Khomsa is the album in which the Tunisian oud player Anouar Brahem took his music into a European chamber setting, with accordion, piano, saxophone and a Nordic rhythm section around his oud. Most of its sixteen pieces were written over the previous decade for Tunisian cinema and theatre, then taken up again in the studio and reworked freely. For ECM it followed Barzakh (1991), Conte de l'incroyable amour (1992) and Madar, his 1994 trio with Jan Garbarek.
The album was recorded in September 1994 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo, and produced by Manfred Eicher, with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer. Brahem's oud is joined by François Couturier on piano and synthesizer and by the accordionist Richard Galliano. The bassist Palle Danielsson and the drummer Jon Christensen complete the core, with soprano saxophone and violin added on some pieces. The line-up changes from piece to piece, so that many tracks are duets or trios. Brahem also wrote the liner notes. The title is an old Tunisian female name meaning "the five fingers of the hand", a symbol of good luck. It is also the name of the heroine in Nouri Bouzid's film Bezness, which Brahem scored.
Several titles point back to the cinema. Nouvelle vague and E la nave va take their names from Godard and Fellini, and Aïn ghazel is named after the first Tunisian film, made in 1924. Regard de mouette began as title music for a film by Kalthoum Bornaz. Galliano opens the album with his own Comme un départ, and the ten-minute Souffle un vent de sable is credited jointly to Brahem, Galliano, Danielsson and Christensen. Claquent les voiles is a brief duet for oud and bass with an Andalusian turn.
The record was well received in Europe and the United States. The Guardian gave it four stars and called it "one of the great records of the year", and DownBeat also awarded four stars. On NPR's All Things Considered, the melody of E la nave va was said to recall "the sweet simple works of French composer Eric Satie". Le Monde de la Musique gave it a Choc. The meeting of oud, accordion and piano would return in 2002 on Le pas du chat noir, Brahem's trio with Couturier and the accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier.
This CD is the 2022 reissue in ECM's Touchstones series, which brings catalogue albums back into print in card packaging. Khomsa was first released in 1995 as ECM 1561.
