speaking of the Master Musicians of Jajouka!

Jeff went to see them play recently in Portland and loved the show.

We saw them years ago in Seattle, and I remember the line of musicians, drummers and horn players, lined up on stage, and an older musician dancing across the stage having the time of his life, playing on his mizmar! It was a great show.

Jeff saw this tour and some of his words about the music was that it was powerful and trancey, with a folkloric and tribal edge. He got their latest CD, below, and it is fab… the cover art is also fantastic, with a simple and powerful graphic image of the horn players on the front, and the drummers on the back, very cool…

not only did the class love my Arabic Cafe CD that I played, and we danced to many songs from that CD, but they loved one of my all time favs, Whirling, by Omar Faruk Tekbilek. He is an amazing man as well as a master musician, and I love all of his CDs. but this one is definitely my favorite along with the title track. I’ve been playing it for years, and it still moves me, and makes me want to move my body too.

Jeff, from Gypsy Caravan, is truly inspired by Faruk and his music, having studied ney and zurna with him on and off for years.

other excellent CDs by Faruk is Fata Morgana, with Michael Askill. this has some great danceable songs too, and is wonderful listening music. He has many other CDs, as he seems to be very prolific, and likes to collaborate with other musicians.

A wonderful zurna piece is called Barburi, off of “One’. I can’t sit still to this song. Let me know what you think!
Oh, by the way, the zurna is that wonderful, loud, trilling, double-reeded horn, like the Master Musicians of Jajouka play, that Jeff plays and I love.

Enjoy, you might need earplugs!

I wanted some inspiration as I was planning my classes for tonight. I dug out Arabic Cafe, the most amazing 3 cd set of pure arabic chilled beats, I bought when I was in london several years ago. It has beautiful soothing tunes, with some funky chillin’ songs, with some melodic songs, and definitley some groovin’ beats. For the longest time you could not find it in the states, but now you can, I am so glad to see. 3 cds of so many different artists, you can’t beat it, and you sure can dance to it

So this is what I am dancing to, listening to, getting inspired by….