Customer Reviews

Ancient Sounds

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I just heard Rahim Alhaj and Amjad Ali Khan perform live in Denver, featuring their joint album "Ancient Sounds". Exceptionally beautiful combination of two ancient string instruments, the oud (Alhaj) and the sarod (Ali Khan). One Iraqi, one Indian, both true masters of their instrument. This album is described as a musical dialogue of peace for our world. If you like Arabic, classical Persian, or Indian music, you will enjoy this uplifting, inspiring album.

Musicians tend to be more eclectic and unbiased than their purist fans. Surely, over the millennia musicians from India and Persia often met, in desert and mountain caravanserais and at the courts of the Great Moguls and Shahs, and did not allow pesky technicalities to get in the way of sessions.

Mr. Bruno, I imagine the real il Nolano in Paris or London listening to John Dowland jamming in an unorthodox manner with musicians from other lands ...

... but considering the sheer amount of malice and ordnance dispensed in the REAL traditional "ancient" dialogue between these two peoples, it's just as well that this IS ersatz. Yes, that "ancient" label is BS, but the whole CD package is beautiful, and it sure has some masterful playing here and there. True, the two instruments are not meant to play together, in fact it's VERY hard to be sure which is which, because they both lose their character in this context, and they play much in the same register; they do get in each other's way. And if only the oud were one of those deep old Egyptians, it might stand out instead of competing, but no, it's a floating bridge oud with a trebly sound. And finally, the instruments sound like they were mic'ed each with a couple of good microphones, creating a pseudo stereo image. But then these two images were overlaid in a bed of reverb, without the simple lateral panning that might easily have separated them, this detail further adding to the growing irritating difficulty of distinguishing and appreciating each player on his own. BUT ... In short it's no small feat to make the album work, and it IS a testimony to good character and good intentions that it works as well as it does. So, indeed, pull out the waterpipe, nay the Bong, and CHILL, there's a good vibe and some generic, but good, have-a-nice day sounds coming up.

Sound, after all, is ineffably transient. A sound can only be as ancient as the time to took to reach your ears. But the title of this CD - "Ancient Sounds" - is misleading in every sense. The seven 'tracks' were all composed by the performers themselves. The ensemble of sarod and oud is a contemporary experiment, a deliberate effort to create "new" sounds. Since the melodic and rhythmic vocabularies of Iraqi and North Indian 'classical' music are not the same, however much they might sound 'a lot alike' to neophytes, the improvisations recorded here are curiously stripped-down and westernized as a means of reaching commonality, and that's surely more 'current' than 'ancient' in its rationale, a result of the vogue for "World Music". Listen to the ample percussion on this CD; what you'll hear is intended to please 'world' ears.

The music I perform myself, on historical European instruments, was mostly written between 1200 and 1700 CE; I have my own sense of what constitutes 'ancient sounds.'

Honestly, friends, I've heard both Rahim AlHaj and Amjad Ali Khan separately, and that's how I recommend that you make their musical acquaintance. Likewise any of the other fine oud, tar, santur, kamancheh, sitar, or sarod players of this generation, a large number of whom live in the USA. North Indian music especially is a rich cultural treasure, one of the most highly elaborated and subtle traditions in the world. The sarod is a solo instrument, almost invariably accompanied by a drone and paired in certain genres with the dumbek or other percussion instrument. The oud is also preeminently a solo instrument. The two strings are not ordinarily tuned in compatible fashion. Frankly, I think they get in each other's way more often than they 'communicate.' What I hear on this CD is a lot of hypnotic mono-chordal drone and even more hypnotic 4/4 and 3/4 Goa Beat, with a 5/4 for the last and longest track.

Hookah, anyone? This is the CD for you!