Permission From The Dancefloor

Chamos took a Kurdish folk song that everyone's family already knows, played it out before it existed as a release, and let the room decide. Shalouw and Guido on "Kevokim," friendship as a production method, and why the record only gets played once a night.

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There is a particular kind of nerve involved in remixing a song people grew up on. Chamos know it, and they talk about it the way most producers talk about gain staging: as a technical problem with a correct answer.

“Kevokim” is built on a Kurdish folk song old enough that most of the duo’s audience first heard it somewhere domestic. A living room. A family gathering. Not a club.

“The track is like an old folklore, like lyrics, and we want to bring that back into the new era, into this time of the dance music and industry,” Shalouw told Ninyaz on Da3s O’ Clock. “Back in the days they hear it maybe home or with family. And now they can hear it in a club, in a new environment where the new generation also comes. So it’s a nostalgic feeling for a lot of people in the crowd, but in a different setting where they can be free and dance on it.”

Ninyaz put the obvious anxiety to them. Was there ever a point where they felt protective of the original, worried about changing too much?

Guido’s answer starts where you would expect and then turns.

“You always have to be careful with those things, because people know the older songs. But the thing with those folklores is that there are more versions. People are not always stuck to one song, and it’s always performed at parties, at weddings. So people are used to hearing it from different artists and different vocals.”

That is the argument that gave them permission, and it is a good one. A folk song is not a master recording. It has always been handed around.

The test

They still didn’t take their own word for it.

Before “Kevokim” was a release, it was a track in their sets.

“We first started to use it for our sets so we could test it out,” Guido said. “And the reaction of the crowd was amazing. So then we decided, yeah, we should release this.”

Shalouw put it more plainly. “We did it with the crowd, with the people who were there, and also the people online who saw the clips. They give the approval.”

Worth pausing on, because it inverts how most dance records get signed off. The decision happened on a dancefloor, in public, before anyone in an office had an opinion.

“They give the approval.”

Three things to balance

The production problem was harder than the permission problem. “Kevokim” has to land on a system and still carry the ache of the original, and it has to sound like Chamos while resting on a vocal from Shayan.

Shalouw described it as a three-way balance rather than a compromise.

“It has to have the identity of the artist of the track, but also the original vocals. What we’re trying to do is have our sound into it, that you directly hear that’s the Chamos sound. The big part of the track is also Shayan’s voice, and how she felt good and safe to do the track. And with all of that, it has to be balanced that you can respect the original. So that’s how we moved forward, piece by piece.”

Note the order. Their sound, her comfort, the original’s dignity. The last one is the constraint the other two have to work inside.

Friends first

“Kevokim” is their second record with Shayan, and when Ninyaz asked what makes the chemistry work, neither of them reached for a musical answer.

“Before we collaborated with her, we first became friends,” Guido said. “I think that was the first step. We visit each other a lot. Always when we’re in London we drop by to her and we’re having dinner together. Our relationship is very strong, and I think that’s what makes the track so good.”

Shalouw framed it as a working condition rather than a nice extra. “It starts with a feeling, a safe feeling, how we work together. And also how we talk about things in life, things in the music industry, how the shows went. We started in a very organic way, and then beautiful things happen.”

Ninyaz called it a secret. Guido didn’t want it kept.

“We don’t do gatekeeping, so I advise everyone to do this as well.”

Once a night

Chamos are taking the record across Europe, and Shalouw makes a case for the room that a stream cannot answer.

“When it’s live, it’s the energy of the room. You feel it on your chest. It’s building up to the moment that you play that track in the set.”

Then the detail that tells you how seriously they take that build. “We always play that track one time. So if you’re not in the crowd, you definitely will miss it.”

Every new tour also carries something that isn’t out yet. “We play the tracks that are released and out there, but we always give a small part of the upcoming tracks. So a lot of tracks that we will play are also unreleased during the show.”

A song that survived by being passed from room to room, handed to rooms that have to show up to hear it. There is a symmetry in that which neither of them pointed out, and probably didn’t need to.

“Kevokim” by Chamos featuring Shayan is in rotation on MDLBEAST Radio. Tune in across the Kingdom on 104.8 Riyadh, 98.1 Jeddah, 97.4 Dammam and 87.6 Abha, or listen live at mdlbeastradio.com.