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Artist
Saam Schlamminger's music negates the dialogue of cultures. Dialogue means one of you over here, the other over there, and now get along with each other. In that kind of scenario, being forced into subjects, cultures can only operate as caricatures. Applied to music, the result sounds as you would expect: Western blandness in Southern or Eastern gravy. Or the other way round: beats that don't bring more world into folklore. There are, of course, exceptions, great encounters. But they don't draw their life from cultures or collectives, they draw it from firmly rooted individuals who finally grow beyond themselves. They can complement each other, steal from each other, grow together to form something new, at best become a whole that was never heard before -- but in so doing, they have left dialogue behind. It might seem to be dialogue, but in fact it is a many-voicedness, many voices that become an orchestra instead of simply talking to each other. Saam Schlamminger has gone even farther. In his music, dialogue is revoked. All is one, but nothing surrenders itself. It is not possible to distinguish origins. Almost everything seems to be Western, everything exotic is deliberately avoided, but in its core the music is more oriental than belly-dance. If you abandon yourself to the pulse of the beats, you recognize the Santour, the Persian hammered dulcimer. In the shimmer of the electronics you can hear the echo of the Tombak, the oriental drum. Saam doesn't embellish himself with