which won the Académie Charles Cros prize in 2017.At the same time, she explores the possibilities of instrumental hip hop with Palestinian rapper Osloob in the formation Al Akhareen, with whom she receives the Prix des Musiques d'ICI 2020.She also founded the trio Quest of the Invisible, a spiritual quest for trance and silence.The album of the same name is enthusiastically received and wins the 2019 Victoires du Jazz award for “unclassifiable album of the year”.
To mark the 10th anniversary of Rhythms of Resistance, the double album Un Autre Monde is released in February 2021. It reveals an unsuspected aspect of Naïssam Jalal's imagination, as she presents a two-faceted repertoire: a version for quintet and a version for symphony orchestra performed by the Orchestre National de Bretagne. Un Autre Monde denounces the social and ecological catastrophes of today's world, but also points towards a world of empathy and love. An album that militates for dreams and the refusal to bow our heads.
External links:
WebsiteAssociated Projects
Line-up: NAÏSSAM JALAL flute, voice, nay, composition - CLÉMENT PETIT cello - CLAUDE TCHAMITCHIAN double bass - ZAZA DESIDERIO drums
In response to the violence of our world, Naïssam Jalal has composed imaginary healing rituals. These “Healing Rituals” provide refuge for suffering spirits and bodies through silence, trance and beauty. Although very contemporary, these rituals are in line with the healing rituals of the ancestral and often animistic traditions that inspired them.
“Despite the anger that today's world stirs up, Naïssam Jalal stays the course of gentleness. Flutist, composer and singer, she has created, project after project, a music that returns to her instinctive strength. Untiringly. Healing Rituals is perhaps the quintessential example of this quest. Almost whispered, the music reveals itself to be a true ritual, inspired by traditional cultures and their ways of accompanying life and healing ailments. The invisible, an age-old subject for Naïssam Jalal, earned her an award at the 2019 Victoires du jazz. Her reconnection with the spirit is at the origin of Healing Rituals, bringing together different extra-Western trance traditions, aiming for collective grace.” Sons D'hiver festival
Line-up: Naïssam Jalal - flute, voice, composition / Samrat Pandit - vocals / Sougata Roy - Chowdhury sarod / Leonardo Montana - piano / Anuja Borude - pakhawaj / Zaza Desiderio - drums / Flo Comment - tanpura
Franco-Syrian flutist Naïssam Jalal has traveled the roads of India to immerse herself in Hindustani music, the classical music of the north of the country, for her new project.
She has gathered around her an orchestra of Indian and Western musicians with a singular instrumentation, which corresponds to her desire for an aesthetic that is both contemporary and intimately linked to its source. Between spirituality and nature, her Landscapes of Eternity are trance-like mental landscapes that connect us with the cosmos and with the history of an entire community of human beings.
Naïssam Jalal explores the tenuous link between music, nature and spirituality at the heart of Indian classical music, in a new creation based on the landscapes of North India. The flutist, vocalist and composer travelled alone in India for several months, in search of the spirit of Hindustani music. Nourished by her encounters and teachings, she composed an intimate, spiritual repertoire based on the sensations and reflections she experienced during her travels.
It features traditional Indian classical musicians Samrat Pandit on vocals, Sougata Roy Chowdhury on sarod, Anuja Borude on pakhawaj and Flo Comment on tanpura, as well as jazz musicians such as Franco-Brazilian pianist Leonardo Montana and Brazilian drummer Zaza Desiderio. The unique instrumentation reflects both the contemporary aesthetic and the strong link with the language of Indian classical music.
Line-up: NAÏSSAM JALAL Flute, Nay, Voice, Composition - MEHDI CHAÏB Sax. tenor & soprano, perc. - KARSTEN HOCHAPFEL Guitar, Cello - DAMIEN VARAILLON Double bass - ARNAUD DOLMEN Drums
En 2011, Naïssam Jalal fonde le très cosmopolite ensemble « Rhythms of Resistance » avec quatre musiciens talentueux.
Une multiplicité d’apports et d’influx conjugue passionnément les influences, les registres, et fascine. Le sens du rythme, la plénitude de l’élan et des improvisations où se retissent les liens entre jazz et musique savante, musique occidentale, musique classique arabe, sont l’occasion d’autant de traversées du miroir entre les champs esthétiques.
Ces «Rhythms of Resistance» nous rappellent alors qu’en dehors de tout logo ou slogan, résister est une idée éternellement neuve, salubre et salutaire, qui refuse les formatages du sensible.
Les deux albums de Naïssam Jalal & Rhythms of Resistance “Osloob Hayati” (2015) et “Almot Wala Almazala” (2016) ont reçu un accueil enthousiaste de la presse et du public avec plusieurs distinctions : « Coup de Cœur 2017″ de l’Académie Charles Cros, “4 F” Télérama, “4*” Jazz Mag, “Indispensable” Jazz News pour l’album “Almot Wala Almazala”, Groupe Révélation 2017 de Citizen Jazz.
Un 3eme album « Un Autre Monde » sort en 2021 autour d’un double répertoire. Naïssam Jalal a composé et arrangé ce nouveau répertoire pour orchestre symphonique : « La Symphonie d’Un Autre Monde ».
Line-up: NAÏSSAM JALAL Flute, Nay, Voice, Composition - LEONARDO MONTANA Piano - CLAUDE TCHAMITCHIAN Double bass
Naïssam Jalal brings together Brazilian pianist Leonardo Montana and Franco-Armenian double bassist Claude Tchamitchian in a quest for the Invisible at the crossroads of extra-Western mystical and traditional music, and modal jazz. Silence plays a central role, and rhythm always leads to trance in a repetitive, hypnotic form, while the voice sometimes lends a hand to the instruments to make contact with the Invisible, by naming it.
Naïssam Jalal won the 2019 Victoires du Jazz award in the “Album inclassable” category for her album Quest of the Invisible.
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