From Which Rumi and Hafiz Emerged

By Molly Gilmore, "Festival celebrates sacred through spiritual music and dance" - The Olympian - Olympia, WA, USA
Thursday, March 6, 2008

This year's Olympia World Sacred Music Festival offers some surprises

There's a pagan drumming and dance group, for example, and even whirling dervishes and jazz.

Yes - jazz. The Olympia Jazz Senators will perform some of Duke Ellington's sacred jazz, composed in 1965.

"Ellington has these sacred suites that are just marvelous pieces of work, and hopefully those, along with the more global music, will help expand people's idea of what sacred music can be," said Scott Stevens, the music director for the fourth annual festival, set for Saturday [March 8].

"There's a church in Seattle that regularly does a jazz vespers church service, so it's not unknown. T he roots of jazz are at least partly in the black churches.

"The world is big and broad, and we're trying to be fairly inclusive about what we're doing, even though we're not doing a lot of traditional church music," he added.

The festival also features African, American Indian, Christian and Jewish music, plus dancing, storytelling and, for the first time, visual art.

"We're going to have around a dozen pieces of art representing a number of faith traditions," said Kathy Erlandson, director of Interfaith Works, which hosts the annual festival.

Back from last year is Shabava, a Portland group that plays the music of Persia, now Iran.

"People really liked them," Stevens said. "I'm not specifically trying to make a political statement with that, but I think it's good at a time when our country is talking about war with Iran that we get a different look at the culture there. That's the culture from which Rumi and Hafiz, the great Sufi poets, emerged."

The festival also will feature the Mevlevi Order of America, with Sufi dancing - also known as whirling dervishes.

"It's a dance and prayer form," Stevens said. "Visually as well as musically, it's going to be very interesting."

Click on the title to read the programme

[Visit the Mevlevi Order of America http://www.hayatidede.org/].