elephant songs in suleymaniyah

 
 

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October 2013 saw another episode of Elephant Songs, my ongoing project in which musicians from different backgrounds meet and create original music together. This time, the backdrop was Suleymaniyah, the economic heart of Iraqi Kurdistan. An anonymous development aid NGO commissioned me to invite musicians from Iran (where I spent a few months on my drumbiker trip in 2012) and bring them together with colleagues in Suleymaniyah. The resulting line-up could be called a worldjazz quintet: Savel Fatih (Suly) on saxophone (consistently called saxyphone by everyone), Kaveh Kamjou (Tehran) on oud, the bass guitar was played by Ari Ali (Suly), percussion by Arash Lotfi (Tehran), and yours truly (from the low lands, Brussels / Amsterdam) played the drums. We spent a week preparing an evening’s worth of music, leading to a concert at Caffe11 on the night of 10 October. Next to rehearsing, Arash and I taught a rhythm workshop to local musicians too. We played one of the pieces we worked on as the opening piece for the final concert.

The group was a great mixture of cultures and backgrounds. Ari lived in Baghdad for most of his adult life and claimed his Arabic might be better than his Kurdish. Meanwhile Kaveh, though living in Tehran since a long time, is an Iranian Kurd and as it turned out, his Kermanshah Kurdish and Iraqi Kurdish were close enough to be mutually understandable. The Iranian language Farsi itself is apparently not too distant from Kurdish and moreover many Kurds speak it, so the week’s communication sounded in at least three languages. From a musical perspective, Savel is equally happy inventing folklorish songs, like the tune Fisherman Culture he contributed, and playing American jazz traditionals – in fact he suggested to play the classic Scott Joplin hit The Entertainer, the only non-original piece of the evening. Arash is at least as proud of his Persian music skills as of his vast knowledge of European classical music, while your humble correspondent has dabbled in a few different traditions himself as well.

Creating new music with a group as diverse as this is obviously not without challenges. “This melody has no good place on my instrument”, someone said when someone else was trying to teach them a new song. How to respect people’s backgrounds & preferences whilst still daring to challenge them? This question was faced by all of us, as we all took turns in leading the creation of a piece.

Savel came up with the afore-mentioned Fisherman Culture, on a groove that Arash was playing around with. Kaveh brought a beautiful tune he called Khazan, Farsi for autumn – the season that was just beginning. Arash and I devised some rhythmical games for the introduction. Arash has been exploring the mouth harp in recent times – as he already showed in last year’s improvised trio gig in Tehran (featuring Kaveh as well) – and wanted to create a piece showcasing five different ones. This resulted in his Lab Chang Concerto – including kadenzen, of course – that we tried out in a few places before the official show, the Shaeb Chaikhana among them. Ari contributed a very danceable reggae version of the traditional Kurdish melody Hewraman that he recently discovered working on another project, and finally my melody Muggosphere got a new treatment, including some fantastic oud work by Kaveh.

I made a short documentary about the process of creating music together, about beginnings of beautiful friendships, showing markets and people, tea houses and coffee bars. And stroopwafels. Enjoy!

elephant song birth, a short documentary about the elephant songs music meeting in suleymaniyah, iraqi kurdistan, in october 2013

The show was filmed by the great San Saravan and his friend Rebin Jaza; many others – including all musicians, cultural network wizard Neil van der Linden and surprise-visitor (and my father) Jan van Hulzen – have pointed cameras at whatever they considered relevant, funny, useful, or otherwise interesting enough to save for posterity.
Elephant Songs in Suleymaniyah was another fantastic project. I’m currently working on new plans involving Tehran and possible Tajikistan, stay tuned for updates. Meanwhile, let’s see the response this doculette will generate. Any thoughts, criticisms, suggestions welcome.

elephant songs: last stop utrecht

 
 

On 2 November, my drumbiker trip Elephant Songs, a musical journey from South India to the Netherlands on an old motorcycle loaded with drums, was concluded with a beautiful evening at the Utrecht theatre farm rood|noot. A full house enjoyed fantastic Indian food cooked by Sanderien, Peter, Irene, and Suzy while watching a selection of filmclips of the trip or checking out the morning pictures (now also available as a fast-forward film clip: 255 photos in 55 seconds, with music from the show at Darbast, Tehran).

In one of the many rooms of the building we then proceeded to play a concert in two parts. The first half featured different combinations of musicians Yedo Gibson (saxophones), Ayman Asfour (violin), Nizar Rohana (oud), Khaled Kaddal (guitar), Jornt Duyx (guitar, accordeon), Fabrizio Colonna (guitar), Marko Bonarius (double bass), and yours truly (drums).

oorlogsleed

3+2+2+3

The second half of the concert was a return to older Amsterdam days, when I often played duo with guitarist extraordinaire Alfredo Genovesi – for improvised or set dance shows, with the Phillip Project, as part of a larger groups, or like tonight – just the two of us, enjoying playing together.

improvisation by alfredo genovesi & robbert van hulzen

The night before we had the honour to make an appearance on the great programme Virus, which is aimed at bringing “classical music” to a younger audience. Wouldn’t have been complete without us, obviously. We played three tunes for an enthousiastic studio audience, broadcast live at the Dutch Radio 4 and the internet. Tonight’s Elephant Ensemble featured Yedo Gibson (saxophones), Jornt Duyx (guitar), Marko Bonarius (double bass), and your humble correspondent (drums).

oorlogsleed

zam-zamah

muggosphere

brrrliner elephant songs: church cucumbers & suicidal pizza

 
 

And how long is your piece?

A surprising question. My drums and I had arrived at the Pizza Suicide Collective‘s Julian Percy Afterparty at Zur Möbelfabrik in trendy Prenzlauerberg expecting to find a selection of likeminded musicians to play an evening of good old-fashioned improvised music. Turned out these were all groups and projects with a clear Item they were going to Present in this squatter-chic venue. But no reason to be worried – I was very happy to find Taishi, whom I’d met earlier in the week in the DIY Church described below, willing to join me, and our Piece was a ten-minute improvisation with voice, electronics, and drums.

improvisation by taishi nagasaka & robbert van hulzen

A few days earlier, after we met during a pleasant coffeebreak around the Janowitzbrücke, Stein had invited me to his radio show DIY Church – his internet radio show that has been going for about two years now, every monday evening from 7 till 9. I brought my friend Jeremy – who not only composes and organises odd musical interventions for unsuspecting diners and the shopping public, but also plays just about any blown instrument – and with him and electronician Minuit Delacroix and vocalist / cucumber specialist Taishi Nagasaka we filled two nice hours with chatting, playing music that turned out surprisingly dubby, listening to the sounds of vegetables, sharing stories, and answering Stein’s questions.

free dub improv live at diy cucumber church

elephant songs: pil ahang at darbast

 
 

darbast
elephant songs at darbast, tehran * poster by amirali ghasemi
When discussing possibilities for playing gigs in Tehran, Amirali (at whose Parkingallery we played on 10 June) put me in touch with Darbast, the concert division of the Mohsen Gallery. After yet another ramble involving more of Tehran’s highways then I really needed at 8 am, I found the place, hidden in a residential area just off Modares Highway – but only reachable through an impossible maze of small streets. Though the problem started already when trying to locate the exit: many streets are known by their old names – while of course only their official, post-revolution names are signposted. I was told to leave the motorway onto Zafar Street, but was close to the Parkway Bridge when it dawned on me I might have missed it. Turned out the street I was looking for is now called Dastgerdi. Of course. But green tea with the lovely Persian sugar subsitute that I forgot the name of (help!) and chocolates made me quickly forget my miseries, and I had a very nice chat with Mohsen boss Ehsan and his people. Oh how I like these people’s sense of time, so much closer to my own: short-term thinking is not frowned upon, but rather the default mode. So we settled on the dates for two shows, and I left with a bag of cds of Mahriz Records, the label that Ehsan recently got involved in, founded by Nader many years ago. Some of the musicians on the albums might be interested in joining, I was told, as might some of the members of Pallett, the band I saw play at Darbast a few days before.

rehearsal
rehearsal with mohammad azmand, soheil peyghambari, daryoush azar, robbert van hulzen, arash lotfi
Over the next few days, I put together two bands for the evening, which both would play a set. A jazz-and-surroundings line-up with Soheil Peyghambari (clarinet), Mohamad Azmand (electric guitar), Daryoush Azar (double bass), Arash Lotfi (percussion), and yours truly (drums) and a more world/folk oriented combination with the musicians of Pallett: Omid Nemati (voice), Rouzbeh Esfandarmaz (clarinet), Kaveh Salehi (acoustic guitar), Behnam Moayerian (oud), Mahyar Tahmasebi (cello), Hessamedin Mohamadianpour (percussion), and the same bass & drums tandem consisting of Daryoush and myself.

rehearsal: rouzbeh esfandarmaz, omid nemati, daryoush azar * photo by shakiba faezipour
rehearsal
rehearsal: hessamedin mohamadian & robbert van hulzen * photo by sanam rahimi

After a week of intense rehearsal, we played two sold out nights (apparently all tickets went in half a day) for very happy audiences.

azmand, peyghambari, van hulzen
mohammad azmand, soheil peyghambari, robbert van hulzen * photo by arash ashoorinia

tahmasebi, moayerian, esfandarmaz
mahyar tahmasebi, behnam moayerian, rouzbeh esfandarmaz * photo by arash ashoorinia

elephant songs in lahore – multiple contacts

 
 

On Thursday 26 April, a fantastic selection of musicians from the Lahore rock and fusion scene joined elephant songs for a great show at True Brew Studios, Lahore. The evening was recorded by Jamal Rahman and Fatima Shah, and later mixed by Floris van Bergeijk. Jawad Shahid and his crew filmed the event.

We started the evening with a group of musicians you may remember from the music meeting on the rooftop of my hotel a few weeks earlier: maestro Akmal Qadri and his son Ali Abbas on bansuri, Kashif Ali Dani on tabla, and myself on drums – joined for the occasion by guitarist Danish Khwaja of Poor Rich Boy fame.

zam-zamah

raag hans dhun

And now for something completely different: a free rock trio featuring Japanese synth wizard Masaki Okamoto (with his new synth) and riff master Danish Khwaja.

here’s johnny

With rockstar bass player Sameer Ahmed of co-Ven fame and electric sitarist Jamil Rakae we played a beautiful jazzy world set, for lack of a better term. (Can someone with better pr skills help me out here?) Video of this and the other tracks will be up shortly, check back or subscribe to updates. For the time being, enjoy the audio, as stream or download.

rocks?

Here’s a glimpse of what we finished the show with – featuring Danish Khwaja, Sameer Ahmad, Kami Paul, Raavail Sattar, and yours truly.

takatak

 
 

Takatak is the onomatopeic (or, as the Germans in an unexpected but most appreciated fit of romance put it, onomatopoetic) name for a dish consisting mainly, if I’m not mistaken, of chopped up goat’s testicles. All over the old town of Lahore you can hear the sound of chopping knives on metal plates, takatak takatak.

Takatak is also the name of Zain Peerzada‘s trash metal band. On Sunday 1 April, they played at the Guitar School in the chique Lahori suburb Defence. In a room the size of an ambitious living room at the top floor of the Guitar School, some thirty or forty music lovers gathered. Shorts, uncovered heads, beards, metal shirts, kurtas, Urdu, and English were happily mixing, showing that there is an alternative to the polarised views of most (western) media.

I missed most of Keeray Makoray’s show, though I did notice the singer has a great voice and likes Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. And here, like in India, George Michael’s Careless Whispers enjoys a continuing popularity, for reasons that are a little beyond me.
Takatak was fantastic – tight, fast, and loud like a metal band should be, and with enough unexpected turns to keep me captivated from beginning till end. Unfortunately I’ll miss their next show – a free fight gala, where men in cages beat each other to pulp to the sounds of crunching guitars and growling vocals.

underwear gig @ studio 7, 12 august 2011

 
 

duck projects 1
sharon smith, santiago botero, robbert van hulzen * photograph by michael evans

 
 

Before rushing off to the Buurtboerderij to jam on Pumporgan tunes with Dirk Bruinsma, Jasper Stadhouders, and John Dikeman, I had the honour of playing in Sharon Smith’s rock band in Studio 7, put together by the inimitable Katie Duck.

duck projects
sharon smith, santiago botero, robbert van hulzen, katie duck, alfredo genovesi * photograph by michael evans

 
 

 
 

 
 

El Torrero on electric bass (an object previously known as an electric bass, by the end of the show), Grandma Fred on guitars, effects, and pseudoporn, and yours truly a.k.a. John the Robbert on drums. Of course it was loud, over the top, fantastic in many ways, and too long.

duck projects
santiago botero, sharon smith, katie duck, robbert van hulzen * photograph by michael evans