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Al-Ahram Weekly 5 - 11 August 1999 Issue No. 441 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 5 - 11 August 1999 Issue No. 441
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Why the lute anyway -- after all it makes noises like a street cat or disrupted digestion and is nothing but the long lost father of the guitar. But it is ancient and borrows a little of the kudos that falls on Homer and the Bible.
Dance with a ghost
David Blake
Nasseer Shamma; Lute Recital;
Open Air Theatre, Cairo Opera House, 28 July
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Focus Interview Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters On a clammy July night it whined in the Opera House's open-air space which boasted the size of audience more usually associated with a successful third-rate film. And to think they were all there for the little old lute, the historic oud of classical music history. It is not even romantic, being a little too sharp for that, like an untuned harpsichord. Yet it has a personality tough enough to draw this crowd away from summer media orgies. Nasseer Shamma appears and after a steamy reception the audience ends its anticipatory fidgeting and fussing to get down to the serious business of listening. Nasseer Shamma prepares himself, arranging his bodily architecture to accommodate the often difficult moves involved in playing the lute.
Some audiences are enthralled by the sound of the lute. Its spare, sparse tones seem to suggest history, time passing, the practicalities of life, the analytical rather than the sentimental. Love and moonlight are not part of the lute's agenda of appeal. Ancient truths it offers, which we enjoy to hear but hardly ever practice. They are truths Shamma's audience adored. The tunes played are known. The audience wants what they already know, and Shamma gave it to them. The first song -- lonely, wavering, but cutting through the heavy air like metallic thread -- extracted murmurs of appreciation. Sometimes Shamma's playing is suggestive of bullets, the chatter of politicians on the run and of crowds protesting. These pieces, though, were conciliatory and meditative.
In the second piece, he produced a fat, warm tone, not lute-like at all but more Spanish guitar. It is a technical knockout. Over a long held pedal-note, done without the slightest tremor, he produces a song. It is delicate, floral and street-musical, possible only because Shamma knows how to stretch the lute to the limits of expression. His concentration is astonishing. The black-lace blew in the wind and the audience was mesmerised.
The fourth and fifth songs were more or less tied together by the lute's gift of independent thinking. It resembles the piano only inasmuch as it goes its own way. It creates an atmosphere, becoming in this case a troubadour, a visteur du soir that on this evening threatened to be devilish.
As one song came and departed two returned, wrapped in the same coat -- a day song, strong and firmly placed, and a night one, an aria, like an evening star glimmering above everything. You have to be some player to suggest all this on the lute. Yet Shamma, the master of magic on this night went further than magic, taking himself and his songs far beyond any rational concept.
It was exciting, cool and aloof, like the story of the infanta doing a dance with her ghost -- a vision to think about which this bewitched audience did. It seems boys like the lute, and this was a boy audience -- a rich, young herd, very physical and on the swing.
Shamma had done half his work. The interval lights went up and everyone, even the girlfriends, were wheyfaced. They had to face the shock of returning to life again.
In the second half a full moon was cruising high over the heads of the audience. Through the big eucalyptus trees outside the theatre its form echoed the wavering notes of the lute. A new motion had taken over the music of Shamma. He began to spell out the notes of present time, with a persistent rhythm instantly known to the audience. The boys began shouting out for individual songs. Now the show had become Il Trovatore at last, the troubadour of destiny, and the tunes were romantic. The virtuoso stuff had started, and the audience began standing up, calling and swaying. The player was taking the lute on a strange voyage in which the audience were participants.
The little instrument began making noises it had never made before. Shamma made it sound like the revving up of a huge engine or the screech of the brakes of a sports car. He became a formula-one driver, and he knew his machine. He drove it through some fearful sequences. He knows the lute so well he is lashed to it for life. He uses its power and takes his time. The temperature of the concert rose sharply.
You can tire of his sheer expertise but, like all great performers, he knows this, and knows thunder can prove hollow. So he turns his back on that door and burrows deep down into the music itself. He lessens the pressure and the concert suddenly stops. Coolly, he gets up, bows and it is over. The young audience knows the routine -- no encore. They steam out of the swimming pool theatre sated with the lute music. It has been no Chinese eastern party for kids -- rather, an oriental gathering which glowed darkly.
