Tag: North Africa

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SOURCE OF LIFE: CONNECTING PEOPLE THROUGH MUSIC WITH THE NILE PROJECT

Flowing steadily through countryside and city, the mighty Nile River connects 10 north and sub-Saharan African countries. It is a source of life, history, and culture for the citizens of the countries surrounding it, but how much do they know about one another and about the invaluable resource they share? What can they learn from one another about the cultures and environment of the Nile?

Sunrise on the Nile River, Uganda, Jul. 2010. (Flickr/Andrew West)

Mina Girgis and Meklit Hadero, two San Francisco-based visionaries originally from the Nile region, have set out to connect the countries of the Nile through music and dialogue. Their multi-phase Nile Project involves an album, performances, a TEDx event, curriculum materials, and more. They hope to raise $10,000 through a Kickstarter campaign by Feb. 1 for the first phase of the project, a scouting trip to find the musicians who will become the heart of the Nile Project.

Girgis, an ethnomusicologist and founder of the non-profit music organization Zambaleta, spoke with Apsara about the ideas behind the project.

How did you and Meklit Hadero first come up with the idea to collaborate on the Nile Project?

This was last September. Meklit and I had not seen each other for months. I had just returned to the Bay Area from two months in Cairo, and she had just returned from a tour in Ethiopia. We met at an Ethiopian concert by Debo Band, and I was sharing with Meklit how I only came to discover Ethiopian music after moving to the United States. This lack of cultural exposure among East African countries is a bit strange seeing we are neighbors and we share our lifeblood—the Nile. So we decided to embark on a new project where we would bring together musicians from various Nile cultures to perform along the river and abroad.

Mina Girgis

What do you most hope to achieve?

Well, we definitely hope to make good music. But we have other ambitions. Through these cross-cultural musical collaborations, we hope to foster cultural connections among the people of the Nile to help us tackle our water-based environmental challenges. So the Nile Project is both a musical project and a platform to spread environmental awareness and inspire social change among Nile citizens.

The Nile flows through 10 countries that are diverse, yet are also linked by historical and cultural ties and present-day politics. What role will music play throughout the different stages of the project?

There are some problems only the arts can help solve. And in the Nile Project’s case, there are two challenges we hope to tackle through music.

I come from Cairo. And when I look around my hometown today, I see that we have become so disconnected from both the river that runs through our city and the people who live down that river and drink from the same water. To most Cairenes, the Nile is either a natural barrier you have to cross, a reservoir of water you cannot live without, or a demarcator of privilege for those who can afford waterfront real estate. When we lack such a visceral connection to our immediate ecosystem, how could we be aware of our environmental impact? Bringing back this visceral connection will not happen through intellectual campaigns. But it could happen with music.

The other issue is a cultural one. Because the Nile is so crucial to our livelihood, it has become the domain of political discourse. When we began working on this project, we were asked the question: “Do either of you work for the government?” We obviously do not. But the question shows you how polarizing the Nile has become. One way to rekindle our cultural connections is through the music we will make.

What will you do during the Lincoln Center presentations in 2013?

We will definitely have a performance series to showcase the many musical collaborations we are developing. All of them will feature cross-cultural performances among Nile musicians. We will also have presentations by scholars, artists, and social entrepreneurs who work on the Nile. We also hope to collaborate with other river projects.

What issues will be discussed during the TED conversations, and who will participate in them? Is any part of the project intended to get at the subject of water control along the Nile?

TEDxNile will feature scholars, social entrepreneurs, and artists who will share their expertise and ideas about the Nile. We hope the videos will help spread these worthy ideas and bring more attention to those who are coming up with solutions. We also hope these solutions will inspire others to come up with more ideas.

The Nile Project is not a political project. It is an environmental and cultural project. We want to spread a new paradigm that overlooks the political boundaries among our people. We like to think of the Nile region in a holistic way, as an ecological and cultural system that predates nations and states. And we believe the solutions will come from this outlook. In our book, the only way towards sustainability is equity. But we are not in the business of fighting over water.

The Nile Project Kickstarter Campaign Video 

Feb. 4, 2012, Sarah notes: I’m excited to share that the Nile Project surpassed its goal by Feb. 1—thank you to everyone who helped support it!

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YEMEN BLUES: GOOD NEWS OUT OF ISRAEL

Ravid Kahalani, founder of the new Israeli band Yemen Blues, takes a moment out of an exhilarating year to discuss his life and music.

Bombs. Gunfire. Armed checkpoints. Mainstream news headlines portray Israel as one of the most violent places in the world. Conflict is there, but it is only one part of a much larger picture.

Ravid Kahalani singing during a performance.

Enter Yemen Blues, a new band from Israel led by visionary singer Ravid Kahalani. Yemen Blues embodies Kahalani’s passionate belief in intrinsic human goodness and in music’s power to bring out the best in people and to cut across religious and cultural differences. “The truth is that as bad things are happening,” Kahalani states, “GOOD things are happening even more all the time.”

The band just released its first album and has toured from Israel to the United States performing a sound never before heard: blues blended with Yemenite Jewish chants, West African percussion, funk, and much, much more. Yemen Blues’ innovative, high-energy music is no doubt one part of their success. Their positivity also speaks to the many people who, like Kahalani, choose to look beyond the doom-and-gloom of news headlines and see the beautiful side of life.

The band

Born into a large Yemenite Jewish family in Israel, Kahalani grew up learning traditional religious chants. He inherited his family’s famous vocal skills and first demonstrated them at the synagogue at the young age of five. Truly an artistic chameleon, Kahalani later branched off to explore blues and soul music, acting, and percussion. Yet many of the seemingly disparate threads of his artistic experiences are in fact a natural progression of one another, especially his singing.

Voice students take note: Kahalani’s masterful vocal control and range reflect a natural talent perfected through a lifetime of practice and a passion for diverse musical styles. While performing in Serbia in 2004, he discovered the beauty of Orthodox Church music and undertook to learn its vocal techniques. This interest led to a serious two-year study of opera back in Israel.

Kahalani eventually “came home” to the Yemenite music of his childhood while performing as one half of the duo Desert Blues. This and similar musical undertakings, including singing with the Idan Raichel Project, fueled his creative vision and enhanced his expertise. Well-versed then in the music of North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond, where could he go from there?

In 2008, Kahalani met Omer Avital and all of his life’s musical experiences came together. An acclaimed composer, bassist, and oud player, Avital is also part Yemenite and grew up with a similarly rich background of religious, regional, and other music. He spent the first decade of his musical career in New York City steeped in jazz, leading bands and performing with legends such as Wynton Marsalis. Avital returned to Israel for a few years to study composition and Arabic and Israeli music, eventually working with Kahalani on the 2008 Israel Festival production of Debka Fantasia.

Yemen Blues’ ten-track eponymous album features Kahalani’s amazing voice and Avital’s instrumental arrangements performed by talented musicians from Israel, the United States, and Uruguay. Kahalani emphasizes that the group’s cohesion gives their music its strength. In interviews, he names each individual musician: Rony Iwryn (Latin percussion), Itamar Doari (Middle Eastern percussion), Itamar Borochov (trumpet), Galia Hai (viola), Hilla Epstain (cello), Hadar Noiberg (flute), Yohai Cohen (percussion), and Reut Regev (trombone). “You can see onstage how much power there is [in the music] because of the people,” Kahalani states.

The music

Through its music, Yemen Blues seeks to bring listeners to what Kahalani calls the “moment of the soul.” It is the fundamental goodness that he believes all people share. He stresses that basic human understanding “before any opinion or religion” is the essential foundation for a peaceful coexistence.

As the band’s name suggests, blues music provides the medium through which all other musical elements are mixed. Its free, improvisational nature and emotiveness suit the band’s mission and Kahalani’s creativity. He likens it to his own artistic experience that, like blues music, stretches across numerous different cultures. Kahalani uses it to link the many experiences of his life together and to connect with audiences around the world.

This studio session of “Um Min Al Yaman,” which describes a journey in a dream, captures the energy of Yemen Blues.

Yemen Blues’ band members clearly love performing together, and their collaborative energy carries over into the audience. Their music often fills listeners with such a sense of joy that it is not uncommon to see audience members of all ages dancing together in the aisles during concerts. The energy generated at performances is an important element of the music that the group successfully recreated on its first album. “We recorded the album entirely in one room with nothing between us so we could feel each others’ energy,” explains Kahalani.

Kahalani primarily sings in Yemenite Arabic, the language of his family. “I’m trying to learn everything back now,” he says. At the same time, he also pairs languages that fit best with the melody and the meaning of songs. “Trape La Verite,” for example, uses French Creole to describe the end of a romance. Kahalani’s singing is at its finest here, ranging from lullaby-like to wailing. The gentle instrumentization by Avital, especially of the percussion and strings, provides the perfect backing for this bittersweet song.

Yemen Blues performs “Trape La Verite” at Reading3 in Tel Aviv.

The bottom line

To date, Yemen Blues has performed from Israel to Spain and from Brazil to the United States, drawing critical praise wherever they go. More telling of their success, however, is their connection with audience members and the fact that they are genuinely fulfilling their musical vision. Yemen Blues works as a band because they have found the right creative medium—blues music—and truly believe in what they are doing. There is a lot of lip service paid to the “universality” of music, but this is a band that could even make a skeptic believe.

“Baraca,” performed at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, demonstrates the best of the band’s musical and collaborative skills.

Yemen Blues’ feverish performance schedule continues this summer, offering numerous opportunities to hear them live. Their website provides details about many of their performances, and check your local concert listings too for those not shown.

We look forward to catching Yemen Blues perform again in the San Francisco Bay Area this summer and expect a bright future for this talented and worthy band.

Ravid Kahalani photo by GANGI.

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BEATS ANTIQUE: BLIND THRESHOLD

Beats Antique album review

BeatsAntique_BlindThresholdI bought Blind Threshold (2010), the third and most recent album by the Oakland, CA-based roots-electronica group Beats Antique, well over a month ago and still listen to it almost every single day. If I had this on vinyl rather than in MP3 format, it would be worn out by now.

So what is so captivating about the album? The eclectic, almost indescribable sound.

The three members of Beats Antique—David Satori, Tommy Cappel, and Zoe Jakes—bring together a diverse and well-trained musical background spanning Western European classical to hip hop, with knowledge of music from Eastern Europe, West Africa, the Middle East, and other regions of the world. This comes through in the album’s fourteen tracks as a bass-heavy, richly layered melding of electronified strings, percussion, horns, and vocals. John Popper of Blues Traveler even lends his harmonica to the track “There Ya Go.”

“Egyptic,” the album’s opening track, is the ideal accompaniment to a tribal belly dance performance, and small wonder with Jakes’ background with Bellydance Superstars and Indigo Belly Dance Company. The song opens quietly, with a line of simple beats and melody, before building into a crescendo of bass, strings, and darbuka. Heavy electronic reverberations replace and also fill the space between the melody and percussion throughout the entire song.

“Rising Tide” features lush vocals by LYNX atop violins and banjo, with occasional forays into the pentatonic scale found in the music of North Africa and the Middle East. It is beautiful, unusual, and a little haunting with the lyrics:

With your altars made of trash,
the aftermath of disposable dreams.
You know that you were born,
for more than what machines provide.

Unlike most of Beats Antique’s other songs, which are largely instrumental, the vocals take center stage here before “Rising Tide” closes with the sound of fading violins.

If you have not heard it yet, Blind Threshold is well worth checking out, as is Contraption, Vol. 1, also with vocals by LYNX and a heavy dose of dub. And if you ever have a chance to see Beats Antique live, their shows are famous for their color and spectacle, as exemplified by this performance at the 2009 Sonic Boom Festival.