Tag: kurdistan

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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.

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escapism

 
 

Waiting for Erik Gustafson of EPIC to talk about elephant songs for his Iraq Matters podcast over more than decent espresso at the Rand Gallery, Suleymaniyah. It’s the second day of Eid and the place is swarming with fifteen-year olds, grouped along gender lines and looking their best: skinny jeans, bow ties, pink polyester dresses, and, for the boys, the incomprehensible middle-eastern haircut – clipped close down the sides and back and a big mop on top, often asymmetrically shaped for heightened effect. The girls taller than the boys, who try to compensate with shadowy upper lips and studied-casual smoking around the bathrooms.

I’ve escaped my room – edit central, these days. How does one turn 20 hours of film into a 20-minute documentary? I’ve done a lot of short clips, but this is new. And exciting, obviously, but I need a break.

Although I must admit it’s not the first escapist move today – after cataloguing and reviewing all my material over the last few days, I felt like doing something concrete, and threw together a quick-and-dirty edit of the song Hewraman from our show at Caffe11 last Thursday, based on an idea by Ari Ali. The static camera was operated by Rebin Jaza, the moving images were shot by film maker and bear saviour San Saravan.

 
 

 
 

paqla
sahaloka paqla
After a good chat with Erik, during which we discussed topics ranging from intercultural collaboration to the economic side effects of donor money (to be broadcast in the nearish future), I walked down Salim Street. The Saholaka area (street corner, really) was busy as always, teeming with groups of men and women of all ages and of course lots of families. Happily munching on a portion of paqla, I once again congratulated myself on that moment of clarity, many decades ago, when I figured I should probably be a musician, because that would surely show me a lot of the world.

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teatime with the people

 
 

After arriving in hot and bone-dry Suleymaniyah a week ago I unpacked half my backpack, met up with my fellow musicians (happy reunions and pleasant nice-to-meet-yous), and we started working. We had a week to come up with a repertoire for the band, and were also intitiating a small group of enthousiastic local percussionists in the ancient arts of Indian rhythm and Balinese monkey dance. Lots to do. But on Tehrani percussionist and old friend Arash’s insistence, we took a one extended lunch break at the bazaar after a few days.
The core of our excursion was a visit to the legendary Shaeb Chaikhana, the People’s Teahouse. Frequented, supposedly, by artists and intellectuals (the male variety) who all drink strong black tea with too much sugar (“don’t stir!” is the advice to non-suspecting foreigners like yours truly) from iconic hourglasses and play backgammon and dominos. The noisier the better: the incessant banter and thick cigarette smoke are complemented with the clack-clack of ivory on ebony boards. (Or is it just wood and plastic.) The walls are lined with portraits of a whole variety of writers and thinkers and other inspirational characters, including a Dutch journalist who died here a few years back – the only woman to be eternalised on the walls here. Or, for that matter, to be seen anywhere on the premises. Arash, full of initiative and unafraid as always, went straight to the proprietor, shook both his hands and with his beautiful mixture of enthousiasm and humbleness asked him if we could come and play.

The only thing the man needed to know was when, the if was clearly not an issue. We settled on Thursday, panj shanbe in Farsi and something close enough in Kurdish.

A few days later we arrived at the teahouse with our cajon and jew’s harps after a hilarious taxi drive. We set up in a corner and started playing. I had no idea what to expect – would the be annoyed? amused? would they ignore us or enjoy our music, tell us to stop or buy us tea? Turned out we were actually quite welcome: while a large number of men simply continued playing their games, others came and stood around us, applauding enthousiastically and indeed bringing us more hot and sticky glasses. We tried out our mouth harp feature, which we were working on for the Caffe11 gig. We call it the lab chang concerto. (The actual Farsi name of the instrument is zanburak, but Arash prefers its Tajikistani name. And by doing so confuses the earwax out of everyone.)

 

kurdistan school audienceBesides the teahouse king, one of our new best friends here is the dean of the French school. We met her in the garden of Caffe11 one afternoon and got talking, like you do. We (enthousiastic Arash again, to be precise) offered her to come and play for her kids, and indeed we spent a lovely morning with some fifty kids of primary school age, clapping and moving along to the music. The tallest girl (you know how girls at some point just shoot up, becoming a head taller than all the surrounding boys?) shyly asked if she could do a très court dance and, armed with our visiting friend Neil’s FC Utrecht scarf, started moving to the music gracefully. To be joined within minutes by almost the entire group, to the amusement and endearment of most (including us, obviously) and the disapproval of some of the stricter teachers. Though rowdy clapping and yelling was acceptable for everyone.

 

school gigYet another expedition led us to the College of Fine Arts. Filming outdoors on the campus was no problem for the pointedly present police (bullet proof vests and guns that put me straight back in Pakistan) but the school’s security staff came and told me off. Once inside, we found ourselves in front of a crowd of students of composition, performance, and ethnomusicology. We had a nice chat about their views, methods, expecations and so on, including a discussion of the term ethnomusicology. Not a favourite of mine, but they insisted that it was important as the additive “ethno” indicates that there is fieldwork involved, rather than the pure literature study they considered “musicology” to be. Unfortunately we couldn’t play “just yet” and were also not allowed to film. To discuss this, we were introduced to their professor. A brilliant man who studied composition in Belfast and played us a beautiful (and very advanced) string quartet he wrote for the Arditti Quartet a few years back. He somewhat reluctantly gave us permission to film at least our talks with the students but when we got back to the students’ classroom they’d all left for lunch. We were expected back at the ranch too and left, happy with the chats and hoping to keep in touch with dr Abdullah.

And after all this, we’re now getting ready for tonight’s festivities here at Caffe 11. Looking forward, excited and curious how we’ll get through the repertoire of diverse and sometimes fairly complex pieces we whipped up in the last week. Khaheem deed, we shall see. (Yes I know it’s Farsi but enough people here speak the Iranian language and enough Kurdish words are pretty close to give me the idea that linguistically I at least somewhat relate to where I am.) A report, including a short documentary about the whole project, will follow shortly, inshallah.

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elephant on the road

 
 

First time I’m on an airplane in a long time (my last flight was a domestic Indian Anand-Delhi blitzrun more than a year ago when I unexpectedly needed a No Objection Certificate from the Dutch Embassy to obtain a visa for Pakistan, the first country to cross after leaving India on my way to the lowlands on an old motorcycle loaded with drums). Take-off will always be a miracle, the rest is as tedious as it ever was. The air host family is currently doing their dance of the trolleys – back and forth and back and forth and just when you think they’re ready to serve you that much-desired drink (any liquid would do fine at this point, when insides of noses have turned into brittle crusts), they back away to the other end of the tube again. The atmosphere is dry and hot, and I’m filled with anticipation of what will happen on the other side of air travel limbo. I’m on my way to Suleymaniyah, in Kurdish Iraq, to do an Elephant Songs project with local musicians and Iranians I met on my drumbiker trip last year. The adventure is commissioned by a Dutch NGO.

Though originally intended to celebrate no rouz, this part of the world’s new year celebration on 21 March, the festivities in Suleymaniyah proved a little more difficult to organise than expected. So much so that I lost some of the Iranian musicians I invited – clarinettist Rouzbeh whom I so pleasantly worked with last year, and santoor player Kayvan Farzin whom I was looking forward to meet both had to accept other gigs when the event dates remained unclear for months. (As it happens, Rouzbeh and his band Pallett will be in Europe while I’m in Iraq; with a bit of luck I’ll join them for a bit when I return.) In addition, two classical instrumentalists from Tehran I would have loved to have in the band couldn’t find a way to travel; they considered the overland border crossing too dangerous for female musicians.

ghq
elephant songs ghq, brussels
My dear friends Arash and Kaveh however are on their way as I type this, so we’ll have a chance to continue where we left off after our fully improvised show at Amirali’s Parkingallery last year. We’ll be joined by bassist Ari Ali from Suleymaniyah and hopefully we’ll find one or two more musicians, as well as some people who’d like to join our percussion workshop. The final weeks of summer in Belgium I’ve been working on my Elephant Songbook, preparing melodies, grooves, improvisation instructions, development approaches. Asked the others to bring ideas as well, to create new music elephant song style: not finding the lowest common denominator but combining backgrounds, mixing and juxtaposing them. With all that done, this is the moment to let go of my plans and expectations and work with what we’ll turn out to have, to create an evening of fantastic music from what’s there. It seems the Bhagavad Gita forgot to mention <disclaimer> or maybe I just missed it </disclaimer> that apart from not worrying about the results of our work (our only duty is the work itself), it’s counterproductive to hold on to our expectations as well. So here’s to using preparation as a safety net only and being open to everything.

Touchdown in a few hours, no idea where I’ll sleep but all will be well. Looking forward to a week of music, nice weather, catching up with friends, reportedly good coffee at our rehearsal and concert venue Caffe 11. Once again travelling to play music. Curious & excited about the collaboration, the audience and their reactions, the artistic results. For those of you who won’t make it to Suleymaniyah on 10 October, I’ll post a 20 minute documentary some time in the week following the festivities. Stay tuned.