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4.5
Playing Time - 45:54 -- While technical proficiency and talent are vital to a musician's success, it is one's personal passion for artistic creation that elevates and transports messages to the hearts of others. Zera Vaughan has a passion for songwriting and singing, in both French and English. This engaging disc provides ample proof of her transcendent and sensuous emotional electricity. Instead of calling the album "Back to the Roots," it would've made more sense to me if an oxymoron had been used to call it "Forward to the Roots" to emphasize her contemporary world/pop/electro approach that also acknowledges her African and European influences.Born to an English painter and French ballet dancer, Zera Vaughan was raised in Tunisia, North Africa and attended the Tunisian Music Conservatory. That country's traditional music includes malouf, imported from Andalusia after the Spanish conquest in the 15th century. While such musical roots from Spain and Portugal don't manifest themselves heavily in Zera's world music with its electronic, synthesized and rhythmic grooves, I'm certain that they played a part in the musical fusion that she's concocted. After high school, Zera studied at the Paris Music Conservatory, and she appeared regularly at lounges throughout the city. Her roots also can be traced to the influences of trip-hop music that she was exposed to in the U.K. That genre takes listeners on a hip-hop trip with synth'ed sounds, samples, loops, and sound effects. Now making her home between Los Angeles and Paris, Zera Vaughan is a globetrekker with a worldly, sophisticated vision for her music. The international appeal of her music is that it has positive energy for humankind.The soundscapes are thoughtfully layered with smooth vocals (although occasionally a little too restrained, reverberated or distant), guitar, keys, bass and percussion. While some synthesized fill is overbearing, it can have the affect of comforting warmth that wraps Zera's mesmerizing voice like a quilt. Reworked versions of material from Randy Crawford ("Almaz"), Sting ("Fragile"), and Eddy Marney/Jean Michel-Braque ("Voir") juxtaposes nicely with her own original material. I particularly enjoyed "This Time," that is a bilingual rendition with vocalist Sirsa Shekim's assistance. `The Crying Moon" also features Kyle Pucci's backing vocals in a selection that is well-executed with Simone Sello's guitar and Ahu Cansenven's dumbek embellishing the arrangement. Much of the music was written by Zera in collaboration with Amir Efrat, a talented keyboardist/programmer/producer who has studied composition, arranging, piano performance and music synthesis in Israel, New York and Boston before his touring with "Ishtar" and relocating to Los Angeles about 2002. Amir certainly had a strong hand in helping to define and present Zera Vaughan's creatively personalized vocalizing that blends world electronic music with jazz, funk and pop sensibilities. While some of the lyrics stimulate one's curiosity, the underlying passion of "Back to the Roots" is revealed in varying degrees throughout the total set rather than in one blazing burst of energy. (Joe Ross, Roseburg, OR.)
