Lockdown has thrown up some musical combination one might not instantly expect. One of these is this collaboration between Lucky Ali and Israel’s Botzer. They’re putting out an album ‘Lemalla’ in the near future and are releasing singles for it; the vibe is very much one of a nice ballad filled with all the idioms and truisms you’d expect when two old cultures cross streams. World music is sometimes a horrible term that suggests detraction from all the cultures involved, but ‘Amaraya’ is a nice, non-intrusive melding of both artists’ creativity.

The instrumentation uses some classic East-West combos with its acoustic guitars, drums, tabla and flute et al. The vocal delivery of both musicians is also quite telling here, with Lucky Ali giving his emotionally dense and full delivery while Botzer goes for a much more impassioned and almost mournful sound with his melodies and voice (a trait one does find a bit in that part of the world). The bridge of the song reaches a cool little crescendo where both musicians give their vocal ranges space to play and the result is a typical ‘wow’ moment you would expect when songs about the human condition try to express emotion without words. This sentiment kind of runs through ‘Amaraya’; there’s some epicness to it but the sound is very folksy and grounded (as one would expect when more traditional elements are used). It does have that tangible spirit of coming together and the whole ‘we are all one’ trope, but hey, that’s not a bad thing to think about right now.