• About
  • Listening
    • Baroque
    • Bluegrass and Country
    • Classical Fusion
    • Classical Period
    • Early Music
    • Film soundtracks
    • Folk Music
    • Jazz
    • Modern Classical
    • Modern Pop Fusion
    • Musicals
    • Romantic Classical
    • Spoken word
    • World Music
  • Reading
    • Fiction
      • Children’s and Young Adult Fiction
      • Classic writers and their works
      • Contemporary Fiction
      • Crime and Detective Fiction
      • Fictionalised Biography
      • Historical Fiction
      • Horror
      • Lighter-hearted reads
      • Literary Fiction
      • Plays and Poetry
      • Romance
      • SF
      • Short stories
      • Western
      • Whimsy and Fantastical
    • Non-Fiction
      • Arts
      • Biography and Autobiography
      • Ethics, reflection, a meditative space
      • Food and Drink
      • Geography and Travel
      • Health and wellbeing
      • History and Social History
      • Philosophy of Mind
      • Science and nature
      • Society; Politics; Economics
  • Reading the 20th Century
  • Watching
    • Documentary
    • Film
    • Staged Production
    • TV
  • Shouting From The Soapbox
    • Arts Soapbox
    • Chitchat
    • Philosophical Soapbox
    • Science and Health Soapbox
  • Interviews / Q + A
  • Indexes
    • Index of Bookieness – Fiction
    • Index of Bookieness – Non-Fiction
    • Index of authors
    • Index of titles
    • 20th Century Index
    • Sound Index
      • Composers Index
      • Performers Index
    • Filmed Index

Lady Fancifull

~ adventures in a mainly literary obsession

Lady Fancifull

Daily Archives: April 14, 2013

Ghazal – Moon Rise Over The Silk Road

14 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Listening, World Music

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Ghazal, Kayhan Kalhor, Moon Rise Over The Silk Road, Music review, Shujaat Hussain Khan, World music review

218px-Hasht-Behesht_Palace_kamancheh126px-Sitar_fullMore magic from the musicians of Ghazal as they continue along the silk road

Once again Ghazal prove they have much more to say to each other in the conversations which particularly the kamancheh and sitar, but also tabla and occasional vocals, are enjoying

Prop._Tabla

In Fire In My Heart the sitar and kamancheh weave around and through each other, Kayhan-Kalhorsomehow conveying an ineffable longing, romantic and spacious, melancholy and sorrowful. It’s curiously mortal music, seeming to exist in a place which is always aware of the passing of time, that everything fades and dies, whilst it savours the moment most deeply. The vocals fall into the places gently, floating and weaving through the instruments. What strikes me so much with Ghazal is a sense of the musicians deeply listening to each other, and deeply listening to the music which is arising, whether this is reflective, or catching the moment when the mood changes, as in the second half of the first track, and becomes shimmery, brilliant and dynamic, inviting the tabla to drive this with excitement. This is a wonderful piece to dance to, as in Gabrielle Roth, Five Rhythms, allowing the music to move through the body of the listener, from flowing through staccato, chaos, lyrical and a return to stillness

The second track, Pari Mahal almost has a circle dance feel to it, with its flamboyance, Moon Risetrotting rhythms, dips and glides. The music and musicians show off their skills – the piece almost seems to touch close to a more Western `jamming session’, even including a small central section which sounds incredibly Celtic! Hoots Och Aye!

The final long track Besh’no az Nay seems a little more prosaic than the high wildness of the first track, a retelling of tall tales, favourite old jokes and happy moments by a group of friends at ease in each others’ company, the vocals creamy and seductive. A track to be listened to whilst savouring fine sweetmeats and small glasses of tea!
Moon Rise Over The Silk Road Amazon UK
Moon Rise Over The Silk Road Amazon USA

Advertisement

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Pocket
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Ghazal – As Night Falls On The Silk Road

14 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Listening, World Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

As Night Falls On The Silk Road, Ghazal, India, Iran, Kamancheh, Kayhan Kalhor, Music review, Shujaat Hussain Khan, Sitar, Swapan Chaudhuri, Tabla, World music review

As+Night+Falls+On+The+Silk+Road‘Felt In The Blood, and Felt Along The Heart’

I expect music to inhabit me, to possess me, and to speak to something I barely understand, and cannot conceptualise. The last thing i want from music is that it should be ‘a background’ – it must be an experience.
mapasia

And so it is with ‘As Night Falls on the Silk Road’. This skillful and sensitive blending of the Iranian spike fiddle and the Indian sitar, tabla and devotional vocal certainly IS felt viscerally, emotionally. The bent notes of Shujaat Hussain Khan‘s sitar and Shujaatunforced vocals, Kayhan Kalhor‘s kamancheh and the dynamic, full sound of Swapan Chaudhuri‘s tabla making my heart Kalhor with Kamanchehswell. There are tracks which demand the listener to move and dance under the stars (Snowy Mountains) and others, such as the longest and final track, Traces of the Beloved, which move with ease between still, internal reflection and explosion into unstoppable movement – a perfect balance between the motions of the heart itself, as it pauses and receptively fills with blood, and forcefully expels that blood through the ventricles. Heart music indeed; diastole and systole. Gorgeous.

Ghazal are an amazing and enhancing fusion group and the fine and wonderful players, Swapan_Chaudhuri_playing_at_the_Other_Minds_festival_in_San_Francisco_in_2013coming from two venerable musical traditions, produce something new, dynamic and rich. This is music which belongs under the cold clear night sky,under vast horizons, far from the hemmed in spaces of cities, unconfined and free, music as narrative, through time and space. And if you are listening in a room, it will transport you back, and out!
As Night Falls On The Silk Road Amazon UK
As Night Falls On The Silk Road Amazon USA

For some obscure reason the live link to mp3 samples won’t work on the USA site – you need to choose the mp3 option once on the product page. Lucky UK Amazonians can find the samples no problem!

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Pocket
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Vasily Grossman – Life and Fate

14 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Fiction, Literary Fiction, Reading

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Battle of Stalingrad, Book Review, Life and Fate, Literary Fiction, Soviet Union, Vasily Grossman

Fragile and persistent shoots of humanity keep struggling through

Vasily Grossman was a Ukrainian journalist, a Jew, who wrote this searing book, an grossman2expose of the Janus face of totalitarianism, whether of the left or the right, in 1960 after Stalin’s death. Though the book was submitted for publication in Russia, it was suppressed and copies destroyed, as too dangerous. The book had a strange life, as a copy on microfilm was smuggled out into the West after Grossman’s death (1964) – it would clearly have endangered his life had this happened whilst he was still alive, and the book finally was published in the West in 1980, and not in his native land until 1988Life-And-Fate-Orange-Inherit

It took me a long time to finally finish reading this difficult, painful book. Not because it is poorly written, but because its subject matter, set around the siege of Stalingrad, and the squaring up of 2 totalitarian systems against each other, carries too much awful cruelty and dreadful reality to easily stay with. We are talking the atrocities of both the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet gulags here. The systematic excesses of ideologies which believed that the ends justify the means. Wherever such isms get in the way of ‘humanity’, the road to expending humanity itself as an unfortunate statistic is walked down.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-W0506-316,_Russland,_Kampf_um_Stalingrad,_SiegesflaggeGrossman’s powerful book achieves its effect not through a blow-by-blow graphic account of torture, elimination and cruelty, but through a constant searching for, and a belief, in the ordinary, powerful smallness of the individual, through a passionate belief in the value of the individual – not in some ghastly Randian hierarchical way – in a way which values the unique preciousness of each individual life. Time and again, Grossman sets the impersonalities of the state machine (whether of the left or the right) its inhumaneness and its ability to negate and destroy life, individual experience, warm connection and empathy, versus the sometimes irrational reality of the ‘human’ response. Powerful images of what this means are given in such instances as the actions of the childless, middle aged Jewish doctor, instinctively seeking to shield the motherless young boy with her own body, as they stand in the killing shower rooms, breathing in cyanide gas. This image, of humanity breaking through surfaces again in the elderly Russian woman, against all reason, offering a crust of bread to a German, following the surrender of the German army. Grossman understands the pressures by which our humanity is eroded. This is a book written not in hatred of ‘the enemy’, be they ‘the Germans’ ‘the kulaks’ ‘the Bolsheviks’ disused-Stalinist-convict-007‘the Mensheviks’ – but with a passionate affirmation that the answer can only lie in ‘the human response’, not in the ideological response.Despite the dreadfulness of the subject matter, and what it says about us as a species, this remains a passionately hopeful book, one on the side of ‘life’, giving us, again and again, these images of the human moment, the friendship, the love, the compassion, the empathy, the very persistence of life itself, seeking to break through.
Life and Fate Amazon UK
Life and Fate Amazon USA

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Pocket
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Page Indexes

  • About
    • Index of Bookieness – Fiction
    • Index of Bookieness – Non-Fiction
    • Index of authors
    • Index of titles
    • 20th Century Index
  • Sound Index
    • Composers Index
    • Performers Index
  • Filmed Index

Genres

Archives

April 2013
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930  
« Mar   May »

Posts Getting Perused

  • William Butler Yeats - Vacillation
    William Butler Yeats - Vacillation
  • Philip Glass - Glassworks
    Philip Glass - Glassworks
  • Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
    Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
  • Mick Herron - Real Tigers
    Mick Herron - Real Tigers
  • Virginia Woolf - The Voyage Out
    Virginia Woolf - The Voyage Out
  • Sarah Moss - Bodies of Light
    Sarah Moss - Bodies of Light
  • Colette - Claudine at School
    Colette - Claudine at School
  • Richard Yates - Revolutionary Road
    Richard Yates - Revolutionary Road

Recent Posts

  • Bart Van Es – The Cut Out Girl
  • Joan Baez – Vol 1
  • J.S.Bach – Goldberg Variations – Zhu Xiao-Mei
  • Zhu Xiao-Mei – The Secret Piano
  • Jane Harper – The Lost Man

NetGalley Badges

Fancifull Stats

  • 162,926 hits
Follow Lady Fancifull on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Follow on Bloglovin

Tags

1930s setting Adult Faerie Tale Andrew Greig Arvo Pärt Autobiography baroque Beryl Bainbridge Biography Biography as Fiction Bits and Bobs Bits and Pieces Book Review Books about Books Cats Children's Book Review Classical music Classical music review Classic Crime Fiction Colm Toibin Cookery Book Crime Fiction David Mitchell Dystopia Espionage Ethics Fantasy Fiction Feminism Film review First World War Folk Music Food Industry France Gay and Lesbian Literature Ghost story Golden-Age Crime Fiction Graham Greene Health and wellbeing Historical Fiction History Humour Humour and Wit Ireland Irish writer Irvin D. Yalom Janice Galloway Japan Literary Fiction Literary pastiche Lynn Shepherd Marcus Sedgwick Meditation Mick Herron Minimalism Music review Myths and Legends Neil Gaiman Ngaio Marsh Novels about America Other Stuff Patrick Flanery Patrick Hamilton Perfumery Philip Glass Philosophy Police Procedural Post-Apocalypse Psychiatry Psychological Thriller Psychology Psychotherapy Publication Day Reading Rebecca Mascull Reflection Robert Harris Rose Tremain Russian Revolution sacred music Sadie Jones Sci-Fi Science and nature Scottish writer Second World War SF Shakespeare Short stories Simon Mawer Soapbox Spy thriller Susan Hill Tana French The Cold War The Natural World TV Drama Victorian set fiction Whimsy and Fantasy Fiction William Boyd World music review Writing Young Adult Fiction

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Lady Fancifull
    • Join 771 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Lady Fancifull
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.

    %d bloggers like this: