Mehdi Nabti

Biography by Thom Jurek

Mehdi Nabti is a celebrated alto saxophonist, flutist, composer, and author who creates improvised polymodal and polyrhythmic music as part of what he calls the "Afro-Berber continuum," a term of his own invention. He composes and improvises using techniques from the ancient and medieval Berber and sub-Saharan traditions that contain compound adaptations of Sufi trance rhythms and rituals from the Maghreb (Aissawa and Hamadcha) and Afro-Berber and Andalusian melodic modes for a musical evocation of the forgotten and unrecognized history of North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. These elements are combined with harmonic and improvisational ideas from post-bop jazz and funk. Nabti incorporates ideas from various disciplines into his "Afro-Berber Continuum" from philosophy, symmetry, and epigraphy, but also heroic fantasy and science fiction (particularly uchronies and cybernetics). A quick listen through any release in his catalog, particularly early recordings — 2012's Presentation in Situ with the international octet Nass Lounassa, or 2015's funky electric Artists in Residence with Pulsar 4 — reveal that given his band's instrumentation, and his own reliance on interplay and improvisation, it is easy to classify their music as a hybrid of world fusion and vanguard jazz-funk, though Nabti actively resists that description. 2018's Les Règles de L'Art (Ethno​-​Ingénierie) with his Prototype ensemble, reveals his thinking in a much more concrete and linear way as North African folk melodies and ceremonial chants, and polyharmonic modes entwine with syncopated layers of rhythms and blues, funk, and jazz tropes in an incendiary meld of improvisation and communicative exchange that makes genre classification nearly a moot point. Recognized in Canada for his innovations, Nabti has received numerous grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Montreal Arts Council (MAC), the Canada Council for the Arts (CAC) and the Quebec Council of Arts and Letters. (CALQ).

Nabti, of Kabyle (Algerian) descent, was born and raised in Paris, France. In addition to pursuing his love of music, he is also a scholar. Between the ages of eight and 15, he studied classical guitar, solfège, and harmony at the local conservatory. He began learning the alto saxophone at 16. While attending university, he studied arrangement and improvisation with distinguished jazz musician/teachers including François Jeanneau, Steve Coleman, Andy Emler, and Philippe Sellam, as well as North African music from luminaries such as Abderrahim Amarani Marrakchi, Haj Azedine Bettahi, and Haj Said Berrada.

​During the '90s, he cut his teeth playing in various kinds of groups careening through funk, jazz, electro, house, percussion orchestras, and improvised and Afro-folkloric music. From 2003 to 2008, he conducted his doctoral research in Morocco with musicians from the Arab-Andalusian music (Mohamed Briouel), Berber folklore (Oudaden, Mouloud El Meskaoui), ritual Gnawan trance (Mohamed Chaouqi), Sufi trance Aissawa (Haj Azedine Bettahi, Haj Said Berrada, Abdellah Yakoubi), and Hamadcha (Abderrahim Amarani Marrakchi). He participated in many concerts and festivals, and dozens of rituals of trance and possession. He learned to play various regional and regional and traditional percussion instruments (bendir, tbel, tassa, tarija), and the Moroccan bamboo flute(nyra) and oboe (reta). He annotated, compiled, and promoted the rhythms of trance, mystical songs, and ancient Berber melodies; he translated into French dozens of Sufi poems from the Maghreb of the medieval period. ​

Between 2004 and 2008, he formed and led a French-Moroccan jazz/world fusion band that assembled French jazz and Moroccan Sufi musicians called Aissawaniyya; instruments included saxophone, bass, drums, and six percussionists/singers. With this group, he taught master classes, recorded unissued sessions (in Morocco, Spain, and Paris), and performed at various festivals in Europe, North Africa, and Canada. After earning a Master's degree in Hypermedia Sciences and Techniques and a degree in sociology from the University of Paris, Nabti went on to study anthropology and obtained a "Très Honorable" mention from his academic jury while earning his doctorate in anthropology at the EHESS Paris. He also published his first book, Les Aissawa. Sufism, Music and Trance Rituals in Morocco (2010).

In 2010 Nabti moved to Montreal to study and teach. He began working with the octet Nass Lounassa (with a three-horn frontline, percussionists, and electric bass) to release his debut album In Situ in 2012. Though circulation was small, critical acclaim was considerable. The following year saw the debut of his quartet Pulsar 4 — a slimmed down lineup of his larger group with alto sax as the only horn — on the acclaimed album Conjugated Tense. Though the band played out only occasionally, they did develop an international following. 2014 saw the release of Pulsar 4's Artists in Residence, followed a year later by the globally acclaimed compilation Multiple Worlds from the British F-IRE label. The same year, he and the band's drummer, Lionel Kizaba, issued the duo offering Etudes Africaines. Nabti further honed Pulsar, this time into a trio with Kizaba and electric bassist Nicolas Lafortune, and issued the provocative, harmonically complex Hybridizations and Transformations in 2016.

Nabti, ever restless, added electric guitarist Joy Anandasivam and drummer Bertil Schulrabe to replace the always busy Kizaba and form the band Prototype. In Montreal, they cut and released Les Règles de L'Art (Ethno​-​Ingénierie) in 2018; the same year Nabti published the study Arabic, Berber and North African Presence in Quebec. 55 years of Plural Music (1962-2017), which was published by L'Harmattan in Paris. Nabti and Prototype played gigs through much of 2019 while he continued researching teaching, and composing. Near the end of the year, he and Prototype re-entered a Montreal studio and cut Grooves à Mystères, a more involved and complex recording of the "Afro-Berber Continuum," and released it through DK Records on Bandcamp in January of 2020.

Mehdi Nabti is is an accomplished composer, alto saxophonist, flutist, bandleader, and author. His music bridges centuries and traditions, blurring their origins to frame them in a complex yet accessible musical dialogue that interrogates root sources and cultures in order to transcend their limits honorably in search of a boundary-less new music. Show less