“Bokat” is a collaborative album by Roomet Jakapi – a performer who sings, recites, and acts in two Dadaist languages – and Swedish musician Girilal Baars. The record features improvisational mini-operettas with fast-developing caricatured characters and interludes that describe both the figures and the unfolding events. These dense, polyphonic audio plays tell, whisper, and scream their stories in multiple voices, complementing and inspiring each other – often also arguing, scheming, and cancelling each other out in a strikingly lifelike way.
Stylistically, the album draws from neoclassical and jazz progressions, opera and chamber songs, as well as droning murmurs of Orthodox liturgical chants. The performers imitate human characters, and occasionally even machines (as in “Blow By Blow”). There are market-square-like imitations of Chinese and Arabic speech (“Bokat”), sharp social – and just as much individual – criticism. One outstanding example of universally recognisable character work is M.O.G.A. – a comic-opera-style duel-duet between Uncle Sam and a cunning Russian babushka (at the time of recording, two Christmases ago, the artists couldn’t have foreseen how prophetic that near-future image would become).
The energy is punk-like, but the sound remains well-controlled, cloaked in a kind of rationality despite the seemingly exhausting expressive effort. There are also occasional fragments of semantically recognisable language – perhaps a possible direction for further development? On the other hand, the intonational musicality plays a major role – including some notably well-executed chromatic thirds. Often the musical motifs appear in perfect synchronicity – an almost unbelievable level of mutual understanding!
The fireworks of character development are so sharp that at one point there’s even a sense of anxiety about potential repetition when an already-introduced character returns – this would’ve been a great moment to push the character even further over the top.
The album’s longest piece, “Surfing Our Distractions”, is devoted to depicting the myriad temptations and lures that pull at an individual’s body, mind, and soul. It becomes clear that the main culprits are one’s own weaknesses: gullibility, foolishness, lust, comfort-seeking, laziness. “Sell, Sell, Sell” is made up of clever sales mantras and psychologically charts the path to purchase. The shouting “Tourist-Trapped” contains a glimmer of hope – if we feel anxiety and frustration at having been duped, not all is lost; perhaps next time we’ll act wiser. The “Temple Sharks” are predators in an echoing temple, alone. Today’s temples of truth-tellers are, unfortunately, crowded. But hopefully, they too will one day be left alone in their cold houses of superstition and prejudice, howling back at one another.
In addition to the CD format, the album is available on Girilal Baars’ Bandcamp page. With its near-goldfinch-like ability to mimic, the human voice truly is the most perfect instrument! Meeeneeee---sidiriviipsissiiiii... Kudakudamägänägääähhhhh. Gukkuu.
