Tag: performance

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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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dinner music

 
 
Celebrity chef Herman den Blijker wanted us to stay all night. But we had other places to go, however beautiful (and ambient-music-inspiring) the accoustics in the high-ceilinged entrance of his place were.

What places? Why, restaurants, of course. The latest sensation in dinner music, guitarist Lukas Simonis, Peter van Bergen, and yours truly pack all the energy and most of the notes of your usual digestive-jazz combo’s full night into bursts of maximum 10 minutes, after which we quickly move on to the next place. The aim of all this on Friday 19 April was to give the dinner guests on the fancy Rotterdam Wilhelminapier a taste of what was going on at the Red Ear Festival for experimental jazz and environs.
red ear

live @ lantaren / venster

One, two, three, go! Freestyle. No prior agreements about form, key, mood. Just act, and react. An intense form of working together, especially with people you haven’t played with before – will vocabularies match, will we “feel” each other enough to follow, contrast, complement each other? Do our repertoires of tricks and phrases work with the others’, do we inspire each other enough to find ways together, surprise ourselves, challenge and feed each other, and above all create interesting music?

Whether we succeeded? That I leave to you to decide, dear listener. But I had a fantastic evening.

The Red Ear Restaurant Tour was organised by Hajo Doorn & Worm. Suyin Gisela Ridderstaat took photos.

Hans Wessels made a short film clip about the festival.

 
 

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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

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burootje beuk

 
 

more videos below

antwerp
antwerp in autumn
Not entirely sure what to do now the trip was almost over, I decided to to enjoy the early autumn light in beautiful Antwerp. From there, one cold and sunny morning I rode into the Netherlands to play with Rik van Iersel‘s Beukorkest at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. On my way there however there was something else I urgently had to take care of – legalising my bike.
No one seemed to really care I arrived at the registration office with my Nepali plates – and that was only the beginning.

Hmm, that front wheel has some play in the bearings. What’s the official margin? None. Rear wheel – same story. The indicators, do they work? Sometimes… That’s ok, on a bike this old they’re not compulsory anyway. What about the brake light? Uhmm… You’ll fix all this, won’t you? Of course. Then all that was left was verifying that this was indeed the bike that was described in its Nepali registration papers. There was some doubt whether the bike was as old as it pretended to be, the speedometer and a few other things looking too new in the opinion of the friendly offical. But in the end it was decided that matching frame and engine numbers sufficed, and the Dutch papers would be in the mail shortly.

beukorkest
beukorkest announcement * by rob benders
I think I wasn’t really supposed to use the bike till then, but with my frontier insurance papers in my pocket I felt safe enough and rode into the centre of the Dutch city of lights, Eindhoven, to find a good coffee and subsequently the Burootje Beukorkest – a combination of art gallery and concert venue that was part of the Dutch Design Week.
I’d found Rik online when looking for musicians in the low lands, and he kindly invited me to come join the festivities in Eindhoven. As part of the Design Week, the Beukorkest was housed in one of a row of houses still under construction. As much art gallery as concert venue, with Heet Brood‘s toasties from heaven in the garden.

After a day of playing and hanging and checking out other activities in the festival, I curled up on the short sofa in our gallery. Frozen stiff I got up before dawn and embarked on the Coldest Ride Ever to the next adventure – first rehearsals for Isabella Green with Ensemble Gending and Dyane Donck. This Elephant Songs chapter will be concluded shortly with a party at rood|noot in Utrecht – food, music, stories, films. After that, many more musical journeys, meeting local musicians and playing with them, will follow, insallah.

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homely elephant improvisations

 
 

When I visited Berlin in 2007, I lived in my yellow camper van in the Volkspark Friedrichshain amongst other mobile-home dwellers during what must have the coldest spring since the banana war. Snowstorm on 21 March. The Kastanienallee in nearby Prenzlauerberg welcomed me with its squatted cinemas, small dance studios, open source computer workshops, independent cafés, and underground venues.
Now, five years later, a lot has changed. Cheap food is still widely available, but is now washed down with latte machiatos by people wearing designer shirts. The buildings look fresh and young mothers with clean children in carrier bikes check their friends’ moods on their iphones.

breakfast
feeling at home with turkish breakfast in kreuzberg
My friend Jeremy Woodruff and his family have been living in this area since 2005. With some musical friends, Jeremy started up the successful Neue Musikschule Berlin, which recently expanded and moved into a building in the Turkish area Kreuzberg – where he let me stay for the time I was in Berlin. At a lunch with the Klang der Krise thinktank of academics that Jeremy invited me for, a longtime inhabitant of Kreuzberg told me about the holy grail: menemen! At Kottbüser Tor, supposedly. She was right, and not only did I find menemen, also çorba and demlı tea. Home sweet home.

After my adventures at DIY Church Radio and the Pizza Suicide Collective, the official Elephant Songs Berlin was a rather exclusive affair. Old friend Ingrid turned up after musicians Jeremy and Oori Shalev had arrived, and she was and remained the only audience that night. The room belonging to Jeremy’s Neue Musikschule was cosy and warm, and I was excited to share the room with Tony Buck’s collection of drums from all over. After setting up and venturing out to stock up on wine and other essentials, we improvised on our drums and whistles for a most enjoyable hour.

And now, to paraphrase mister McEwan, get me out of fucking Berlin! I rode down the streets that had become my friends on my nightwalk from jazzclub Sounds the previous week, crossed the river, and then I felt the spark plug being blown out of the engine. I now know from experience that an internal combustion engine is all about compression. Ever tried to explode a blown-up paper bag that’s already got a hole in it? You hit nothing, no resistance. No explosion. Same thing happens when there’s a hole in the combustion chamber. A fix turned out to be fairly temporary, and I’m now stuck in a youth hostel in Steglitz, of all places. To be contintued. Somehow.

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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

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songs of beyoğlu

 
 

Besides the most enjoyable improvised sessions I took part in in Istanbul (with Sumru and Anıl, with various musicians on the Elephant Songs night in Kooperatif on 10 August, and upcoming on 20 August in jazzclub Nina – material of those last two events coming up, check back or subscribe), I was very lucky to have a few cosy evenings at the studio of streetfolk legends Kara Güneş. I had fantastic cheese, fell in love with the santoor, and had great chats with many wonderful people.With one of their members, multi-instrumentalist Özgür, and cellist Duygu Demir, we played with and improvised on songs, grooves, and ideas we all brought.

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safranbolu songs

 
 

safranbolu
the old ottoman town safranbolu
In the part of the world I have now reached, tourism no longer means Backpackistan: Safranbolu is the territory of large touringcars, Koreans with elaborate cameras, unwinding pensioners, and European families on exotic summer holidays (as it happens, that’s how I came to Turkey the first time, when I was fifteen). The upside: almost-decent espresso. Which was very welcome during the hours the electricity was cut, eliminating one of the reasons I stayed a full day instead of just making this an overnight stop on my way to New Musical Adventures in Istanbul: updating my blog and catching up with audio and video editing before collecting new material. So instead, I sat in a café reading my book and walked around in this beautiful Ottoman town.

alarm
bike with newly installed alarm system
The place is filled with small shops selling all kinds of handicrafts, from textile to metalworks. I used the opportunity to finally invest in an alarm system for my bike – just in time, as I’m heading to Europe. Suggested by the ever-resourceful Benno Graas, I now have a beautiful little bell to hang from an unseen place on the bike at night, whose glassy tinkle will no doubt wake me up should someone with dishonourable intentions come near the bike.

stall
bells, kettles, and other metalworks
music meeting
robbert van hulzen (drums, left) & ali yapıcı (bağlama) (photo by soonjung lee)
The evening brought a pleasant surprise: Ali Yapıcı not only runs the charming Bastoncu Pansiyon (in a beautiful old Ottoman house, all old wood and roughly hewn stone and off-white plaster), he also has a powerful voice and plays the bağlama, a lute-type instrument with three sets of strings played with a soft plastic pick. The strings are tuned to the tonic, fourth, and fifth, and the frets create a scale that has pleasantly little to do with that western totalitarian system, equal temperament. I unpacked a small selection of my drums, and, cheered on by other hotel guests, we enjoyed an hour playing of Turkish folk songs.

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elephant songs: ba1pa, on one leg

 
 

road
majjid on the road in north iran
The road into the mountains was wet and green and smelled accordingly. At a roadside restaurant our production assistant and general spokesperson complained about the kashk-e-bademjan, one of our lunch dishes.
I liked that about my Iranian friends – their politeness lies in hospitality and courteousness, while they don’t mind giving criticism, or receiving it. Apparently there was something wrong with the bademjan, the aubergine. My mirza ghasemi, roasted aubergine mixed with copious amounts of garlic, was delicious as usual. The proprietress of the eatery acknowledged the complaint, and we said goodbye in friendship.

Mazandaran food would be a happy memory when I got further up north, towards the Azerbaijani border. Do you have any vegetables? No. We are Azeri. We eat meat. Baluchistan food crisis all over again.

camera fix camera fix
attaching the camera to the bike * left photo by golboo fiuze

After our seaside resort days in Neshta Rud we were on our way to a village in the mountains, where Tehrani musician Majjid Rahnama and yours truly were planning to play a concert. Reza Fahramand was going to film it all, hoping to bring the result to film festivals around the world. However, after lunch it was decided that our planned destination was too far away; the village of Jannat Roudbar was considered a great alternative. A good choice, it turned out, especially after a quick musical break on the side of the road unexpectedly took much longer: a car screeched to a halt and out tumbled a very drunk driver and his proud son. Majjid and I ended up accompanying the father on an endless, narrative folk song with an infectiously melodic little chorus. When this suprise meeting was over and my new friend had kissed me full on the lips in goodbye (to great hilarity of my filming companions), we rode on to Jannat Roudbar. We were shown into our comfortable rooms on the second (and top) floor of the house of a lovely couple. The man was concerned about the safety of my bike and insisted on covering it, so caringly we hid it (though of course everyone had seen us enter the place). Over oily, hot, delicious omelet and strong black tea in the lovely village tea house that night I was very happy with our new home-for-a-few-days.

jannat roudbar
our home in jannat roudbar

We spent the next days hanging out, playing in the teahouse, having more tea and omelets, chatting, smoking water pipes. We considered a number of locations for the show. The cemetery, an interesting idea of Reza’s, didn’t work out for various reasons, the disapproval of the local mullah an important one among them. We eventually decided on the square high up on the hill in the village, a more open space than the lower square which was full of shops and trees and other things. A stage was constructed and people gathered. We performed five tunes, in which Majjid played seven different instruments. We didn’t talk before (didn’t even speak each other’s languages), didn’t prepare anything specific, we just sat down as two musicians and played. We played the way we are, relying on each other because we both know music, singing together without words.

 
 

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beach fun

 
 

After finishing the successful shows in Tehran, I had planned to ride through the Alamut Valley to Qazvin, to visit the castles of the Assassins on the way. Then on to Tabriz, and up to Armenia.

beach set-up
our set-up on the beach
However, in the meantime, through CouchSurfing I’d met Komeil, who worked in the film industry and had been involved with documentaries on various topics including Iranian culture and tourism. During the last days of my stay in Tehran we met a few times (in the earlier described Café Un), first just with him, then with a whole team headed by Reza Fahramand, director of the award-winning films Tajrish and Shirzad.
beach filming
majjid and reza ready to shoot
We decided to make a film of a trip undertaken by musician Majjid Rahnama and yours truly, to play a concert somewhere in the valley, or in Qazvin. But this didn’t happen. After long consideratons, the location was changed to the foothills of the Alborz mountains on the Caspian Sea. The reasons were never entirely clear to me, though I did gather that in those more remote areas, filming without all the official permits would be less of a problem. Anyway, I had no reason to complain about this change of plans, the whole trip was amazingly beautiful.
And wet. For some reason (possibly the fact that a large part of their country is made of dry sand and gravel, as I experienced earlier), Iranians love the wetness of the north. “Just like where you’re from!” – as if that was a recommendation.

After the amazing Karaj-Chalus road, we rode up the coast for a while. Before heading into the mountains, we stayed at a beach house in Nashtarud for a couple of nights, swimming in the (cold!) waves and jamming on the beach. In the rain, of course.

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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

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elephant songs at parkingallery, tehran

 
 

photo by saba moghadami

In the summer of 1998, Amirali Ghasemi started the Parkingallery, an independent project space in a former garage in the north of Tehran (expanded in 2002 with an online gallery). One good Friday, at the opening of Amir Bastan‘s Worn Out Mirrors (Friday is Opening Day in Tehran), fellow percussionist Arash Lotfi informed me that we would perform in the space that coming Sunday. We asked oud player Kaveh Kamjou to join us, and, surrounded by Amir’s rorschach-art, we played an evening of improvisational music to a, given the short notice and no advertisement, surprsingly large crowd.

photo by saba moghadami
Our preparation for the show was a few hours of jamming in the afternoon, trying out different placements in the space. We worked on some tunes, grooves, improvisation ideas, and had another cup of tea before the audience started arriving. If I ever make a film out of the footage I collect on this trip, you’ll see that Arash also plays the ney beautifully. I can only wonder how he used to play the setar, before the accident that ruined one of his fingers, exactly three years ago these days.

photo by saba moghadami

One of the pieces was a percussion duo, featuring Arash on the lab chang, a Persian mouth harp.

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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.

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peeru’s café

 
 

The first time I went to Peeru’s Café, my landlord Sajjad of Lahore Backpackers insisted I take a rickshaw – “for security”. When I told my driver my destination, well-known for its qawwali performances, he proudly announced he was a qawwal himself and sang all 25 kilometres of the way there. Welcome to Pakistan.

Reaching the place, I was a little surprised by the high, barb-wired fence with the steel gate and armed guards – not just your regular guys dozing in chairs with shotguns in their laps, but uniformed men in bulletproof vests and complex-looking weapons – all dull black angular metal instead of the usual simple steel barrel on a wooden handle. After my bag and I were screened and searched and declared acceptable, I was shown into the compound – a beautiful, quiet, and relaxed place that I later found to be much bigger than what I saw just then: a glass house where juices were made, a small stage, and a number of tables where waiters served food and drinks that were presumably prepared in the building in the back. Only later I learnt that Peeru’s had been attacked several times in the past – with bombs and arson, terrorists attempted, in vain, to disturb and discourage the lively cultural scene promoted there.

When I was preparing my visit to Lahore, Pakistan, my invaluable friend Neil van der Linden had put me in touch with the Peerzada family, who run Peeru’s Café and the Rafi Peer Theatre Group. Peeru’s is part of a compound that houses the café-restaurant, an auditorium, various artist-run arts and crafts shops, the puppetry museum, and the offices of the RPTG. While I was still in India, Mr Faizaan Peerzada kindly helped me obtain my visa for Pakistan, and invited me to come over to discuss what we could mean to each other as soon as I reached Lahore. Meanwhile, playing with Maarten Visser and Keith Peters at the Global Music Festival in Madras, India, I met Sam Mills and Susheela Rahman, who adviced met to get in touch with one Hassan Qureshi in Lahore. Hassan responded enthusiastically, and mentioned his family’s auditorium and their many musician friends. We agreed to meet and talk about possibilities for elephant songs – and Hassan turned out to be married to one of the Peerzada daughters and having an important function in the Rafi Peer organisation. The world is small. Like everywhere.

After meeting them at Peeru’s that first night, the brothers Faizaan and Saadaan took me back to their home right for a lovely evening of chats and drinks and brainstorming about what we could do during my time in Lahore. I was excited to hear them suggest I’d play with the famous dhol players, the sufis Goonga and Mithu Sain. We discussed ideas and set some things in motion and then went back to Peeru’s for dinner – Punjabi food (the cuisine that is served in most so-called Indian restaurants in the west) of such a refined quality that it redefined my opinion on the north-subcontinental kitchen. Contrary to my earlier judgments, I think I actually like it.

The following days many things happened. Sajjad took me around Lahore, showing me the old town and some sufi shrines, including lots of qawwali, and also the Badshahi Mosque. I wandered around a lot, went back for juices at Hafez’s, had almost-vegetarian biryani for lunch. For dinner I often went for the fantastically spicy lentil-and-eggs concoctions served in a small place close to my room, usually dark because of the frequent power cuts (one hour on, one hour off). The boy who cleaned up usually brought me a candle so I could still read my book on the Great Game. I met many more musicians and I had the great honour of playing with Goonga and Mithu Sain on several occasions, including, interestingly, a French cultural evening at LUMS University. (A post with clips of several of these collaborations is coming up, check back or subscribe.)

On Saturday 7 April I was at Peeru’s again. I’d brought my drums, and played for two hours with maestro Mian Meeri and his qawwali troupe. I’m looking forward to what’s next. Apparently, there’s something coming up with the Sain brothers and UK dhol sensation Rani Taj. And I’m working on putting together a dedicated elephant songs show with a lot of different local musicians here in Lahore. Stay tuned.

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monday match

 
 

bimhuis announcement

 
 

Dancer Irene van Geest and myself were honoured being asked to curate a Monday Match, a night in the montly series of music & dance improvisation at the Amsterdam Bimhuis.
We were very happy to get a large & inspiring cast together:
Peter Cseri, Lily Kiara, Silvia Bennett, Yannick Greweldinger, Irene van Geest (movement), Felicity Provan (voice & trumpet), Ned McGowan (flutes), Fabrizio Colonna (guitar), Rob Kloet (drums), Robbert van Hulzen (drums)

 
 

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all photographs by joris hol