Ghazal – Moon Rise Over The Silk Road

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

More 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

In Fire In My Heart the sitar and kamancheh weave around and through each other, somehow 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, trotting 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

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Ghazal – As Night Falls On The Silk Road

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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

‘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.

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 unforced vocals, Kayhan Kalhor‘s kamancheh and the dynamic, full sound of Swapan Chaudhuri‘s tabla making my heart swell. 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, coming 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!

Ernst Reijseger – Requiem for a Dying Planet

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Cuncordu e Tenore de Orosei, Ernst Reijseger, Mola Sylla, Music review, Requiem for a Dying Planet, Soundtrack, Werner Herzog, World music review

Shivery, aching music for the end of time

This is an utterly splendid, stunningly beautiful, piece of music, which, even without the Werner Herzog films it is soundtrack for, suggests space opening up, relics of all we have loved and lost, and humanity itself, vanished on the wind. All we were, all we created, gone. The first track, a richly pure unknown vocalist floats a classical devotional `Thanks Be to God’ Danke Sei Gott’ in a way which seems to lift into the stratosphere, dissolving into Reijseger’s cello and disembodied isolated notes. This then settles into the overall musical flavour, which is a rich weaving of the cello, accompanying the ancient, earthy, visceral sounds of the vocalists – Senegalese singer and musician, Mola Sylla, singing in Wolof, with a voice of rich ululations and resonance (he also plays kalimba, xalam, percussions), weaving with some of the amazing drones and tapestry of throat music sounds of Sardinian polyphonic music, both sacred and secular, sung by Cuncordu e Tenore de Orosei, marrying two traditional singing modes.

The powerful combinations of voices, cello, other instrumentation, and natural sounds which come at the ends of songs – water, wind, thunder, suggest the sadness of a planet now without life.

This is music for and by those who value and hold sacred Gaia, and all that creeps, and bounds upon her, swims within her waters, or flies in her skies It also speaks to those who treasure and value our several histories, as creatures who are nurtured by earth, even as we destroy her
Requiem for a Dying Planet Amazon UK
Requiem for a Dying Planet Amazon USA

Jocelyn Pook – Flood

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Africa, Early music, Flood, Jocelyn Pook, Kathleen Ferrier, Music review, sacred music, Soundtrack, World music review

The weird, wonderful, Puckish Ms. Pook

Jocelyn Pook’s fascination with both the sacred early music traditions of Christianity, and the music of northern Africa, the nomadic tradition and Islamic influence, easily puts a girdle round the earth in 40 minutes.

From the beginning track where ethereal female voices sing a choral Requiescat, she moves into something which opens out the horizons on the second track, with a vista of sandy deserts and nomadic camel riders, except that the strange beat, the synthesised soundscape behind the ululating female voices, suggest an almost other world, futuristic planet.

The fourth track, Oppenheimer, where the narrative voice at the beginning makes reference to Hindu devotional texts, Vishnu the destroyer, is apocalyptic. There is a harsh, windy soundscape which sounds like the end of the world has happened, through which weave and interweave prayerful music from Christianity and equally devotionally intense music of Arabic influence. It is almost like some final, terrible battle between major faiths, and at the end of things is harshness, and the beauty which mankind created (music) left to remind us of the devotion and the savagery of faiths.

Another track starts with the urban voices of children at play, and weaves the rich voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing Blow the Winds Southerly with the small soprano female choir singing a Pie Jesu. Pook clashes worlds together in an utterly new, hypnotic way

I don’t know who is responsible for the primary female vocals on most of the tracks, the floated voice, but it is sublime!
Jocelyn Pook – Flood Amazon UK
Jocelyn Pook – Flood Amazon USA