Celebrating civilizations

By Joseph Badtke-Berkow - The Japan Times - Tokyo, Japan
Thursday, September 28, 2006

The Islamic world is home to one of the richest and most important musical traditions on Earth. It doesn't hurt that it also spans an incredibly vast area, stretching west to Morocco and east as far as Indonesia, and that it contains an intricate tapestry of races, languages and cultures, or that it is an area where just about everything we recognize today as elemental to human civilization first arose. With music, as with so much else, people from the Islamic world have had a lot of practice.

They are the proud inheritors of a vast musical tradition and if the artists due to perform in cities throughout Japan beginning this Saturday as part of the Ramadan Night Muslim music festival are any indication, their traditions are alive and well.

Named after the holiest month of the Muslim calendar, which began this year on Sept. 23 and ends on Oct. 22, the festival will feature performances by renowned Persian classical musician Kayhan Kalhor and the Pakistani singer Faiz Ali Faiz, arguably the greatest living practitioner of qawwali, an ancient form of Sufic devotional singing from Pakistan and northern India. Kalhor and Faiz represent the traditional side of the festival's program, while concerts by the Paris-based North African roots group Gnawa Diffusion and DuOuD, along with Mercan Dede from Turkey, will showcase the melding of traditional musical forms with everything from rock and funk to Western electronic music.

It is no doubt a small gesture in the grand scheme of things, but the festival may in some humble way help to turn the "clash of civilizations" that overshadows the world now into a "celebration of civilizations." At the very least, it is a rare opportunity for audiences in Japan to see and hear a handful of the most celebrated members of a musical milieu to which nearly all of the world's musical tradition's owe a great debt.

Kayhan Kalhor
Sufism is an influence shared by several artists performing at Ramadan Night. Sufic dance, literature and music is purposefully made to induce trancelike states of spiritual revelation in which it is thought a person is best able to experience the divine presence.

The teachings of Sufism have spread across the Islamic world, but they have put down particularly deep roots in modern-day Iran, formerly Persia. "The connection between Sufi poetry and Persian music is very strong," Iranian classical musician Kayhan Kalhor said by phone. "Musicians actually learn their phrasing through the poetry, through the rhythm and language of the poems. But beyond that, poetry is very important in Iranian culture, period, and not just in relation to music. Poetry is a way of life, and you can feel it in every step you take."

Born into a Kurdish family in Tehran in 1963, Kalhor was recognized as a child prodigy on the kamancheh, or ancient Persian spiked-fiddle. Known for its distinctive nasal sound, the kamancheh is notoriously difficult to master because it is the only fiddle requiring the player to turn the body of the instrument in order to bow its individual strings. In the hands of Kalhor, the instrument's plaintive notes meld effortlessly with sung passages from poetry by famed Sufi bards like Attar and Rumi about spiritual love, creating a deeply emotive music that sounds as if it has been pulled up from the basement of time.

Throughout its recent history Iran's religious leaders have intermittently cracked down on music, which they argue the Quran prohibits. But such efforts have always been difficult to enforce in a country with music in its blood. Authorities attempted a ban immediately after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, smashing instruments and intimidating musicians, but it was not long before the clerics realized they could not maintain such a policy in perpetuity. Today, Iran is home to its own rap and hip-hop artists, along with a thriving community of folk and classical musicians.

Kalhor has traveled throughout the country, visiting many different ethnic groups and familiarizing himself with their folk music, which has led to a unique style of playing that belongs to no single tradition but touches on them all.

Faiz Ali Faiz
Faiz Ali Faiz is the most famous living qawwali singer in his native Pakistan, the large Muslim communities of northern India and abroad, thanks to a long concert career that has frequently taken him across the globe.

Qawwali originated in ancient Persia but achieved its current form on the Indian subcontinent more than 700 years ago. Featuring sung recitations of Sufi poems written in Urdu and Punjabi, a lead singer is usually accompanied by a large ensemble that includes a chorus, harmonium and tabla players. A typical qawwali song often lasts more than 30 minutes, ranging from languid episodes of delicate call and response to feverishly quick free-for-alls in which the entire ensemble combines in praise of divine love and wisdom, bringing audiences to such a fevered pitch of excitement that the songs might be best described as the Islamic equivalent of foot-stomping African-American spirituals.

Faiz is particularly well known for his astounding vocal range, and lately he has been mentioned in the same breath as the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the most revered qawwali singer in recent history. While qawwali cognoscenti, or raskias as they are known in Pakistan and India, might believe such a comparison smacks of sacrilege, Faiz's success at home and abroad may soon find him emerging from the master's shadow.

Mercan Dede
Sufi influence reveals itself in its most modern guise in the music of Mercan Dede, a Turkish musician, composer and DJ whose group, Secret Tribe, mixes electronic and techno grooves with traditional acoustic instruments to produce a sound that he has described as "electronic and folkloric."

Dede has been deeply affected by Sufi philosophy and, like many techno and electronica acts, his spirituality is a huge part of his music-making. Unlike so many artists from that world, Dede's skill, creativity and showmanship keep the music from drifting away from him. Instead he has shown just how far a creator can go with a mastery of the technical side of electronic music and an openness to learn and use methods and melodies from rich traditional sources.

Dede is best know for laying the acoustic sounds of traditional Turkish and Iranian instruments like the ney, a wooden flute that Dede has mastered, qanun (Persian zither) and darbuka (goblet-shaped Arabic hand drum) over his own electronic compositions and thudding techno beats.

His interest in Sufism has primarily centered on the well-known Dervish offshoot of the tradition, which in Turkey produced the most universally recognized symbol of Sufism, the Whirling Dervishes. Secret Tribe usually performs with their own dancers, who will be touring in Japan with the group.