Now in its second year, Transcender 2010, part of the Barbican's programme of contemporary music takes a wide look at transcendental, devotional, spiritual and sacred music - music designed to transport the listener, to conjure trances or summon states of ecstasy, taking the audience closer to their god - or perhaps to someone else’s. This year Transcender focuses on the musical exchanges and mutual influences between East and West featuring Ali Qasimov with Homayun Sakhi, Faiz Ali Faiz with Titi Robin, Najma Akhtar with Gary Lucas and Parvathy Baul plus Islaja. Concert details in full article.
Wednesday 15 September 7.3Opm
Transcender: Islaja plus guest
Café Oto
Tickets £10
Produced by the Barbican
A night of electronic music influenced by the shamanic traditions of Northern Europe. A regular collaborator with psych-folk and improv artists Kemialliset Ystdvdt and Avarus, Finnish-born Islaja’s music is born from experimentation, uniting traditional Finnish forest mystery and a radical song universe. Islaja’s spectral sound suggests pathways to other worlds, with echoes of religious chants underpinned by steady percussion, and fluid vocals melding with drones. Her new album Keraaminen Pää(Ceramicfleaci) is out on Fonal records in September.
Café Oto, 22 Ashwin Street, Dalston, London E8 3DL 020 7923 1231
Friday 17 September 7.3Opm
Transcender: Najma Akhtar & Gary Lucas plus Parvathy Baul
Tickets £15/20
Produced by the Barbican
Two very different, but equally transporting, takes on Indian vocal traditions. Parvathy Baul is a young performer of ancient and hypnotic Baul songs, while Najma Akhtar’s music-making springs from a love affair with the Ghazal tradition of South Asian mystical poetry. Akhtar has been at the forefront of the World Music scene for the last two decades. Born and raised in England she has nonetheless remained rooted in the music of India, her ancestral home. Her first (1987) recording with Triple Earth, Qareeb, was a groundbreaking fusion of jazz and Indian Ghazals based on Urdu poems. She has gone on to prove herself as an extraordinarily versatile artist, using modern jazz influences with Indian vocals to create a haunting fusion of eastern and western styles. Her current collaboration with guitarist Gary Lucas is a thrilling example. Grammy-nominated songwriter and composer Lucas has more than 20 acclaimed solo albums to date, and is a soundtrack composer for film and television. Cited as one of the " 100 Greatest Living Guitarists" in Classic Rock magazine, his 2009 collaboration with Indian vocalist Najma Akhtar, Rishte, was a major hit in World Music charts. Lucas also co-leads Fast ‘N’ Bulbous, devoted to the music of rock visionary Captain Beefheart, in whose band Lucas first put himself on the musical map.
‘Her(Akhtar’s) voice is a heaven-sent gift’— Songlines
Saturday 18 September 7.3Opm
Transcender: Jaadu with Faiz Au Faiz and Titi Robin plus Seyir
Tickets £1 0 / 1 3.50 / 1 8.50 / 22.50
Produced by the Barbican
This concert offers two fascinating dialogues between Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern traditions. Headlining is a collaboration which must have been written in the stars, between arguably the greatest living Qawwali singer, Faiz Ali Faiz, and the brilliant maverick guitarist Titi Robin.
Both artists have long been fascinated by other musical worlds, Faiz Ali Faiz pursuing collaborations with flamenco artists and Robin with Rajasthani dance musicians. Since their first concert together in August 2006 their musical dialogue, with its strong gypsy and flamenco roots, has been a developing project, combining innovation and tradition in an intensely powerful stage act.
"This isn't qawwali plus some novel colouring, but a real meeting of minds and styles ... this recording breaks newground "— Songlines review of Jaadu
Born in 1 962, Faiz Ali Faiz was trained in Hindustani (Northern Indian) classical music and Sufi devotional music, and made numerous recordings for Pakistan’s domestic market. In keeping with his love for traditional qawwali, he has recorded a great deal of standard repertoire and much of his work has been a homage to the qawwali master, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. In June 2005, the Faiz Ali Faiz ensemble were joined by Spanish flamenco artists Miguel Poveda, Duquende and Chicuelo for a groundbreaking collaboration at the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music. Their performance underlined the common roots of flamenco and qawwali in the subcontinent.
Born and bred in the west of France, Thierry ‘Titi’ Robin is a musical internationalist, brilliantly combining flamenco guitar with Arabic oud and the dance music of Rajasthan’s snake charmers. He has acknowledged learning much from France’s Gypsy and North African communities; recently his interest in the music of the Gypsies has lead to him collaborating with two legendary female artists — Robin backed Macedonia’s Gypsy Queen Esma Redzepova on her 2007 album Mon Historie and tours widely with Gulabi Sapera and her ensemble. While
Seyir is another fascinating collaboration, between Cretan lyre player Ross Daly and a group of Greek and Turkish musicians. The ensemble pairs Daly with another lyra player, Kelly Thoma. They are joined by three of Turkey’s foremost virtuosi: Yurdal Tokcan (oud), Göksel Baktagir (kanun and Ugur t~ik (cello), as well as by the remarkable Israeli percussionist of Turkish origin Zohar Fresco. Seyir is a celebration of Eastern Mediterranean modal music, introducing listeners to ecstatic Balkan and Cretan rhythms, and to the unique melodic beauty of the Ottoman classical tradition
Sunday 1 9 September 7.3Opm
Transcender: AIim Qasimov Ensemble plus Homayun Sakhi
Tickets £1 0 I 1 3.50 / 1 8.50 / 22.50
Produced by the Barbican in association with Serious
Alim Qasimov is one of Azerbaijan’s most beloved musicians, a virtuoso described by Le Monde as possessing ‘one ofthe most beautiful voices ofour era~ He is also a master of the disciplined balance between memorization and extemporization that is an essential part of the art of mugham. Like other traditions of court or classical music that span the core Muslim world from Casablanca, Morocco, to Kashgar in western China, mugham is rooted in a system of melodic modes and motifs that provide a framework for both improvised performances and fixed compositions.
Beyond this, it aspires to the creation of hal, an Arabic word that has strong associations with Sufism and the mystical dimensions of Islam. For Sufis, halis a state of spiritual awakening that creates an openness to the presence of the Divine. Qasimov, translating halinto the language of his art, says, ‘It’s not something you can pull out of your pocket ... I can’t command myself to get inspired at a particular moment and perform something. There’s an atmosphere that starts to nourish us that comes from beyond our own will, and that’s the source of the unpredictability in our music. It’s almost a feeling of ecstasy that leads to some kind of meditation. There isn’t any point in performing mugham without haL’
Born in 1 957, Qasimov grew up 1 00 kilometers from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Following a stint in the army and a spell working in the oil industry, he began his conservatory studies with Agha Khan Abdullaev, who instructed him in the art of the virtuosic improvisatory vocal style mug/7am. In 1 999, in recognition for his musical contributions to world peace, Qasimov was awarded the coveted International IMC-UNESCO Music Prize (previous winners have included Yehudi Menuhin, Ravi Shankar, Olivier Messiaen and Daniel Barenboim). He also famously sang a duet with cult singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley at a small festival in France in 1 995 which appeared on Buckley’s Jeff Buckley Live from L’Olympia album.
‘His voice soars and the mood is transformed. The effect is devastating, the people watching seized by the power of the ancient poetry’- The Times
Homayun Sakhi is widely seen as the outstanding Afghan rubâb player of his generation, a brilliant virtuoso also endowed with a charismatic stage presence. Remarkably, during Afghanistan’s long years of armed conflict, when music was heavily censored, repressed, and, for a period, totally banned, the classical rubâb style to which Homayun has devoted his career not only survived but reached new creative heights.
Homayun Sakhi was born in Kabul in 1 976 into one of Afghanistan’s leading musical families. From the age of ten, he studied rubâb with his father, Ghulam Sakhi. The rubâb itself is of Central Asian origin - one of a family of double-chambered lutes that includes, among others, the Iranian tar, Tibetan danyen, and Pamir rubâb. While rooted in the raga tradition of North India, the music performed on the Afghan rubâb also has strong stylistic links to Iran; at the same time the tabla that accompanies the rubâb and express the music’s subtle rhythms, is indisputably Indian. Similarly, Homayun’s performance style has been shaped not only by the musical traditions to which Afghan music is geographically and historically linked, but by his lively interest in contemporary music from around the world.
Presented in collaboration with the Aga Khan Music Initiative, a programme of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.
Concerts at the Barbican Hall, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS unless stated Box Office: 0845 120 7550 www.barbican.org.uk
