Dhafer Youssef

Dhafer Youssef was born on 19 November 1967 in Téboulba, a coastal village in Tunisia. His grandfather was a muezzin, and the call to prayer was the first singing he knew. He was sent to a Qur'anic school, where he listened to jazz in secret, and he has said the radio was the most important school he had.

He left Tunisia to make a jazz career and has lived in Europe since 1990, mostly in Paris and Vienna. The oud is his instrument, but the voice is what people remember: a wordless, very high improvisation that behaves more like an instrument than a song, and that comes straight out of the sound he grew up inside.

The collaborations run wide. He has played with Zakir Hussain, Jon Hassell, Uri Caine, Tigran Hamasyan, Markus Stockhausen, Nguyên Lê, Omar Sosa and Hüsnü Şenlendirici, and recorded Electric Sufi in 2001 with the rhythm section of Tackhead. Later records — Diwan of Beauty and Odd, Sounds of Mirrors, Street of Minarets — drew in Herbie Hancock, Marcus Miller, Dave Holland and Rakesh Chaurasia.

He tours constantly through European concert halls and festivals. What holds it together, across the jazz and the electronics and the Nordic and Indian colours, is a devotional register he never abandoned.