A DIP IN THE OCEAN
the moussem of
sidi mustafa
Featuring the Andalus Orchestra of Tetouan. Director Sidi Muhammad Amin el-Akrami (violin) and the singers of Larache, Tetouan, Casablanca and Fez.
2CD SET
" Some of the great spiritual music of the world, rarely heard but strangely familiar - its thousand year-old tradition must have influenced a Northern Europe coming out of the dark ages - played and sung here by today's greatest exponents, this is sublime music for the heart, body and soul "
RICHARD THOMPSON
LINER NOTES
Classical Andalusi singing and instrumental music at its most ecstatic. These unrehearsed live recordings were made in the summer of 2001 in Larache, a small sea-side holiday resort and fishing port on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. Sidi Mustafa Mesamri, a native of Larache and himself a singer invited some friends and acquaintances to a private celebration at his house. He tempted the best Moroccan singers and musicians he could find to a few days beside the ocean to relax and unwind. What you hear on these two CDs is part of the final night with some of the Andalusi Orchestra of Tetouan, accompanying a large group of singers from Larache, Tetouan, Casablanca and Fez.
The orchestra normally performs in formal concerts around Morocco and further afield in Europe but this was a night off for private entertainment. The first CD presents the unique combination of voices, two violins and viola (played traditionally on the lap), qanun, rebab, oud, darbugha (hand drum) and tarr (small tambourine) accompanying the hadra, the dance of invocation well known in the zawiyyas of sufi orders in North Africa but also common at public events and weddings. The second CD is predominantly singing, hadra and percussion, finishing as on the first CD with the recitation of Qur'an by Abu Bakr Siddiq, Imam and Hafiz from Ksar Kebir, a town nearby and is in a traditional unique Andalusi style not heard outside North Africa.
This style of recitation, singing and instrumental music has come down to us through an oral tradition dating back a thousand years to the royal courts of Cordoba. Even if the meaning of the words is inaccessible to the western listener the singing and music is universally understood. What is unusual on these recordings is the exuberant blend of pure Andalus and Gnawa rythms of Saharan Africa.
The qasidas (a poetic form) that are sung here are drawn from the huge corpus of classical poetry famous throughout the Arab speaking world and include excerpts from the beautiful Burda and Hamziyya of Busiri and qasidas by Shushtari, Haraq and other lesser known poets. They are poems in ecstatic praise of God and the Prophet Muhammad and are famous throughout North Africa and the rest of the Muslim world.
The price for recording live in Morocco is the occasional dropped tea tray, the patter of private conversation and the ever-present wedding celebration two blocks away - and of course the mobile phone which mercifully only features once on these recordings. To the fastidious perfectionist this is irritating but for those who wish to participate in the spirit of the event they are indispensable.
Photography: Peter Sanders
Executive Producer: Mustafa Mesamri
Produced, Recorded and Edited by Ian Whiteman with the help of Peter Sanders
Copyright Qasida 2001
First Released on Ihya Records, Toronto in 2002
(some of these are still available - see sales)
