**** Natacha Atlas

DIASPORA

(MCA)

Atlas sings yalla, the limitlessly eclectic street dance music of young Egypt. What is yalla? Imagine Indian movie tunes, Madonna, Mediterranean morna, house music, tambourines, and digital tape dubs played at the same time. Hooks of all kinds bond and clash, which means that Atlas -- whose crystal soprano Melody Maker aptly describes as that of a "nightingale perched on a diamond chalice" -- has to sing well outside the norms of melodic progression in order to make her point. But yalla singing, like the Arabic mawal style from which it emanates, uses blue notes, melisma, and nuance, and Atlas effortlessly twirls, peaks, and bends her notes as she traces a rapturous course through the dither of derbouka and funk dancing beneath.

As the Arabic-language songs spin on from the dreamy title tune to "Yalla Chant," the trip-hoppy preoccupations of Atlas's London sponsors, Transglobal Underground, occasionally violate the spirit. But these soon vanish, and the Sphinx-faced joyousness of jams like "Iskanderia," "Leysh Nat'arak," "Alhambra Pt. 1," "Duden," and the curiously named "Fun Does Not Exist" take over, wailing eerily like the voice of Melissa sadly searching her way through life in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. Melissa didn't survive, and neither might Atlas; catch her before she vanishes.

-- Michael Freedberg