I Only Have Eyes for You

Lebanese composer, producer, sound artist and DJ Jana Saleh presents I Only Have Eyes For You, her debut album for Mais Um.

I Only Have Eyes For You is a single, continuous 32 minute composition divided into seven sections. All instruments and programming were conceived and performed by Saleh, and the album is built around a vocal sample from Mohamed Abdel Wahab's “Gafnouhu Allam Al Ghazal",with lyrics by the Lebanese poet Bechara Al Khoury (al-Akhtal as-Saghir), first heard in the 1933 Egyptian musical film al-Warda al-Baida (The White Rose). The title of “Gafnouhu Allam Al Ghazal" names both its subject and its form: ghazal, the classical Arabic poetic tradition devoted to beauty, longing, and the pain of separation.

The album developed from Saleh's ongoing research intotarab, the Arabic tradition in which singer, musicians, audience and space combine to create a shared performance, and follows earlier reinterpretations of recordings by Umm Kulthum, Zaki Nassif and Sabah Fakhri, which received support from Late Junction (BBC Radio 3), NDR Blue, Rinse FM and WFMU, among others.

Born in Beirut in 1980, Saleh studied piano under Boghos Gelalian, musical advisor to the Rahbani brothers who played a significant role in Fairuz's career, before studying music synthesis and electronic composition at Berklee College of Music. She was a key figure in Beirut's alternative music scene of the 2010s, establishing the B-ROOT music studio and co-producing the debut album by legendary Lebanese indie band Mashrou' Leila, alongside work in theatre, contemporary art, commercial production and DJing. Following her move to London in 2020, she began focusing on reinterpreting historic Arabic recordings through contemporary electronic composition. I Only Have Eyes For You is the first album to emerge from this work.