What began as a few friends playing music together in the Middle East turned into an international tour with a stop at Silver Moon Brewing in Bend. El Khat is a three-person minimalist band, using mostly homemade instruments.
“I wasn’t planning on starting a band, I was working on some tunes that afterwards became the first album. I invited some friends to record and one thing led to another,” founder Eyal El Wahab says. He describes their sound as “something like rough Yemenite traditional experimental.”
While living in the Middle East, Eyal says they made instruments using whatever they could find, such as creating a DIY Oud, cello or using tin cans as drums.
“Those sounds can be found in the ancient Yemeni culture,” he explains, which is where their families once lived. El Khat started touring in 2019 and have released three albums so far, with a fourth expected in 2026. Their latest is titled “Mute.”
“The songs are about canceling one another, having no doubts, holding strong opinions, insensitive and blind towards one another and gratitude. Like not hearing but not in sound necessarily,” Eyal says. The band’s name is born from a family tradition.
“Khat is a plant chewed in Yemen and many other countries in the Arab Peninsula. It’s in our families’ tradition to have those Khat ceremonies weekly. We felt the leaf represents everything that’s good in its purity, being natural, on the other hand highly destructive,” he says.
This is the third time El Khat has toured the U.S. Press releases about the band describe them as detached to a land or flag.
“You are born in a place; does it give you ownership over it because of that?” Eyal told the Source. “I believe no one should be attached to anything, especially to a land and flags. These are only symbols that make walls instead of uniting, those symbols controlled by other people, people that call themselves leaders. They clearly don’t represent the people and don’t care about their people so there is no attachment, I am an individual.”
Eyal says he’s grateful for the opportunity to visit Bend and share his culture and tradition. El Khat will be at Silver Moon Brewing on Nov. 11.
El Khat
Tue. Nov 11, 6pm
Silver Moon Brewing
24 NW Greenwood Ave., Bend
silvermoonbrewing.com/events
$19
This article appears in the Source October 30, 2025.
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