Here\u2019s what Eyal el Wahab, El Khat\u2019s band leader, has to say about Aalbat Alawi Op.99<\/em>: \u201cI tried to be simple in the structure. It\u2019s a bit like pop music, where the soul is four chords and a melody. The difference is in the expression<\/em>.\u201d That sense of expression, present throughout the entire album, flows particularly well on the first single \u201cDjaja\u201d, where he sings \u201cFrom Yemen and beyond America\/ We are all together and I am alone<\/em>\u201d, looking over the shoulder to his family\u2019s past and forward to the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n El Wahab plays many of the instruments on this upcoming album, like the dli and the kearat that he constructed himself. A child of the Yemeni diaspora who grew up in Tel Aviv Jaffa, Israel, he talked his way into the Jerusalem Andalusian Orchestra as a cellist, self-taught from busking and unable to read music. But his world truly changed when he was given Qat, Coffee & Qambus: Raw 45s from Yemen<\/em>, an LP of Yemeni traditional music from the 1960s. It came as an epiphany: he quit the orchestra, began building instruments and put together El Khat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n