Artist.......: El Tanbura
Album........: Between the Desert and the Sea
Label........: World Village
Genre........: Ethnic
Catnr........: n/a
Source.......: CDDA
Rip.date.....: May-01-2008
Str.date.....: 000-00-0000
Quality......: VBR/44,1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: n/a
track title time
01. Waziery 04:28
02. I saw the moon 04:01
03. My heart was burnt by love 04:30
04. Sar a lay 04:32
05. Zayy el nhardah (the canal song) 04:54
06. Between the desert and the sea 02:29
07. One day we blamed each other 03:42
08. dundarawi 04:16
09. Shoft toshy 04:08
10. Salah 03:55
11. Gamel weno 04:15
Runtime 45:10 min
Size 65,8 MB
Release Notes:
The simsimiyya is a five-string lyre, dating back to
Pharaonic times, and to the Sumerian civilisation. It is
traditionally imbued with magical properties, used for
healing and exorcism as much as for dancing and trance. It
is a female instrument, its players are its lovers, and,
in some folk tales, it is a siren who seduces both her
lover, the player, and her audience. In its sound, it is
something of a cross between the Arabian oud, the West
African kora, the Moroccan ghimbri and the Sudanese
tanbura.
"You will find it in the museum of Pharaonic times," says
the singer and percussionist Zakaria Ibrahim, founder and
musical director of the 20-strong Egyptian group El
Tanbura, one of the headline acts appearing at the
Barbican's Ramadan Nights season. Their second album,
Between the Desert and the Sea, features 11 songs from
their repertoire of Egyptian folk and sacred music. "Some
of the traditional songs go back 800 years, others are so,
so old you can't even date them," he says, in a north
London cafΘ. "They are performed in a language that we no
longer hear in daily life."
El Tanbura were formed by Ibrahim in Port Said in 1989,
where as a boy in the Fifties he witnessed the revival of
the simsimiyya, which would give its name to a
revitalising Egyptian folk movement that found its fullest
expression in the 1956 Suez crisis, when the
nationalisation of the canal triggered Britain's last
imperial crisis and served as a rallying cry to Egyptian
and pan-Arab nationalism.
The revival continued through the Arab-Israeli War of 1967
and the occupation of the Sinai, but by the Eighties,
Egypt's folk culture had been pushed aside by cheaper
instruments and sound systems; what remained had been
co-opted by government sponsorship. Zakaria and El Tanbura
determined to let the music live on its own terms, and on
its own streets.
"Since I began El Tanbura at the beginning of 1989, our
main target has been to keep this traditional music in its
environment," says Ibrahim. "At the beginning we met
resistance," he adds, "forces intent on destroying the
traditional way of playing. People in most of the Third
World look to the West and imitate what they are doing.
But we have set out to keep our traditional music, and to
encourage [others] to do the same."
For the first five years of the group's existence, they
went about collecting a huge repertoire of original folk
songs, along with an ever-expanding list of members. "We
now have a repertoire of more than 20 hours of traditional
songs," says Ibrahim proudly.
But it is a contemporary repertoire as well, with several
tunes on the new album penned by Ibrahim, including "The
Canal Song" (Zayy el Nhardah), written for the 50th
anniversary of the Suez crisis. "It's about the emotion of
the people, their pain and hopes, and also the migration
after the 1967 war, how people miss their cities and want
to go home again. I wrote the text and the melody that
relates the history of the digging of the canal, how our
grandfathers did it, and how we didn't have any profit
from it."
To coincide with that anniversary, the BBC is broadcasting
a three-part series about the crisis with a soundtrack by
El Tanbura. "But we also have to create new songs for what
is happening now," Ibrahim says. "We have created songs
for the Iraq war, songs to encourage people not to
relent."
Nevertheless, at the heart of the group's music is the
spirit of celebration, of magic, of dance, and reverie -
and the simsimiyya. A short film by Ibrahim has its UK
premiere at the Ramadan Nights festival, two days before
their stage show. Siren tells the story of the simsimiyya,
with footage of their master player, Mohssin, who began
learning it when he was seven.
Earlier, Mohssin, with Ibrahim on hand percussion, vocals,
and some exuberant dancing, had played a scintillating set
on an instrument much expanded from the five-string
original. The sound runs and flashes underneath the band's
percussion and vocals, while, solo, it is utterly
entrancing, almost otherworldly.
"We sometimes use the simsimiyya for ceremonies," says
Ibrahim. "There is the feast of the spring, which goes
back to Pharaonic times. We celebrate it in April, and
play from nine in the evening until three in the morning."
Not only Pharaonic feasts, but ritual healing ceremonies,
too. "One particular ceremony is a ritual to help people
who suffer from psychological problems. If there is a
genie or other spirit inside them, and they are suffering,
this music will help them to be a friend to the spirits
they have, not to get rid of them." After rave reviews for
their appearance at the Nile Festival in April, this
particular Ramadan Night, a prelude to a national tour in
the new year, promises to be an explosive and transporting
one.