Music for Missing Someone: August Denhard and Munir Nurettin Beken

Oud/Lute

About the most lovely sound in the universe is the song of the lute.  Tonight’s  offering is a scrumptious and gentle concert of  lute, played by August Denhard, and oud (Arabian lute) played by Turkish master, Munir Nurettin Beken.

Denhard is from Seattle and the Director of the Early Music Guild (EMG) a collective of music lovers of which Frazier and Niles would be proud to be members.  In addition to his responsibilities of running EMG, Denhard, as this album demonstrates, is an outstanding lutenist himself.

Munir Nurettin Beken was born and raised in Istanbul. From the age of 11 he studied at the State Conservatory of Istanbul specializing in the Turkish classical repertoire, the oud (Turkish/Middle Eastern lute) and also Western classical music and composition. He graduated with honours and then taught at the Conservatory whilst studying for his bachelors degree. During this time he also began to perform on local television. He also represented his country at an international music festival in Poland and had many of his compositions performed by ensembles and orchestras. Following the completion of his BA studies, Beken helped to form the State Turkish Music Ensemble along with other respected Turkish classical musicians. He also began composing for local television, radio and ballet companies and has subsequently won numerous awards for his work on soundtracks. In 1989 he moved to the USA to study Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland, where he subsequently became the Executive Director of the Centre for Turkish Music. He was invited by Rounder Records to compile Masters Of Turkish Music Volume Two, an anthology of recordings from the early twentieth century, and subsequently recorded his debut, The Art Of The Turkish Ud, for the same label. It featured solo ud performances of pieces from the Turkish classical repertoire, allowing Beken to display his mastery of the instrument and featuring a surprising variety of moods and tempos for a solo recording. (AMG)

This album is a series of duets and conversations between these two musical soulmates. Absolutely lovely music from the Renaissance and Medieval periods.  Great for Sunday mornings or afternoons when you are missing someone who’s company you love.

            Track Listing:

            01 Greensleeves

02 Piva

03 Estampie Fragment

04 Recercada I

05 Nota I

06 Estampie

07 Estampie IV

08 Lamento Da Tristano, Rotta

09 Spagna For Two Lutes

10 Aspire Refus Contre Doulce Priere

11 Notas II And III

12 La Manfredina Estampie

13 Douce Dame Jolie

14 Belle Fiore Dansa

15 Untitled

16 Un Fiore Gentile M'apparse

17 Calta Ala Spagnola

18 Saltarello

19 Buselik Saz Semaisi

here

The Path between Shaqlawa and Poonch: Naseer Shama and Ashraf Sharif Khan

Between 1986 and 1991 I lived in Pakistan. One of my favorite weekends was to drive up through the foothills of Azad Kashmir, where the evening mountain light was pure and golden, to take photographs and soak up the stunning landscapes. A town I often passed through had a narrow bazaar that had to be approached by driving up a steep incline and navigating a hairpin bend, The bazaar was known as Poonch, and it had a nice little restaurant with purple glass windows and tables that overlooked the river and mustard fields below. There was nothing, I thought, extraordinary about Poonch.  

It wasn’t until very many years later that I learned that one of the great maestro’s of the sitar, Ustad Mohammad Sharif Khan, had grown up  in the court of the Raja of Poonch where his father was one of the court’s primary musical performers.  As he grew to fame as a sitarist in the 1940s and 50s,  the  appellation, Poonchwaley (the one from Poonch) was added to his name.  Suddenly, and forever, this minor fiefdom in the mountains of Kashmir was immortalized.

Ustad Mohammad Sharif Poonchwaley

In 1991, I left Pakistan and took up a job in the mountains of Kurdistan. I worked in the far eastern part of the region but from time to time travelled around.  In mid summer I drove westward to a town in the hills called Shaqlawa.  This was at the time a sort of political headquarters of one of the main Kurdish parties and we were there for a meeting with a few of the party heavies.  The approach to Shaqlawa reminded me of that to Poonch: steep, narrow and windy.  In the mountains the air was thinner and clearer just like in Kashmir. 

Tonight’s selection brings these two towns and the countries and regions in which they are located, together, with beauty and grace.  Naseer Shama is an oud player born and raised in Iraq. Half Kurdish, in addition to mastering his instrument he has made it a point of his musical career to speak out against the oppression and subjugation of his people. Resident in Baghdad throughout much of the turmoil of recent years, he championed the cause of children victims of American/European bombing in the early 1990s and has raised money and awareness for the sanctions-crippled health system Iraqis have had live with through most of the 1990s.  He has received many international music and humanitarian awards and currently lives and teaches in Cairo.

Naseer Shamma

Ashraf Sharif Khan

Ashraf Sharif Khan  is from Pakistan and is the son of that country’s most revered sitarist, Ustad Mohammad Sharif Khan Poonchwaley. Like his Iraqi counterpart, Ashraf is well regarded as a curious and adventerous musician.  Now resident in Germany, Khan has collaborated with musicians from a number of genres including jazz.  This record, Viages de las Almas is an elegant collaboration and fusion of Iraqi, Middle Eastern and South Asian, Pakistani music.  The album title means ‘travelling souls’; its co-leaders are a Cairo-resident  Iraqi virtuoso of the fretless Arabic lute and a German-resident Pakistani master of the sitar.

Naseer Shamma provides the composed notes, as well as playing the oud. Supported by tabla player Shabbaz Hussain, Naseer Shamma and Ashraf Sharif Khan make beautiful new music.

The sitarist’s definition of good ‘fusion’ music: ‘the amalgamation of the two styles without compromising one for the other, rather presenting the two in a new light.’ (ABC Australia) 

The music, obviously, is what is great about this record.  The fusing of Middle Eastern and Hindustani music is seamless and absolutely credible.   The playing is of the highest quality and full of soul.  With several tracks clocking in over 10 minutes long the musicians appear to have made the choice to let each explore the music at an unhurried pace yet in a clearly reflective way. 

Fantastic and unique music.

            Track Listing:

1.                Viage de Las Almas (Traveling Souls)

2.                Al-Andalus Abre Sus Puertas (Al-Andalus Opens    its Gates)

3.                El Camino a Shaqlawa (The Path to Shaqlawa)

4.                La Sibiuria de Mi Abuelo (My Grandfather’s Wisdom)

5.                Nostalgia de Cordoba (Nostalgia for Cordoba)

6.                Hammurabi

7.                Para Tunez (For Tunez)

here

The Yearning and the Longing: Muhamed El Amin

The oud player

There are few sounds I’ve grown to love dearer in recent years than that of the oud. The plucked string resonates with a crispness that never grows stale. Though it is often played solo, its song is far more sonorous than the solo guitar. It speaks with a natural confidence, like some sort of precocious youngster where the (acoustic) guitar seems to whisper.  This is not without its pleasures but the oud’s assured tone spells hope and urgency.

I’ve not been in Khartoum in Sudan though have worked with several Sudanese in my years in the aid industry. They were intensely proud of being Sudanese and frequently notified me that no one spoke Arabic with greater clarity and melody then themselves.  And for a tradition and language that is intimately bound to speech and oral communication, as opposed to writing, this is high praise. 

My only visit to the country was to the south many years before it became an independent nation. I was on a mission to meet and interview some high ranking Ethiopian government officials of Sudanese extraction who had fled to the regional city (no larger than a small neighbourhood) of Nasir.  Because of their association as loyal public servants with the despised and recently collapsed leftist Derg government headed by Col. Hailemariam Mengistu, they were in fear for their lives.  Though they were ethnically ‘home’ in southern Sudan, they were mistrusted and disliked by the local population. My job was to see if there was a way to get them resettled in the West.   To make a tangential story short, there wasn’t and I don’t know what became of them after I flew back to Nairobi.

Muhamad El Amin

Tonight’s selection is Muhamad el Amin, one of Sudan’s great voices accompanying himself beautifully on oud.  Mohammed el Amin is a Sudanese folk-hero for his majestic voice and superb oud playing, and the near-blind, reclusive old revolutionary is also a brilliant composer and arranger. Never a prolific writer, his work is concentrated and even his rearrangements of old songs sound fresh. I forgot the irritating half-assed reggae of lesser bands the night Mohammed el Amin conjured up a playful dub fade-out of one epic song with just a violinist (Mohamediya), bass player and tablas. Born in Wad Medani, central Sudan, in 1943, he began learning the oud at the age of 11, taught by the well-known professor Mohammed Fadl. He wrote his first compositions aged 20, and went on to become honorary president of the Sudanese Artists' and Composers' Society. Frequently in trouble for provoking one military dictatorship - he was jailed by Nimeiri's regime in the 1970s - he moved to Cairo after 1989 to avoid similar run-ins with the National Islamic Front, but returned to Khartoum in 1994 and kept a low profile. (http://www.sudanupdate.org/REPORTS/MUSIC/musicians/AMIN.HTM) 

The CD The Voice of Sudan (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Germany)
 is an intimate solo acoustic set recorded in Berlin in 1991. It captures his smokily majestic voice and nimble oud playing - the latter sometimes got lost in his earlier big band outings - in glorious epics such as Habibi, where the roller-coaster riffing of the 1980s electric version gets altogether subtler treatment. (http://www.sudanupdate.org/REPORTS/MUSIC/MTEXT.HTM)

Here is a link to a good introduction to the music and musical politics of Africa’s largest country. Well worth a read. (http://www.sudanupdate.org/REPORTS/MUSIC/MTEXT.HTM)

This is another fine example of Arabic left-folk music. Oud and voice both in outstanding glory.

            Track Listing:

            01 Al Jarida - The Newspaper

02 The Longing And Yearning

03 Obituary

04 Life

05 Eyes Of Hope

06 Fullmoon Over The Castle

07 Habibi

here

Setting sun (M)oud Music: Abdel Hamid Tnnari (Updated Link)

I’m in a ‘oud-y’ mood these days. Just have to regular fixes of those Arabic gut strings pulling on the heart strings.

I don’t know and can’t find anything out about Abdel Hamid Tnnari but assume he’s Egyptian or Lebanese. Maybe Iraqi or Syrian. Can someone help?

So I guess that about sums it up for me. Nothing much to say except, that you are in for a treat. This album, despite its rather silly name, is splendid oud playing by someone who obviously knows the instrument intimately.

In case you don’t know what the oud is, think of it as the grandparent of the European lute.  Tnnari plays solo (as you’d guess from the title of the album) as well as sparsely and tastefully accompanied by violin, derbouka (small hand drum) and mazhar (Egyptian tambourine).  Music for the setting sun.

PS. I was recently contacted by Abdel Hamid Tnnari's grandson who is currently living in Sweden. He has confirmed much of the information provided in the comments below about this grandfather. I'm so pleased he reached out and I was able to share this recording with him, which he was not aware existed.  For links on Abdel Hamid's son, Hassan Tnnary's playing you can find lots on YouTube like this.

            Track Listing:

            01 Taksim Oud

02 Ngm Al Ams

03 Taksim Qanun

04 Taksim Oud

05 Taksim Ney

06 Raqs Halafi

07 Taksim Kman

08 Laeli Tarjou Ya Lael

09 Taksim Oud

10 Nism Alina Al Hua

11 Raqset Al Hareem

Listen here.