Rachid Halihal - Traditional Songs of Fez, Morocco

I'd never heard of this guy before picking up the cd used a year ago. But it's pretty damn good music, I must say. It might be worth mentioning that all the guitars and fiddles in the world have evolved from things basically like what Rachid plays (oud & Moroccan fiddle), and he's quite masterful on both.

How to describe this music?

It's like a a party that's a devotion at the same time. Like your call-and-response exquisite church music got a life and became ecstatic call-and-response festival. And it has all these crazy microtones - in the singing, the oud and violin playing. It's actually quite affecting to hear someone whose voice can be gruff and guttural one moment reach scintillating heights of delicacy the next. Kinda like Blind Willie Johnson... only different.

Anyway, I don't have too much to say about this. It's just thoroughly enjoyable. So enjoy!

Artist’s biography for Rachid Halihal:

As a world-class musician, Rachid Halihal brings to the community the true character and spirit of musics from the classical Egyptian repertoire which is much loved throughout the Middle East; from the Fertile Crescent; from diverse regions of Morocco and North Africa; and also the mezmerizing music of the Arabian Gulf.

As a child, growing up in Fez, Morocco, Rachid played the nei and sang, imitating the famous singers of the time. At age fourteen he entered "Dar Aadyil" the Conservatory of Music in Fez. At first he studied Western classical and Andalus music on piano and violin. He soon expanded to include a variety of other instruments in order to better express his native music. In addition to his voice, which is best featured in the Andalus style, his strongest instruments are the oud (similar to a lute without frets) and the violin, which he plays in both the classical manner and upright resting on the knee for Moroccan folkloric music.

Until 1986, Rachid played in an Andalus orchestra in Fez, and at various occasions throughout Casablanca. Then, over a span of fourteen years, he presented his music to a more varied audience. This included an extended stay in the Ivory Coast; one year in Sweden; one year in Finland, where he and his seven piece band played at the Helsinki International Music Festival sharing the bill with Cheb Khaled; and in the coastal city of Agadir, Morocco, Rachid fully managed a night club, its musicians, and folkloric troupe for seven of those years, playing his music every night for the club’s primarily touristic and Arabian clientele. On his violin, he accompanied many of Morocco's well known singers who toured to Agadir. On many occasions he played with Mohammed Abdo, one of the Arabian Gulf's most loved singers. During two years, Rachid was invited numerous times to the Arabian Gulf as a singer and oud player in his own right.

In Summer 2004 Rachid toured the USA with The Chicago Classical Oriental Ensemble playing Moroccan Andalus music with Abdelfattah Bennis, including Genesis at the Crossroads Festival in Chicago. He was presented at Columbia University in concert with visiting Israeli singer, Michel Cohen, with Moroccan singer Pinhas in New York and Miami, as well as other ethnic concerts and events throughout New York City. In 2003-4, Rachid was presented with his band at Denver's Global Groove World Music Festival, with Nawang Kechong in Aspen, in two separate Mid-East Dance concerts at the Boulder Theater, Colorado, with Souhail Kaspar in Denver, Boulder, Portland, and Los Angeles. Rachid also played at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the inaugural King Tut exhibit in the US on June 15, 05. In Summer of '05 Rachid toured the USA and Canada with Rachid Taha (Algerian/French) Rai-rock band.

Rachid Halihal - Traditional Songs of Fez, Morocco

Year: 2006

Tracks:

01 Allala Ylali

02 Dor Biha

03 Lemlain

04 Elazri

05 Mahani Ezin

06 Khalini Maak

07 Kaftank Mahloul

08 Jeet Nsaydou

09 Lattar

10 Ana Dene Den Allah

11 Ane Layle Moulate

12 Fen Shak Leatetk

13 Rasael Algeran

ayiiiaahhahhyahaayiyaha

mp3 >256kbps vbr | w/ scans

* though only 4 years old, this album appears to be completely unavailable - from the artist's website, amazon, younameit. how else should one get it, but here?

oh, and like always, the Pirate's on the lookout for more. if you have this album, give a shout:

Rachid Halihal - Resonances from My Soul

Munir Bashir - 2 Albums

You know, it's no accident that guitar music happened so much in Spain. It evolved from the Lutes/Ouds that were brought by the Moors into the south of Spain. And they didn't just bring the instruments, they brought culture and ideas and an Arabic sort of soul. So now that you've heard Sabicas, take another listen to Munir Bashir and see if you can hear how flamenco evolved from Arabic music. Interestingly Munir & Sabicas occupy very similar positions in their respective musics: masters of tradition and inimitable innovators who have influenced literally everyone to come since them.

Really, if you can just ignore the differences in scales, the musics are very similar. Like, listen to the flamenco handclaps and then listen to the percussion behind Munir's oud. Or the way they'll play a flurry of notes and then just stop dead, leaving their musical cloud to dangle on the brink. And this points to the mystery - the hole! - which is at the heart of these musics, and let me tell you - it sure as hell didn't come out of any European church / court music. It came from people who can never name God, so who must constantly make reference to his unfathomable presence through the patterns of emptiness and splendor that is this mosaic of sound.

Now, some musicological details from the booklet of the album below:

MUNIR BACHIR - OUD SOLOS

The form taken in Iraq by the sawt of hidjaz is the maqam which is the most perfect and noblest form the scholarly music of that country can offer. The maqam is performed by one singer (the qari) and three musicians who play respectively the santur - a cithara derived from the Greek psaltery, the djoza - a vielle resting on a pike and the tabla or dûnbak - a double drum. To constitute the djalghi baghdadi of nawbah another kind of drum is added: a riq - the drumhead of which is stretched on a wooden frame, - The principal part characteristic of the maqam is a poem written in one of the sixteen varieties of classical metres either in literary Arabic or in spoken language. In the latter case the poem is called zûhairi.

The maqam, the tradition of which has lasted in Iraq for nearly four centuries, has been transmitted orally by the Iraqi masters in an uninterrupted chain between past and present. The singer improvises melodic passages making freely use of different rhythms while passing progressively from one part of the chosen mode to another. Displaying all his virtuosity and flexibility of voice he reaches the acme of the maqam; then leaves it imperceptibly and comes to the final note of the mode after having embroidered musical phrases, all of them proofs of his talent and spirit of invention.

The maqam starts with the tahrir often preceded by an instrumental introduction called badûa and composed on a well-defined rhythm; the singer accompanies the badûa passing alternately from high-pitched notes to low-pitched ones. The tahrir is made of one or more songs, the texts of which may be extended by one or two Arabic, Persian or Turkish interjections added by the singer when the texts of the songs prove too short with regard to the improvised melody. The maqam ends with the taslim or taslom which is a text set to a falling melodic passage ending with the final note of the scale of that maqam. Between the tahrir and the taslim there is a series of melodic passages of variable length which are performed alternately by the singer and the musicians and which develop in turn the different parts of the scale.

The artists who interpret the maqam-s are considered to be authorities on the matter of repertory; they know all about it and are famous for the specific way everyone renders such a maqam. Some of them are famous for the passages they have added to certain maqam-s, others for the composing of whole maqam-s with a view of enriching the already rich repertory.

A concert made up of maqam-s only is called a fasl. In such a fasl the maqam-s are always played in the same order and the fasl is named after the first maqam of the series. The Iraqi repertory offers five fasl-s: bayati - hidjaz - rast - naûa and hûsseïni. At the end of every maqam the orchestra plays a pesté which is a piece of music composed in the same mode as the maqam. This device allows the singer to rest before the beginning of the next maqam. In former times it was usual to play several fasl-s in a musical evening.

Among the masters of the maqam who have carried on its musical tradition, generation after generation, and whose names are still known nowadays, we will mention: Mûlla Hassan Babûdidji (1782-1840) and his pupil Rahmallah Shiltag who taught a whole generation of artists, the most famous of whom were Ahmed Zaidan and Mûlla Osman Almûssili. Many artists of the following generation have Ahmed Zaidan to thank for their musical talent and their fame, for instance Rachid Kandardji (deceased in 1963) and Abbas Chaikhali. Among the artists of the next generation we will quote the great master Mohamed Elkabbandji who was born in 1901 and considered as the greatest of his time for the register of his voice as well as for the precision of his interpretation of the traditional maqam. Endowed with a very good memory, he had memorized a great number of poems, which allowed him to sing what was fit in all circumstances. He was the one who was sent to Cairo in 1932 as an Iraqi representative to the Congress of Arab Music.

Is the text of the maqam secular, it belongs to the classical repertory but if the text is religious the maqam belongs to the Sufi music which has also its famous performers among whom are Elhadj Jalal Elhafnaûi and Charif Mohieddine Haidar. The latter was the dean of the Baghdad Art Academy and taught a great number of lutanists his method. Among these we will quote: the names of Jamil Bachir (deceased in 1977) and his brother Munir Bachir presently secretary-general of the Arabic Academy of Music. Simon Jargy, a professor at the University of Geneva, considers Munir Bachir as one of the greatest soloists of ud and one of the greatest musicians of the Arab world. Born in the northern Iraq, Munir Bachir belongs to a family of very gifted musicians who have passed on from father to son the noble art of playing the lute.

"He was but five years old, S. Jargy writes, when (together with his brother who also became a well-known lutanist) he was taught the first rudiments of lute playing by his father who had become impregnated with the purest oriental and Arab musical traditions of Baghdad, the old capital of the Abbassid Caliphs. Knowing all the subtleties of Arab music and mastering all the secrets of ud playing, Munir Bachir has rapidly become a great artist and an unrivalled virtuoso, giving back to this instrument the importance it had at the time of the Thousand and One Nights. After World War II, he founded an academy of music in Baghdad with a view of teaching ud playing to talented young people. Then he was appointed as a professor at the Art Academy where he succeeded his master Mohieddine Haïdar. He became also head of the musical programme for the Iraqi broadcasting Co. Wanting to widen his knowledge, Munir Bachir went to Budapest where he studied traditional folk song and music. In 1965 he obtained a doctor's degree in Budapest and was appointed there as an assistant lecturer at the Academy of Science in the department of folk art. At the same time he gave a series of recitals in Hungary patronized by the famous composer Zoltan Kodaly who was one of his admirers and who encouraged him to acquaint people with the authentic Arabic music. Subsequently he gave concerts in the Near and Far Eastern countries". Touring Europe he first came to Geneva where this concert was recorded, parts of which are presented here.

To complete the timing of this compact disc we have resorted to the most prestigious lutanist of the thirties, Mohammed Elkassabgi, who was also one of the first composers of the great singer Um Kalsum. Mohammed Elkassabgi's improvisations: a taksim bayati, a taksim saba, a taksim hidjaz kar and a rhythmic piece, dalaa elhawanem (Ladies' coquetry) have been chosen to let music lovers compare the individual skills of each of these two talented artists separated by more than a quarter of a century. It will also enable us to stress on the one hand the mastery and the inventiveness of the classical school which Mohammed Elkassabgi belongs to, and on the other hand the virtuosity of the younger generation of artists, one of whom is Munir Bachir.

- A. Hachlef, Translated by M.Stoffel. September 1988

Mohamed el-Qasabgi (محمد القصبجي; pronounced [in the Egyptian dialect] el-Asabgi) (1892 - March, 1966) as an Egyptian musician and composer, and is regarded as one of the five leading composers of Egypt in the 20th century. Most of his credits went to Umm Kulthum, Asmahan, and Layla Murad who sang most of his great works and scores. Until today, most critics classify Mohamed El Qasabgi as the master of the oud due to his great abilities and skills which he had during his time.

In most of his tunes, there is a real sensation of the pure Oriental spirit, mixed with European musical techniques and taste. This was mostly seen in songs like Ya Toyour, Raa' El Habeeb, Ana Albi Daleeli.

In the above mentioned songs and many others, he was widely recognized by most musicians and critics at that time as the leader of development of Oriental music and mixing it with newest musical techniques, such as influenced brought in from Western classical traditions of his time.


Munir Bashir - Solo de Luth-Oud: Recital [Oud Solos Live]

Year: 1988
Label: Club du Disque Arabe - AAA03

Tracks:
1 Mounir Bachir - Maqam Nahawend
2 Mounir Bachir - Maqam Rast
3 Mounir Bachir - Maqam Kourdi
4 Mounir Bachir - La Voix de L'Orient
5 Mounir Bachir - Le Oud Fou
6 Mounir Bachir - Hayra
7 Mounir Bachir - Hayra (2)
8 Mounir Bachir - L'Orient En Andalousie
9 Mohamed Elkassabg - Taqsim Bayati
10 Mohamed Elkassabg - Taqsim Saba
11 Mohamed Elkassabg - Taqsim Hidjaz
12 Mohamed Elkassabg - Dalaâ ElHawanem

taqsim vs. maqam.
m4a 128kbps | w/ scans | 55mb

thanks to the unbeatable Lemmy Caution!

Munir Bashir - Dialogue Between Oud & Rhythms

Year: 2001
Label: Voix del l'Orient

This one builds to a pretty amazing percussive climax in the second half of track 1. Also, you get to hear very Sandy Bull-ish oud-delay, which for some reason is less cheesey than most kinds of delay/echo effects.

Tracks:
1 Dialogue Between Oud & Rhythms 22:45
2 Layal (Arabic Dance) 11:18
3 Babylonian Nights 11:45

Munir Bashir, oud
Sami Abdel Ahad, percussion

layala?
mp3 256kbps | w/ cover | 83mb

Munir Bachir - In Concert in Paris

Until his death a dodecade ago, Munir Bashir was considered by many to be the greatest oud player alive. Or, rather the best musician who plays the oud. Quite frankly, even now most would argue he was the best of all time. Imagine a combination of John Fahey and John Coltrane, and you'd have some sense of Munir's importance in the field of Arab classical music, a sense of his mastery, mystery, and originality. And haunting. God, is it ever haunting.

You see, Munir doesn't just play the oud, he inhabits it. Or more accurately, he inhabits the music, be it maqam or taksim or whatever, and he molds it to the shape of his dreams, a cathedral made of shifting desert sand. And there are dancing shadows on the walls of the cathedral, and the walls are floating, and when you listen, you'll float on your shadow too. This music will transport you to another dimension; it will bend and fold your senses until time disappears. The magic of Munir Bashir is this: when you listen to him - I mean really listen, beginning to end - you begin to hear music in the silence, and all the silence around you becomes pregnant with a quivering life, about to leap into being.


Bio:
Munir bachir was born in Mosul (Iraq) in 1930 into a long established family of musicians. His father taught him to play the Oud at a very young age. He then spent six years standing at the Baghdad institute of Music, directed by Serif Muhiddin Targan. Later he completes a doctorate of musicology in Budapest. Munir bachir, passionate defender of Arab music is in constant rebellion against the misrepresentation of this music and its use for commercial ends. More recently he has fought to establish his lute as a solo recital instrument. He travels the world as a true ambassador for Arab classical music, bringing it to specialists as well as to a larger audience, restoring credentials to a music that has become debased though bending to the tasters of colonial nostalgia. Faithful to the letter and the spirit of traditional Arab music Munir Bachir improvises from fully authenticated sources. As much creator as performer, his music is forever evolving, never repetitive. Munir Bashir died in 1997.

Allmusic Biography by Craig Harris:
A master of the mode-based, raga-like Arabic Taqsim, Munir Bashir transformed the oud (Arabic lute) into an important solo instrument. His improvisations inspired comparison to jazz's most inventive players. According to www.rootsworld.com, Bashir's "improvisations (were) elegantly melodic. He (tended) to favor short phrases and certain moments remind me of the kind of development one might find in unaccompanied saxophone solos by Anthony Braxton and Roscoe Mitchell." Descended from a long line of musicians, Bashir was shown the basics of the Arab lute, by his father, as a child. He continued his musical training at the Baghdad Institute of Music, which he entered at the age of six. Bashir's musical career was balanced by his experiences as an educator. Receiving a doctorate in musicology in 1955, he began lecturing for the folk arts department of Budapest's Academy of Sciences. He eventually rose to directorial positions at the Higher Institute of Music in Baghdad and the Music Service of Iraqi Public Radio. Previously unreleased recordings found by Bashir's children shortly after his death in October 1997 were released as Raga Roots. Bashir's musical legacy is continued by his son, Omar.


Here's an excerpt from an interview with Simon Shaheen, one of the finest living oudists:

"Munir Bashir--I know his playing. This is more the Iraqi school of playing the oud. Now, when we say the Iraqi school of playing the oud, it's not necessarily pure Iraqi. We are talking about the Iraqi musical tradition coinciding with the Turkish way of playing, because there were two excellent Turkish, musicians who came to Iraq and established the school of playing the oud in Iraq. We are talking about the 19th and early 20th century. So what the Iraqis, people like Munir Bashir, did was they took the technical aspects of the Turkish way of playing on the oud, and some of the ahank, which are the musical pulses, not exactly ornaments--colorings, if you will--and he applied them to the Iraqi style of playing. So it was a matter of combining both Turkish technique and color with the Iraqi traditional vocal instrumental style.

But actually, if you want to listen to a really impressive performance, you should listen to Munir Bashir's earlier recordings. Listen to something in the 60s and early 70s. I met his son [Omar Bashir] in Greece. I was giving a workshop and there was a gathering of instruments from around the Mediterranean, and I heard him playing. He is very much a replica of his father, very much influenced by his father's playing. He has good abilities, but we ought to see in the future how he will develop. But Munir Bashir as a player, definitely he was a fantastic player, and of course, he improvised a lot, and he utilizes both worlds, the Turkish, the Iraqi. He uses very much the Iraqi maqam. When we say the Iraqi maqam, it's not necessarily the scale system. The Iraqi maqam is something like a suite. They have very structured compositions called the Iraqi maqam. And each suite has its own modal structure and forms. So he used this in much of his playing and in some of the pieces he composed. He had his own sound. It's very important that we listen to somebody you know it's him. This is his sound."

- read the whole (excellent) article here


Munir Bachir - In Concert in Paris

Year: 1988
Label: Inedit

Review by John Storm Roberts, Original Music

Here's Ud virtuosi of two generations and two traditions. Munir Bachir is perhaps the finest living player in the great Iraqi school. In this Paris concert he concentrates on the high-classical tradition in four maqamaat.

Tracks
1 Maqam Yekah et Aoudj - 16:20
2 Maqam Nahawand - 14:58
3 Maqâm Bayât - 12:34
4 Maqam Hijaz - 12:32

the shape of silence
mp3 192kbps | w/o cover | 77mb

for more Munir & Omar Bashir recordings, check out WeLove-Music and FolkMusicSMB.
and for more amazing oud music, check out the Hamza El-Din posts in the archives, and also browse around WeLove-Music and FolkMusicSMB.

if anybody has his Quartet album, the Stockholm Recordings, or Concert in Budapest, I'd love to hear 'em. Thanks!