The Whole Music Experience

Ahmed Mukhtar & Sattar Al-Saadi Music from Iraq (Rhythms of Baghdad) Arc Music (2010) I have listened and watched oud players (an Arabic lute) from Lebanon, Turkey, and other countries, but Rhythms of Baghdad marks the first oud album by Iraqi musicians.   Here we have a duo of Ahmed Mukhtar (oud) and Sattar Al-Saadi on percussion (riqq, tar, dombak and other drums) performing sensuous modes and rhythms.   The robust opener, Souq Baghdadi features “a very old Iraqi rhythm called Gorgena,” but even listeners unfamiliar with the scales, and other architecture of traditional Iraqi music, will find this piece uplifting and full of light. The second piece Mantasf-al-lil carries a darker message.   “It describes a scene of Iraqi refugees on the ocean in the middle of the night looking for land to seek refuge in.”   The slow tempo and melancholic melody played on the lower end of the spectrum wed to tense percussion, convey the sadness and longin...

Le Trio Joubran As Far (Asfar) World Village In 2008 I interviewed Wissam Joubran for an arts and entertainment publication in Washington State and I felt deeply moved by his story.   I was scheduled to attend a Le Trio Joubran concert, but in the end I missed the concert.   This was a real shame because the Palestinian oud-playing brothers’ performance on their studio and live recordings prove nothing short of mesmerizing, even flawless.   The brothers don’t just deliver seamless performances (imagine three ouds in sync or playing counter melodies), they perform with their hearts dangling on their sleeves and in a live DVD that I watched, trails of tears on their faces.   Granted, even though the musicians are blessed with an incredible musical gift and hail from a lineage of oud players, Palestinian life is rife with tragedies. So the musicians have a huge palette in which to draw from when composing and performing music.   At times the music ...

Rahim Alhaj Little Earth (2-CDs) UR Music Miraculous, one of a dozen adjectives describes Iraqi oud player/composer Rahim Alhaj’s Little Earth . I say miraculous because musicians from mostly western musical traditions join the exiled composer on such instruments as accordion, guitar, Native American flute, and orchestral arrangements performing microtonal compositions with exotic rhythms foreign to most western listeners’ ears. And as the title of the recording suggests, the coming together of musicians from South America, the American southwest (Robert Mirabel), US, China, Cape Verde, Iran, Brazil, and Iraq certainly portrays a small world after all, (quoting the Disney classic song). On the track, Missing You/Mae Querida , Cape Verdean Maria de Barros marries a mourna (Cape Verdean lament) to Alhaj’s maqam (Arabic mode/structure), and in contrast to this composition about loss, the guitar-oud duo ( Morning In Hyattsville ), with jazz musician Bill Frisell takes on the pl...

Le Trio Joubran À l’ombre de mots World Village In 2008 I had the great pleasure of interviewing Le Trio Joubran for an arts supplement article. Unfortunately I missed the trio’s concert at Western Washington University, though I was told that the musicians performed for a receptive audience. The Palestinian oud-playing brothers compose and play seamless pieces performed on ouds crafted by their own hands. The music wraps sublime, melancholic, and fiery emotions into its own poetic expression. But mostly, this recording with its CD and DVD (same program) provides a requiem for a favorite Arab poet. You can see those ouds and the brothers’ passionate performance on the DVD portion of À l’ombre de mots , which features a concert commemorating the death of the renowned Palestinian poet and activist Mahmoud Darwhich (Darwash). And in fact, the late poet’s voice appears ghostlike reciting his poetry along with the oud compositions. The camera zooms across the musician’s faces, s...

Le Trio Joubran Majaz Randana/Harmonia Mundi The Joubran brothers, Samir, Wissam, and Adnan all deftly play the Arabic oud. Palestinian by birth, but sporting Israeli citizenship, it's challenging to fathom that the beautiful music flowing from the newest disc, Majaz , hails from a place of turmoil. In recent news, we read that the Israeli government placed another stranglehold on the Palestinians living in Gaza, and now many Palestinians seek refuge in Egypt, causing an already overheated Middle Eastern situation to boil over while the rest of the world watches helplessly. It's hard not to think of this political situation when listening to the three brothers play their ouds. These are young men who hail from a long lineage of Palestinian traditional musicians and instrument makers, and in fact, the middle brother, Wissam not only composes and joins his other two brothers on oud, but he also crafts the instruments. While performance of a 3-oud ensemble brings a contempor...