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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 November 1999 Issue No. 455 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 11 - 17 November 1999 Issue No. 455
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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The Arabic Music Festival, Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, performances: 3, 5, 6 November
Tall orders
By David Blake
From the performance of the Arabic Music Festival, which closes today
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Books Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Some of the music in these productions is over the hill, some under it and some merely swimming in the Nile. Still, everyone has a high old time.
Everything about this year's festival caught the vibes and its tone hummed along through history, up to the glitzy shows of the present.
No one person but Kulthoum ever bridged the lot and even she has been dead for 25 years so a listener gets some rough shocks on the ride. It is like breaking the mirror of time.
To fit in a period beginning with the early twenties, clearing the hurdles and holes up to the Second World War and to come bang up against the black spider generation of love, disorder and the distraught in a few evenings is a tall order indeed. But so far this festival has done a good job. Time does not stand tall, and only God knows what it does for the young.
There are no cross-curriculum artists here like Gillespie, Ellington or Gershwin to pave away and catch the rhythms of the day. So back to Kulthoum again. She has done the best job of all so far and a few of her late compositions have the real glamour and rich, almost mordent force of the Blue Room of jazz.
On night three of the Retiba Hefni Festival came one of these heart-rips. A stab from the real past. The rest of the night of this confrontation opened to show a set, a room, somewhere in the early twenties. It might have been Paris, New York, London, Cairo. The twenties, for some, were like that.
A disturbing scent, then, of another past, yet the music lived up to its surroundings. Room space at the opera? There was none. The place was packed, emitting the disturbing smell of a full opera house -- a flow of perfume and mortality.
There were ten men on stage, five musicians sitting and five standing behind as chorus, all wearing black, perfectly cut suits and atop each head that much maligned male decoration, the tarboush. Poor tarboush, symbol of more wicked times and royalty, the social emblem no-one wants around anymore but everyone reveres. It decorates recent history like the colourful stain of a departed species.
There was a long orchestral introduction. Rarely at the opera has an orchestra sounded more moving and upsetting. The sound softly crooning soon gave way to singers.
During night three, 5 and 6 November, there was a procession of singers, young, not so and so so, who gave their all to the music. And there was the atmosphere to make this the most lovable Arabic Music Festival since it began in the new theatre.
On 3 November, after the orchestral prelude, there was a successive trio of voices, Ahmed Ibrahim, Iman Bakki, a Syrian, and finally a singer and anun player, Samiha El-Kourshi.
The singers in this programme provided evidence a plenty of where the roulades and coloratura of 19th century Europe -- Rossini especially -- originated. The singers, waving and trilling, were like birds on a summer night. A famous name, Mohammed El-'Ezabi, showed a romantic force and a tone that will never wear away with time. There were trios, choral symposiums and then the lady with the anun.
Samiha El-Kourshi was brought on stage in an entrance like Montserrat Caballé, took her seat at the instrument and began to play. She looked like a Kabuki empress playing mahjong. The fingers glittered and fluttered over the notes almost too quick for sight. She is a master, making the anun the most Egyptian of all instruments. Its tones shine and ring out through any orchestra, no matter how large, with an alluring twang.
And then she sang. She is a comforting singer, maternal and erotic, cynically diminishing sometimes with a wave of one of her free hands. She seems to dismiss everything, man, mood and event -- what remains is her humour, black but real. Her low tones are thrilling, they cut the air and the anun in two. The Mama Musicale knows what she is about and the sell-out crowd adored her. She waves good-bye after the performance and her beautiful bird-like flutter has a sense of fun.
On the fifth night Angham herself arrived on stage like The Merry Widow. Stark black dress like a Blues diva, laconic, humourous and with a big voice. She is more diseuse than straight singer but her star quality shines brighter even than the gleam of her dress. She brought down the house and the end was nicely managed with stamps and shouts.
The performances for the fifth and sixth night were a medley of comedy and orchestral music. The orchestra adapts a more comfortable and relaxed position than for a classical concert but the tempos were racy.
For the singers the moods change. Sometimes dark and serious, at other times frothy. All the songs were known to the crowd, though they suggested things undiscovered, or on the breach of discovery. Nothing sounded dusty.
A comedy team, man and woman: he is just a chap in black, she a floating vision, a dusky goldfish misbehaving in a gilded crystal bowl. A black, slither dress and over this a filmy coat of bronze. She was expensive and spendthrift, so he said, but like the gentleman he is he pays up and off hey go for an expensive night's pleasure -- we hope.
Night six was a big spread for the sopranos. First came a female chorus. Then the tone changed -- friskier, more dashing, rather like Leila Mourad, though the songs belonged to Asmahan. She made a legend of mystery and high glamour then passed on. The mood is not Kulthoum. Nor is it cynical. The soloist did her best, but Asmahan's is a difficult mood to capture.
Then came a surprise -- Karima Al-Suqli. She is a tall, galabiya-clad person, grandly yellow and shining with quiet assurance. We had not to wait long for the reason. For the three nights this was a voice -- the voice everyone waits for. Real, quite natural, with no affectations. Voice. It is a tall, lengthy, self-confident sound, clear and tuneful.
The words matter but the sound and the tone is what the audience rides upon. It was full and gleaming. She can run and race through the Arabic decorations like a star opera singer. And when it came to the highs, she was there still gleaming and happily smiling as her voice took over the opera house and melted into the yells and shrieks calling for an encore. She gave it and conquered. Flowers.
The orchestra itself deserved bouquets. In this concert it seemed the Garden of Eden was for women: the men when they came from the shadows were the disrupters of the Garden.
The performances gave a special twist to the thing which helps form the best Arabic songs -- the suggestion that things of great moment are about to happen. Voyages across a winter desert are suggested as forcibly as in Baudelaire's poem, L'invitation au voyage. The result is one of the most potent visuals music possesses. Bags, rugs, whether a Land Rover or a camel, it's all the same, a trip is in the offing -- out into a form of eternity.
Apart from Fouad Zabadi's jolly paternal song, as creamy as the food itself, the final concert was about sterner things.
It cannot be good-bye to the songs the anun sang up from the orchestra, or to those who sang their hearts out to keep a straight line on Kulthoum. But we were to have one queen more.
The tallest of all, she was a flowery tower of jacaranda, blue with a high voice. She looked sweet, but not the sound. Post-Kulthoum singers seem to forget that apart from the manner of cool majesty, K had a perfect pianissimo and enjoyed intimate breaks into softly loving ways.
But the bouquets flew about and the full house would not leave quietly. Lavender water for all.
