Led by multiinstrumentalist Eyal El Wahab, El Khat explores old Yemeni traditions on homemade instruments. We are proud to present the magnificent orchestra at Stairway in Vanløse.

El Khat is retro futuristic Arabian music led by multiinstrumentalist Eyal El Wahab. He is a Yemini jew who grew up in Tel Aviv, Israel, where he taught himself to play music on homemade instruments. Later, he talked his way into the Jerusalem Andalusian Orchestra as a cellist without being able to read a musical note. It gave him a strong foundation, but his world changed when he was given an LP of Yemeni traditional music from the 1960s. The epiphany made him quit the orchestra, and he began building instruments and put together El Khat with a mission to explore his own Yemeni roots musically.

El Khat’s second album “Albat Alawi Op. 99” was released earlier this year on the iconic label Glitterbeat Records to great praise from Songlines and Uncut. With the album’s title, Eyal El Wahab wants to give the compositions the same respect as western classical music. The album is recorded by classical musicians who beautifully reproduce the sound of southern Yemen’s 60s and 70s. An orchestra of percussion, horns, strings, electric instruments and El Wahab’s home-built instruments create a mesmerizing, retro-futuristic universe and make it sound like a fascinating journey through the Arab diaspora. When El Khat visits ALICE at Stairway, Eyal El Wahab and two other musicians will perform the album in a trio version.

Said of El Khat
“Joyously mixing authentically Arabic musical tropes with ethnomusicological forgeries. Vigorous psychedelic stomps…an exciting new discovery.” – Uncut

“The songs on Albat Alawi Op.99 are [band leader Eyal el Wahab’s] own compositions and he has created a denser, rougher sound to carry them.

The result is like a whirlwind in a workshop: a barrage of freaked percussion, whooping bass and choral voices set off by banks of detuned brass.” – The Wire

ALICE at Stairway
While the concert hall at Nørre Allé 7 is getting a new ventilation system, ALICE is moving into the music venue Stairway in Vanløse on January 1. 2023.