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...

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...