Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 30 July - 5 August 1998 Issue No.388
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue | Previous issue | Site map

 

Smoke over sun city By David Blake Karam Mourad and his troupe; Nubian music and songs; Open Air Theatre: Cairo Opera House, 24 July Ever on, sometimes wearily, at times desperate, but on it goes for always, the people and the songs. "I come from a far country," tall Nubians used to say in the days of Nubia. They meant it. There is probably, and always was for them, a far country within Nubia itself. Its vastness was a far country for the inhabitants. And the music, the voice and the tones of the instruments of the players produced a weird impression of distance. From somewhere in the present moment you heard it from far away. From the heights of Garmische to the depths of Leicester Square, if the Nubian voice encountered you it suggested a far, far country. And a sad one. Its sadness was palpable, and it is still the unique gift of Nubian song. In the days before the flood you were dislodged from the plane on to the little old Aswan airport and no matter how high the actual temperature was you stepped into an Indian hill station: the air crackled with dryness. The Aswan voice is the same -- rather twanged, well-tuned like a harpsichord. This concert of the artist Karam Mourad made no deviation from the Nubian pattern. As songs, they are not long, not like the litanies of Um Kulthum, not the aggressive aphorisms of pure pop. They have brevity and, having delivered the message, either go on to something else or stop. To begin such a concert, a few Nubians in white robes with emerald green waistcoats start the sound ball rolling. And it is here you get the first introduction to that far country. The music has a personal rhythm, softly rolling, undulating, unchanging, a kind of 6/4 dotted, swaying lilt, with a hole, a big bump in the middle. You can dance it or sit it out and analyse its subtleties. As dance it is as hieratic as Ravel's Pavanne for the Princess who Passed Away. The Nubian rhythm does not pass away. On the contrary, it just goes on and on, elegant little dots and then the big soft, velvety bump for contrast. It is the bump that matters. The bump is the far country -- Africa -- speaking. It is not a music which solicits; it does not make even the slightest gesture of intimacy. It is tall music, ancient and withdrawn. Nubia was for eons a passage through which action passed on the way to somewhere else. Even its indigenous population moved. Nubians are found in Perth and the Arctic Circle. The spaces beside the river produced people who themselves moved. There were no classes, nothing in the middle but water and space with the heights and depths at each end. Mourad's voice is like a falcon. He zooms to altitudes and falls back again to the deeps. The words matter -- the audience knows most of the songs and are not shy about showing their preferences. But it is the Nubian presence which is the important thing. It matters most; it is the landscape. And so to the core of the music. It has no core. It is like the Nile, a force without an end. Water begins it and ends it. Like the music, like the Nile itself, Karam Mourad sings without interruption, on and on for hours, sinuous, appealing, criticising, drawing his conclusions. He and his lute become a traveler's diary, going through history from heartbreak to ecstasy, a gentle wind with a tragic grandeur to its message. This makes for straight appeal. The large audience were happy. About 10 per cent seemed Nubian. The rest gave an impression of chic cult appeal. This rather added to the sadness. Gustav Mahler wrote some songs of wayfarers like Mourad's. "I am come into this world a stranger." And Mourad could add "on the Orient Express line to nowhere." The concert gave off a strange antiphony of Nubia's peculiar mythic position as a country. Like Queen Christina of Sweden it does not fit anywhere. She abdicated her throne, traveled, went to Rome and entertained popes, though she was not too keen on men, and she became like Nubia, a myth. The Queen gave up, went away. Nubia became largely water and went away too. Mourad does not state these things, but the air is thick around his bittersweet songs of a state of national limbo. After intermission, the song line seemed to grow sterner. The audience swayed and high stepped a bit more. The mood relaxed and took on a deeper colouring. Mourad's voice had become richer and his singing was very beautiful, poised and expressive with no squawking or bluster. Who cares about wayfarers or Queen Christina's position as a female carpetbagger? Here was Karam Mourad in voice and on line. The mood of the concert was settled, cool, chic, with Mourad, rather nasal, and with that Nubian twang, half smoke, half clear zircon blue sky, never human in spite of the rigid classical formula of the music. But a small inescapable something else hung about in the air, on the song and the myth of the Nubia destiny. Old Nubia, New Nubia, whatever Nubia was this? Nubian? A telephone call on a far out African line desperately waiting for an answer that will never come.