Siwan (Ocrd)

Jon Balke, Amina Alaoui | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 30, 2009)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: ECM Records
• ASIN: B001PS0EKW
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,765 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sublime cross-pollination blending Arabic, Baroque and improvised music, July 26, 2009

By 

Dore Stein (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Siwan (Ocrd) (Audio CD)

A wise man once said "cross-cultural pollination is the life blood of music". He could have had Jon Balke's "Siwan" featuring the remarkable Moroccan vocalist Amina Alaoui in mind.

The ensemble includes Norwegian Jon Balke who conceived the project and arranged the music, Amina Alaoui who sings poetic texts in Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese from the Al-Andalus period of Muslim Iberia (730 to 1492), John Hassell (trumpet, electronics)lives for this kind of cross-cultural synthesis, and 12 baroque soloists (Bjarte Eike's Barokksolistene) with strings and lute and harpsichord. The most soul stirring sounds come from the artists newest to me: Algerian violinist Kheir Eddine M'Kachiche and Amina Alaoui.

I'm fascinated by Amina. She is a virtuoso singer and musicologist. Born in Fez, she was originally schooled in the Moroccan Gharnati tradition. Gharnati derives from Al-Andalus, where it spread from Granada to North Africa. Amina continues to research connections between flamenco, fado and the music of Al-Andalus. On Siwan much of the music was originally composed to Spanish translations of the poetry. Alaoui then helped to reshape the material around original Arabic versions.

The inspiration for this project stemmed from Balke observing similiarities between two beautiful traditions represented by the voice of Amina Alaoui and early music, as explored by Bjarte Eiike's Barokksolistene. But it goes deeper.

Excerpting from the cd liner notes and ECM's website:

"The title Siwan means in balance, or equilibrium, in a mixed language called Aljamiado, spoken under the Inquisition in Spain.

This is a fascinating blend of Arabic and European music and poetry, which is very poorly documented in European music history. This project is not a musicological research, but rather a tribute to musical freedom. Andalus was a beacon of learning in the so-called Dark Ages, and unique in the degree of exchange between Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars. Balke points out there are striking correspondences in the writings of the Sufi poets and the Catholic and Sephardic mystics.

Siwan also raises questions about what was lost in the bonfires of the Inquisition, and points to the catastrophic costs of religious intolerance."

Siwan gathers nourishment from the cooperative spirit of Al-Andalus and creates an exquisite mosaic where the unlikely elements are integrated into an atmospheric whole. The results are not only sublime but a revelation.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Album, July 1, 2009

By 

Chester J. Phillips (Boston) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Siwan (MP3 Download)

Jon Balke does it again with another great album. This one isn't as overtly 'modern' as say Divergent Travels, but it is certainly 'new,' in the sense that it is blend of various traditional music genres with a bit of an electronica twist. If you are looking for something with electronica beats though, I suggest checking out Terje Rypdal's Vossabrygg. The percussion on this latest Balke almbum is pounding and flashy but it leans toward an acoustic feel. If your contemplating getting the mp3 version, I'd like to point out that the linear notes for this record contain full translations of each song and a short essay with pictures on the project and its intention. For some this may not really be worth the extra money and the lack of instant gratification but at least you can feel confident that having a hard copy of CD has a small perk.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intimations of a lost world, March 13, 2011

By 

Philippe Vandenbroeck (HEVERLEE, BELGIUM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Siwan (Ocrd) (Audio CD)

Siwan is a tantalising ECM project emerging from an eclectic literary and musical constellation. Amina Alaoui is a formidable scholar and artist, and one of the most gifted interpreters of the Gharnati tradition: the songs that survived at the Granada court, the last holdout against the Reconquista, and have survived centuries through oral transmission. Jon Balke is a Norwegian composer and jazz/folk/fusion pianist who won fame with his Magnetic North Orchestra. It is Balke who composed the music for the Siwan album, with Alaoui stepping in for poem adaptation and melodic co-composition. Jon Hassell is an American experimental trumpetist. Kheir Eddine M'Kachiche is an Algerian violinist and long-time accompanist of Amina Alaoui. They are backed up by a full-fledged baroque ensemble led by Bjarte Eike. Moorish and Iberian poets from the turbulent 11th and 12th centuries offer the literary raw material for Alaoui's songs. There are two excursions to 16th century Spain with Lope de Vega and St John of the Cross, the mystic who established the order of the barefoot Carmelites.

The journey starts with a purely instrumental invocation led by Kheir Eddine's mysterious violin. The following, short song 'O Andalusin' connects most poignantly. Richly harmonised it opens a vast and colourful panorama on a world that was on the verge of disappearing. Alaoui's voice is powerful and strikingly husky. The unfolding music is generally in a slow tempo, mournful (Ondas do mar de Vigo), longing or pensive (Ashiyin Raïqin) in tone, with discrete ostinato percussion sometimes lending an air of inevitability (Itimad). There are more lively intermezzos too with songs that sound strikingly contemporary (Jadwa, A la dina dana). Alaoui switches from Arabic to Spanish and Portuguese with admirable facility. The unfamiliar blend of sonorities (baroque orchestra with harpsichord, lute, theorbo and recorder, Balke's synths, Hassel's nasal trumpet, oriental percussion) works wonderfully well. The hypnotic finale is built around two long extemporations (10 and 12 minutes long, respectively): Thulâthiyat ('trilogy') is based on a poem by the great Sufi mystic Husayn Mansour Al-Hallaj (857-922) that describes the stages of the ascetic's path. Alaoui writes in the liner notes: "At first the consciousness remains external to the essence of ecstasy. It becomes an astonished spectator, then becomes disoriented, and finally joins the paroxysm, dispossessed by the ego in ecstasy: a ceaseless transformation through vital alternation without ever achieving permanent stability." The song opens with a percussion-underpinned recitation and steadily gathers momentum to a hypnotic climax.

'Toda ciencia trascendiendo' is based on a gentle, sombre march rhythm wrapped in adventurously modulating unisono strings and M'Kachiche's melancholy violin. Alaoui recites in an almost matter of fact way St John's 'Couplets written in a state of transcendental contemplation' in which he gives an account of how he found his way to a 'perfect realm of holiness and peace (...) beyond all science'. Only in the final line of each couplet, 'toda ciencia transcendiendo', Alaoui lets the voice soar to spine-tingling effect. A lively instrumental coda with Hassel's stratospheric trumpet hovering over insistent percussion, brings the album to an end.