Riding On the Concept of Love

By Dewi Anggraeni, "Melbourne's Muslim music fest celebrates Ramadan" - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta, Indonesia Monday, September 22, 2008

Melbourne, Australia: One of the advantages of living in Melbourne is that while Anglo-Celtic mores dominate the ambience in general, which is well and good, you never feel cut off from other cultures.

There are always reminders that you live in a multicultural society.

Take the Darebin Music Feast which is taking place in Melbourne's northeast suburb of Darebin, until Sept. 21, 2008.

Among the wide array of programs was the Muslim Music Festival, supported by the Darebin City Council and the Islamic Centre for Education and Development. It opened on Sept. 6 and finished on the evening of Monday, Sept. 8.

The festival was divided into three parts, the first two being, "Love is Divine: Chapter 1 and Chapter 2", focussing on music inspired by the poetry of Jalalud'din Rumi, a 13th century Persian Sufi poet, a highly-revered mystic even today, who was believed to have the gift of being a seer.

The third part, titled "Songs of the Heart, Rhythms of Unity", was a modern interpretation of Muslim devotional music woven through stories of ordinary lives grappling with contemporary issues.

Delivered through the various media of qawwali, hip hop, electronic and traditional music -- not simultaneously, the evening's offerings were incredibly well-grounded and compelling.

Ustad Khalil Gudaz featured prominently in both parts of Love is Divine where he played the sitar on the first evening, and sang while playing the harmonium on the second. On each night he was accompanied by other musicians on the tabla, tampoora, delruba, sitar and rebab.

Well-versed in Afghani and Hindustani music, Ustad Gudaz's performance was faultless. He opened the first evening with calm notes drawing the audience into the realm of Rumi's poetry wrapped in his own notes and giving us time to absorb the language of the music.

Then he played Raga Durga taking everyone to a higher level of involvement. When he had the audience all sitting on a figurative floating rug, he deftly took us further, now flying high, now flying low, with varying speed and movements traveling through different surroundings. Each time he finished a number, the audience had to descend slowly into the real world.

Compared to the Love is Divine chapters, the final night's Songs of the Heart, Rhythms of Unity was lively and varied.

The evening was opened with two dancers from Sanggar Lestari Dance Company, who performed Tari Ngarak Penganten, a dance from West Sumatra. A riot of colors was carried with subtle elegance by Mira and Yana, the dancers, who would later return with another Minang dance, Tari Lilin.

The qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music, was presented by a group of vocalists from Fiji, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, who call themselves The Color of Unity, accompanied by harmonium, tabla, and of course, the clapping of hands, from the stage, as well as the floor. The music flowed on bringing a rather inebriating ambience. Yet it was at the same time inviting and emotionally soothing.

One performance which would make you wonder why we bothered with musical instruments at all was beatboxing by Shazet. The Malaysian-born young artist has the ability to produce the most incredible repertoire of sounds and noises with his mouth, from the boinging and pinging electronic guitar sounds, drumming thuds, to rippling fluid notes and many more.

Needless to say, he also has an impeccable sense of rhythm. His on-the-spot improvised mouth percussion accompaniment livened up the delivery of hip-hop and rap performances by The Brothers, who told stories of their everyday lives as Muslims in Australia.

The audience were entertained with the accounts, for example, of a girl's dilemma whether to wear a hijab and tolerate and answer curious questions from her friends, or not wear a hijab and be answerable to her parents, or of Muslims youth maintaining equanimity in the face of prejudice from some people in the wider community. And looming large in their performance was the issue of how to behave during Ramadan.

Another feature in the evening's event was an extraordinary group called The Empty Quarter, consisting of Mark Pedersen, Kate Grealy, Rasheeda Cooper and Pete Emptage, who performed several numbers, combining lyrics with poems from Rumi, Hafiz and Ghalib, merging electronic and traditional music, riding on the concept of love.

Each evening the group of people most of whom -- if not all -- had not long broken their fast, showed their solid commitment and dedication to what they believe in. And we the audience were grateful for it.

[Pictures from http://www.darebin.vic.gov.au/page/page.asp?page_Id=878].