Riad Abdel-Gawad, El Tarab El Aseel: Autochthonic Enchantment
Living in New York City, I'm exposed to a fair amount of Arabic music. But I know very little about it. So I don't have much context in which to place this recording by violinist Riad Abdel-Gawad. It sure sounds tasty and interesting, though.
Abdel-Gawad was born in Cairo, and although he was educated at Harvard and in western music conservatories, he explores his musical roots in the four pieces on this disc, mixing the taqasim (improvisational) tradition with tarab, the "performance practice of musical ecstasy." Adbel-Gawad and his group use the oud (Arab lute), riqq (Arab tambourine), qanun (Arab zither), and nay (Arab flute), all traditional acoustic instruments, together with the violin, which has been co-opted into Arab music (replacing the indigenous two-stringed kamangah).
My untrained ears can't tell for sure where composition ends and improvisation begins, or where the music adheres to historical forms and where it doesn't, but I am enjoying it just the same. And on that latter point, Abdel-Gawad says something very interesting in his liner notes: before the advent of recording technology, it was the natural state of musical traditions to evolve. Afterwards, certain recorded performances became canonical, and so a distinction arose between historically "accurate" performances and "evolutionary" or "experimental" music. This is just as true of Western musical traditions as Eastern. And it is, in a sense, an artificial distinction.
I don't have time to undertake a study of Arab musical traditions, and most likely you (dear Western reader) don't either. What you can do is listen to these long, twisting, alternately trance-like and dramatic pieces, and I'll wager you'll find it a rewarding experience.
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