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Music is my drug of choice.<\/em> Whenever I play music I really do see "visions of sugar plums dancing in my head". The music will transport me to far-off places including entering the time-machine and it will instill various types of emotion. I think I have ADD or ADHD. If I need to concentrate on a task or read, I don’t like to have music travelling through my veins. If music is playing, I need to dance.<\/p>\n Of course some music brings on a greater degree of high than others. And some music is more danceable in my head than in my body. In this case, I am speaking of two albums of music that both encourage my addiction and enable me to lose my mind in my body.<\/p>\n These two albums, Ahla Andalusi <\/em><\/strong>and 40 Days & 1001 Nights, <\/em><\/strong>\u00a0really do transport me as in a time machine to other times, other lands and other ecstasies. They both seem to have been composed in another time and another place. There seems to be no modern crossover influence in that the music is acoustic and takes advantage of the musicianship and instrumentation of yesterday with no globalization of today. <\/p>\n They are islands of beauty and as the two albums dance in my head, I am lost in a dream of visions – colors, light and dark, pure and hazy, and smells of incense and flowers wafting in the breeze of temperate temperature which encircle me and the choreographies of my mind.<\/p>\n Now to the reality of the albums:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Nesma<\/a><\/strong> of Spain has done it again. She has produced a wonderful spellbinding album featuring Egyptian composer, musician and vocalist Maher Kamal<\/span> in Ahla Andalusi<\/em>. The stringed instruments are violin, viola, cello, contrebass and kanun. The nay and kawala along with the voices provide the spiritualism of the heavens and the riq, tabla, duf and dahola give us the heartbeat. I thought I heard an oud also, but it is not listed.<\/p>\n Initially when I heard this album I was first struck with the beauty of the stringed section and then I heard the magic of the voice of Maher Kamal.<\/p>\n In San Francisco we are privileged to have a wonderful musician and singer, Elias Lammam<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0 whose velvet voice brings to mind Abdel Halim<\/span>. At times I wonder whose voice I enjoy more – Elias’ or Abdel Halim’s. That’s a hard decision for me to make. Well – then I heard Maher Kamal’s. He doesn’t sound as much like Abdel Halim as he does Elias Lammam. To me this is a plus. <\/p>\n Besides the musical compositions in this album, this haunting, heavenly voice alone which is speaking, as if to me alone, is reason enough to own this album.<\/p>\n Since albums are a vehicle to convey the musical message, in this case, that is a good thing. Although the sepia-toned Moorish artwork and thought behind the also sepia-toned booklet- sized multi-lingual (Spanish, French, English and Arabic calligraphy) 32 paged liner notes are very artfully done and well-thought out, there seems to have been no thought behind the phrase "Can the reader see or read the written material?"<\/p>\n Even with reading glasses perched on nose, while squinting and holding a magnifying glass in hand in the daylight and under a bright light, I had enough trouble reading the lyrics and translations that I did not even want to bother to do so.<\/p>\n In the case with Nesma’s liner notes – maybe "less is more" should be the case. However the liner notes are important and very informative and I hope your eyes are better than mine.<\/p>\n Ahla Andalusi <\/strong>is an album that moves and dances in the genre of the muwasha<\/em> (muwahshahat<\/em> pl.) – poetry with music and vocalisation. Originated in Moorish Spain (about the time of the crusades -around the tenth century) the muwashahat<\/em> to me is poetry in motion. I belong to an Arabic choir, Aswat<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (Voices), that strives to preserve and present all types of classical Arabic music and song. Our favorite pieces and probably the most difficult to perform are the muwashahat. The poetry is incredibly beautiful, allegorical and visual. It is interwoven and interconnected with the musical phrasing and rhythms. I play in the percussion section and many of the rhythms are odd time signatures that change. In playing the muwashahat it can become easy to groove into the rhythm but then just as easily the flow will take a gentle turn that takes you on another path.<\/p>\n In listening to Ahla Andalusi <\/strong>you will experience this gentle flow nudging you from one phrase, rhythm or mode to another in a complex uncomplicated manner. You will be transported from one time and place to another – but all will be timeless and without a specific place in mind.<\/p>\n You will ask yourself, "Is this music Arabic? Is it Egyptian? Is it Spanish? I hear the rumba rhythm, I hear maqsoum." Well, it is Andalusian and it is all of the above. It is tradition and it is a blend of the historical and contemporary music and poetry from the 10th, the 11th, the 12th centuries and even a bit of the 21st century.<\/p>\n
\nIt’s my addiction.<\/em>
\nDance is my high.<\/em>
\nIt’s a result of my habit.<\/em>
\nDance takes me places. Music is my vehicle.<\/em>
\nI’ve read of people, especially modern dance choreographers, who transcend the music and are able to envision dance and forms without it.<\/em>
\nI cannot.<\/em>
\nI cannot envision dance without music. The two require each other.<\/em>
\nI can play music and dance in my head.<\/em>
\nAnd I can dance and play music in my head.<\/em>
\nIf there is music, there is dance<\/em>
\nand if there is dance, there is music.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Ahla](\"http:\/\/www.gildedserpent.com\/productreviewgraphics\/09\/nesmamaherkamalcdtn.jpg\")
Ahla Andalusi by Maher Kamal<\/p>\n\n
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