19 - 25 July 2001
Issue No.543
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 19 - 25 July 2001 Issue No.543 |
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Upside downside
David Blake drifts outside
Banat Al-Nil, Manal Mohieddin (harp), Abeer Amin (soloist vocals); Cairo Opera House Open-Air Theatre, 14 June
The sound of the Banat Al-Nil at present is a folly of dreams, mixing history, social attitudes and the flow of time -- a pot pourri attempting to go somewhere definite.
Given their fame this attempt at the musical outlook of today presents a whole range of problems. Whither, how and how big the jumps. They are highly trained and professional players, which makes, if anything, the jump more difficult. Working in a contemporary style they might be forgiven an occasional botch. But this the Banat do not permit themselves.
Their excellence as musicians exposes them and their admirers to many criticisms, ranging from indifference to that most damaging slight of all -- they are behind the mood of the times. But it doesn't seem to worry them very much. The procedure of their concerts goes on today almost as it did years ago.
The image of the players does not change so much. They are clothed in almost official office work type outfits.
Manal Mohieddin
photo: Sherif Sonbol
There was a lack of balance in the ensemble, which removed any edge to the music of the 15 intrumentalists. And this was a pity, since it means their music has lost something emotional. They are very honest workers, so near and yet so far, and should, when all goes well, possess a startling intensity of mood.
The first three pieces were: Farid El-Atrash's Qalbi wa Muftahu, Fouad Abdel-Meguid's Gharib El-Dar, Omar Khairat's Qadiyat Amm-Ahmed. These fitted the mood conveyed by the tone of the orchestra exactly. They gave their versions of past pop tunes though they do not in any way evoke the time or the place of the originals. They evoke something rarer, something of their own.
The band sounds big, deep and with a quality they have always had, a sort of glaze. It is historic, redolent of a kind of style that has gone.
Their harpist now is Manal Mohieddin. From the beginning something rose out of the orchestra, something sharply aspic, helping to firm the metallic glaze of the old Banat. This gives a definite tone to the orchestra, which they could follow to their own advantage. As the big arpeggios and distinct pluckings of the harp lifted the sound to a new level, as well as temp and rhythm, the muggy night disappeared. It was Manal Mohieddin's sound, which had a therapeutic effect.
We were beautifully nowhere and big, and the band ticked over. The time was of the grand tunes of the 20th century -- the evocative heart-breaker music which surrounded Gaby Morlay and Charles Boyer in the film Romance. They were superstars before this film, celestial fixtures after it. These luminous ones went dancing through the shadowy silver spaces of the old Semiramis Hotel ballroom in ever-diminishing circles of bliss, never to be forgotten.
The Banat have the key but not the idea of slotting in to the strange, provocative and parabolic sounds their band makes: the sounds of Nowhere, difficult to entrap once captured. These first-rate pieces were proof of a treasure unnoticed.
The Banat are there -- very definitely. Pleasant to think about, but less so to hear these days if only because of their insensitivity to the originality of their sounds: neither Pharaonic pastiche nor nervy- edgy.
They are almost casual and seem not to realise their own uniqueness. For most pop sounds of today, the plague bells ring, but not for the Banat. They are far too sturdy for the plague to touch them.
They've lasted, and so now what? Maybe back to the old Semiramis ballroom again. It's Nowhere, and that's where the best sounds are coming from today -- a stitched up magic carpet between heaven and hell.
The first three songs were mostly sad, the band going very close to the last tango. There was Harpo Manal, and after her a singer in a green dress. Green is rare, it is lucky and means voyages. And so the Banat began in the proper way but the sound disintegrated. Nile girls should never be still. This needed more harp, which we had in the next song. Manal was a true Nile maiden.
The last song before the immensely long, damp intermission was a piece dedicated to the recently deceased Soad Hosni. This time the song was perky but sad at the end, and the orchestra, like the river Nile surface: as easily as a thread of wind changes its direction so the orchestra changed its colour. There was a taste of what the Banat can do. Maybe the night they find the right legend they will become one themselves.
At the moment their leitmotif should be "search," and they will find. The last songs were repetitive, neither old, young, light nor dark, neither dusk nor dawn, but each one a question. Are we or aren't we? What's the question to which we have not found the answer? We are the Banat Al-Nil, the Nile will not abandon us. It has always reacted well to forms of politesse, but the present lack of respect can arouse it. The well- hymned glories of ancient Egypt are at its mercy. The Banat are well named, the music is finely made and high-tuned.
They almost make it an impoliteness to complain at them. They are gracious enough to leave the door ajar. When you hear the dull thud and rather hefty sound of the orchestra's middle voice, you are not at a ball game or bobbing about in a balloon suspended over Red Sea beaches. You are part of the unimaginable splendour of the river Nile.
Let the plague bells ring for the other sounds -- the knell of the rise and fall of fashions. One never can say goodbye to the Nile, it is beyond time and fashion, rather like the Banat themselves. When they find that key to open the door that leads them to the land of Nowhere, of the eternal tango in the ruins of the old Semiramis ballroom, that will be the night. Until then, thoughts -- and again thoughts. We'll be around some time somewhere.
Mind how you go.
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