Award winning trumpeter and composer Ibrahim Maalouf releases his seventeenth album, Capacity To Love, now available to stream from all platforms. The album arrives alongside a new single & video – ‘Our Flag’ – featuring Sharon Stone, a huge fan of Ibrahim’s music who wrote and recorded her stirring contribution especially for Capacity To Love. The album also features a number of other collaborations including De La Soul, Erick The Architect (Flatbush Zombies, Beast Coast), D Smoke, Gregory Porter and JP Cooper, and follows close on the tail of Ibrahim’s widely praised album released with Angelique Kidjo, Queen of Sheba.
Speaking about the collaboration with Stone, Ibrahim says;
With ‘Our Flag’, I wanted to bring back, 80 years later, Charlie Chaplin’s speech from his movie ‘The Dictator’. For this, I felt like giving the floor to Sharon Stone, a famous Hollywood actress, someone who is as symbolic as him and with a similar aura. I wanted someone who doesn’t mince their word, who doesn’t shy away from a particular stance, and mostly someone defending the same message as Charlie Chaplin. In that sense, ‘Our Flag’ echoes Charlie Chaplin’s speech, but with words reflecting our reality, our time. Chaplin’s speech from ‘The Dictator’ is more relevant than ever and urgently needs to be heard again. ‘Our Flag’ does just that, almost a century later, with the same goal, uniting all of us, when the global context pushes us to shut out others.
Born in Lebanon and raised in France in a society increasingly polarised by such issues as race and migration, for Maalouf, Capacity To Love is an anthem for inclusivity, shared identity and reconciliation, a new chapter in Ibrahim’s career that explores art & innovation through music and his long-standing love of hip-hop. “I’m a nomad,” says the trumpeter; “I’ve never believed in borders or boundaries because at the end of the day, the most exciting thing to me is the way our differences can come together to create new art, new stories, new generations. When we collaborate, we can change the world.”
Capacity To Love finds him teaming up with a host of hip-hop and R&B artists for his most bold and innovative collection yet. Recorded in Paris & Los Angeles, the record blurs rap, jazz, pop, classical, electronic, Middle Eastern, and African influences into a cross-cultural swirl. The performances are fuelled by punchy brass and propulsive breakbeats, with production helmed by Maalouf along with French producer NuTone and American producer Henry Was. The result is an exploration of identity, community, and unity in a world that needs harmony now more than ever.
“Like a lot of people, I’m frightened by the state of things and the direction we’re headed”, says Maalouf. “There’s a lot of fear and aggression out there – I want to demonstrate my belief that mixing cultures, languages & genetics, that’s the only way forward.”
Growing up, Maalouf had listened to rap like a lot of his peers, but had a formative experience when he made his debut at the Montreux Jazz Festival back in 2006. “I walked into the venue I was supposed to be playing that night and was just blown away by this massive sound coming from the stage,” he recalls. “It turned out to be Wu-Tang Clan. I couldn’t believe I had to go on after them, and I spent my whole set that night thinking about how someday I would make music as impactful as that.”
Capacity To Love sees Maalouf finally deliver on that promise. Comprising a mix of new originals and reimagined samples of tunes from throughout Maalouf’s career, the musical beds on the album are often lush and cinematic, drawing on a wide-ranging palette that finds joy in the marriage of unlikely sonic elements. An avid film buff, Maalouf opens the record with Charlie Chaplin’s poignant speech from The Great Dictator (in which his character chooses democracy and brotherhood over demagogy and fascism), closes it with Stone’s ‘Our Flag’.
Ibrahim Maalouf may be a musical nomad, but with Capacity To Love, he sounds more at home than ever.