MUSIC: RAHIM ALHAJ, HOSSEIN ALIZADEH & DJIVAN GASPARYAN
RootsWorld, CT
May 17 2007
Rahim Alhaj
When the Soul Is Settled: Music of Iraq
Smithsonian Folkways
Hossein Alizadeh & Djivan Gasparyan
Endless Vision: Persian and Armenian Songs
World Village
The last century has visited more than its share of tragedy and
suffering upon Armenia, Iraq and Iran, and it would be easy to
romanticize the musical heritage of the region. The world-music panel
at the January 2007 Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP)
conference in New York attracted a striking mix of people, among them a
young Iraqi exile who related the difficulties he confronts in seeking
to study Iraqi classical music with elderly tradition bearers, and
spoke passionately to the audience about the music’s tenuous future
in his homeland and abroad. His concerns are certainly borne out by
recent history in Iraq, although the future of Iraqi music may not
be quite as bleak as he seemed to suggest.
Consider the work of another Iraqi exile, Rahim Alhaj, who studied
oud in Baghdad with Salim Abdul Kareem and Munir Bashir (1930-1997),
the latter widely regarded as the most important oud player of the
contemporary era, as a master of Iraqi maqam (roughly, "mode"). In
Iraq, "maqam" refers to a sense of melodic movement and structure;
to a specifically Iraqi vocal tradition; and to the concept of a
spiritual station.
Shortly after graduating with honors from the Baghdad Conservatory of
Fine Arts (1990), Alhaj fled Iraq, dogged by the Hussein regime. He
lived for a decade in Syria and Jordan before gaining asylum in
the United States in 2000; Alhaj now resides in Albuquerque. On
the strength of When the Soul Is Settled, Rahim Alhaj is a worthy
successor to Bashir. The repertoire consists of nine extended taqsim
("improvised") maqamat in pan-Iraqi style. The music represents
a continuum that extends from North Africa into the Levant and
eastward into Central Asia. Alhaj is ably accompanied by Lebanese
master percussionist Souhail Kaspar, trained at the Conservatory
of Traditional Arabic Music, Aleppo, Syria, and now resident in Los
Angeles. The extensive notes (with musical transcriptions, bibliography
and discography) are in English and Arabic.
Endless Vision unites Armenian virtuoso Djivan Gasparyan on duduk
(an eight-holed, double-reed flute made of apricot wood, derived from
the regional shepherd’s flute) and Iranian master Hossein Alizadeh
on tar and shurangiz (new Iranian lute). Their live 2003 outdoor
performance at Tehran’s Niavaran Palace was accompanied by a trio of
singers (in Armenian, Azeri and Persian), Armen Ghazaryan (duduk),
Vazgen Markaryan (bass duduk), and the Hamavayan Ensemble (vocals,
oud, shurangiz, percussion).
Born in the Soviet Republic of Armenia and trained at the Komitas
Conservatory of Yerevan, Gasparyan is responsible for elevating
the duduk to classical status in Armenian traditional music. His
career began in 1948 with the Tatool Altounian National Song and Dance
Ensemble and the Yerevan Philharmonic; some listeners may recognize his
work from the soundtrack of Martin Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of
Christ. Gasparyan has recorded with Peter Gabriel, the Kronos Quartet,
the Los Angeles Philharmonic and numerous others.
Alizadeh began his career in the late 1970s after studying Persian
classical music at the University of Teheran’s School of Music;
he conducts the Iranian National Orchestra of Radio and Television,
and enjoys an international reputation as a soloist and composer at
home and abroad.
This meld of Persian and Armenian songs unfolds slowly and
dramatically; the musicians and singers give one another plenty of room
to explore the delicate nuances of these complementary and evocative
musical traditions, whose microtonal character is accented by the
plaintive duduk and the extraordinary overtone singing of Hourshid
Biabani, Afsaneh Rasaei and Ali Samadpour.
Reflecting upon this remarkable performance ought to call into question
the wisdom of perpetrating in Iran the militarist folly and human
sacrifice that already haunt Armenian and Iraqi history. By contrast,
as Gandhi observed when asked his opinion of Western civilization,
"It would be an excellent idea." – Michael Stone
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