by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

The soft, lush glamour shots that accompany the release of each new album by Natacha Atlas are somewhat deceptive. True, she’s as coy and feminine as she wants to be. But at the same time, in conversation, she’s opinionated, often brusque, given to sudden bursts of biting laughter and fully prepared to court controversy.

And controversy will dog someone born into contradiction and contrast. Her surname suits, because you’ll need an atlas to chart her background. Belgian-born and London-based, of Egyptian, Moroccan and Palestinian descent with both Arab and Sephardic Jewish lineage (she’s described herself as “a human Gaza Strip”), Atlas is in a position to comment, from a position of authority, on any side of the clashes and hostilities shaking the planet right now.

A pair of songs from her latest album Something Dangerous show her readiness to call any side on its shortcomings. The title track, with its slinky bass line, electro beats and Middle Eastern melody, develops a deeper resonance every day that WMDs remain unfound in Iraq.

“I wrote the title song right after the first anti-war march in London,” says Atlas, “last October, which I joined along with one of the record’s producers. We brought a little of the spirit of that day to writing the song, which is about the government lying to us, telling us to believe one thing when the reality is clearly different.”

Conversely, she takes the Muslim world to task for its retrogressive sexism. Her weapon of choice this time around is James Brown’s “Man’s World,” the cover tune on this record (previously, she’s covered Jacques Brel and Screaming Jay Hawkins). “I did that song for two reasons. First, I’m Egyptian, so I know what it is to live in a man’s world. Second, I wanted to make a video for that song which in the first half showed all of man’s great achievements, in the sciences, art, architecture and so on. The second half would show all the destruction that men do, especially war and environmental damage. It would end on the image of a woman holding her child in front of a bombed-out house.” Her label, a bit less eager to toss out the bait, has yet to green-light that one.

Living the world

Ultimately, however, Atlas’s music is about harmony, not discordance. As the singer for ’90s ethno-techno act Transglobal Underground, she shot to the forefront of the nascent world-crossover scene. The band liberally mixed up techno, dub, drum & bass and rock with rhythms, melodies, instruments and tonalities from around the world. The setting was ideally suited to the multicultural Atlas, and it served as the springboard for her healthy solo career. Since leaving the band in ’99, she’s been invited by French pop electronica pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre to perform at the massive Y2K New Year’s Eve event at the pyramids of Egypt, toured with Led Zep’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and signed on as a UN Goodwill Ambassador to boot.

While her last disc Ayeshteni saw her digress and focus on shaabi, the bluesy pop of the Egyptian working class, her latest pulls back out for a macroscopic, global view. “I wanted this album to be a sort of a bridge, to help Westerners get a better understanding of Arabic people,” she says, but there’s so much more to it than that

The record features vocals in four languages—English, French, Arabic and Hindi—and draws in elements not only of Arabic classical and pop music, played off downtempo London club beats, but also touches of Bollywood and Hindi-pop, dancehall, hip hop and Western avant-garde classical music. It spans a wide emotional range, from profound melancholy to unbridled playfulness, and sees her working with guest singers (and rappers) for the first time, among them Sinead O’Connor and Cinematic Orchestra’s Niara Scarlett. She’s also enlisted the aid of bassist and world-dub explorer Jah Wobble (of whose Invaders of the Heart Atlas was once a member), Fila Brazilia, composer Jocelyn Pook and her own husband Abdullah Chhadeh.

Chhadeh, an outstanding player of the qanun, is also appearing at Nuits d’Afrique this year, though not on the same bill as Atlas. She’s headlining the Vive La World! tour, a sonic caravan intended to showcase to North Americans the way in which France has become a checkpoint between the musical cultures of Europe on one hand and Africa and the Middle East on the other. It’s a bill she shares with Zaire’s So Kalmery, Afro-techno act Electro Bamako and DuOud, a pair of artists that bring the Arabic lute to an acid-jazz setting.

With So Kalmery, Electro Bamako and DuOud at le Spectrum on Friday, July 11, 8:30pm, $35

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