A Closer Listen
Whatever culture we come from, plucked strings are somewhere in our musical DNA. Classical poets and heroes; prehistoric ancestors; divine visitors from above: all might be evocatively depicted with a stringed accessory. Even the futurism of Detroit techno has the “Strings of Life” in its backstory. From the lyre to the oud, strings embody our spiritual and cultural lives more than any rival family of instruments. The simple sound of a plucked note can transport and elevate. Two albums from 2024 explore carry the legacies of their respective instruments, whilst cataloguing new possibilities and combinations.
In the words of her website bio, Farah Kaddour “attempts to rediscover and experiment” with the sound of the buzuq. Combining a backward and forward glance, she specialises in “a new, yet rooted music”. Her interview for “QuarterTones: Music from the Arab World” gives technical and cultural explication of this instrument, a long-necked lute with multiple courses of strings. As she explains, improvisation is the bedrock of Badā. The first track settles in gradually, nudging into possible shades of melody. Kaddour starts to carve out a space. After a touch-and-go three minutes, she is off and flying. Across her improvisatory tracks, we find frantically controlled picking and fret work. Kaddour temporarily returns us to reassuring ground, then races away, exploring the sonic range of the buzuq. On the longest track (“Khuzāma”), Kaddour showcases the articulation and timbre of her strings, striking metallic and startling notes, rallying them into organic flurries of sound. The music evolves over seven minutes, as phrases are introduced, chewed over, and digested by the greater body of music.
An experienced bandmember, cross-culture collaborator, academic researcher, and musicologist, Kaddour imbues her music with knowledge of the Arabic classical and Western popular traditions. Conventionally, the buzuq is at home in a takht (ensemble), but does fly solo in a taqasim, or improvised piece in a given maqam (mode). Kaddour has worked in less orthodox groups, bringing the buzuq into experimental sonic fusions. Traces of this work can be found in her solo album. It does explore modes, but is more free-wheeling and avant-leaning than classical elevations of the instrument. “Avant-Levant” is a tempting description of Kaddour’s work. However, we mustn’t overlook her honouring of the instrument’s folk origins. The most exciting track, “Taraddud”, uses a strumming and picking technique, while traversing the frets in a fast-paced improvisation. The track centres on a forceful melodic statement, which is revised and rethought over numerous iterations. Here, the traditions of the Levant have all the hypnotic power of Western minimalism, along with the nourishment of folk roots.
The only inherited piece on the album, “Bulbul el-Afrāḥ” reminds us of the rich traditions behind Kaddour’s practice. A North African composition rearranged for solo strings, this music is less flighty and brave than Kaddour’s improvisations. Nonetheless, it offers a calling card for her forceful and expressive playing. Later, the final track shows her skill as an original composer (“Madd ou Jazr”). This premeditated piece has a clearer line of sonic development running through it. Bolstered by percussive accompaniment, Kaddour builds energy through segments/phases of the composition rather than improvisatory reiteration. Listeners are left wanting more. Certainly, Kaddour has more varied skills than a single album can contain.
Andy Aquarius has a penchant for tapping into the rich sonic and cultural legacies of his instrument. A self-described “sonic alchemist and devotee of mystical folklore”, Aquarius explores stories and myth by blending the folk and classical legacies of the Celtic harp. Strong leanings into New Age and ambient music also figure. This is a music which speaks of ancient powers, but is never “olde-worlde” in its approach. His instrument has a long, fabled history in the Celtic nations. Its shape is instantly recognisable as the national symbol of Ireland. Irish harping even appears on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Fittingly, Aquarius makes tangible a long-lost quietening of the spirit. But he is equally unafraid to take the Celtic harp into new territory. After all, Golla Gorroppu is a mystical journey not into the Emerald Isle, but into Sardinia’s Gorroppu Gorge.
Like a hiker finding an unfamiliar path, Aquarius picks his way forward. His compositions often feature repeated phrases, laying the ground for lyrical lines of melody. The melodies circle back, find their bearings, develop new routes. It is only by retracing their steps that they lead us further along hypnotically patterned trails of sound. Statement; reconsideration; recalibration. These are the phases that melodies pass through, nosing their way in a purposeful process of thought. It helps that the harp is adept at talking to itself. Asking a question with one of the musician’s hands, it offers possible solutions with the other.
The interaction between Aquarius and his harp is tangibly felt. The plosive rebound of a plucked string punctuates a melody. At the centre of the album, the shortest track offers an expressive interlude (“Jagten”). We feel the tight pop and reverberation of the higher notes. The light shuffle and rustle of the musician turns into percussion. Elsewhere on the album, Aquarius goes beyond these incidental accompaniments. Wordless vocals, both high and low pitches, call across a restful expanse. Humming vocalisations mark out a meditative rhythm. Brief recitations of the album’s title give cryptic significance – a short message coiled up in an intricate vessel of glass. Synthesised ambience also features, subtly swelling around the lyrical harp. Along with moments of silence, these sounds fill the gaps between crystalline notes, like soft layers of bedding in a cool igloo of sound.
The final track is the album’s longest and perhaps most accomplished. One hand keeps time with a bright, metronomic repetition. The other feels out a space for song. A melodic line of enquiry stands alone. Then ambient textures rise up, like a sonic richness revealing itself from a silence. As we reach the eleven-minute mark and the conclusion of the album, we achieve no simple closure. Rather, we are left reassured that the harp may continue talking with itself for centuries to come, never quite resolving its questions or its journey. (Samuel Rogers)
Sun Sep 29 00:01:17 GMT 2024