Grounded in the Middle East but finding meaningful connections with music from many other places, the American group Salaam explores chordal connections with mariachi, minor-key electronica and jazz on Train to Basra. “Blue notes” often provide the common ground—in a shared musical language drawn from the Islamic roots of Spanish and West African music—on original songs that merge seemingly diverse sources into engagingly melodic, rhythmic numbers whose Middle Eastern origins are always unmistakable.
