Issue No. 608
Culture
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17 - 23 October 2002 Issue No. 608 Culture |
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Ufukwe at the Townhouse
Youssef Rakha tackles a workshop, a concert and a cultural centre
Friday night at the New Space of the Townhouse Gallery was a memorable occasion for intercultural exchange. The culmination of a music workshop entitled Ufukwe (Swahili for "Shores"), this was the second of three remarkable musical events, the first of which was held on Thursday at the Jesuits Cultural Centre in Alexandria, the third (to celebrate the inauguration of the Kwame Nkrumah Pan-African Cultural Centre) on Saturday at the Centre's headquarters on the Maadi corniche.
Both workshop and concert embodied the collaboration of three serious-minded, alternative music groups: the Zanzibar-based Dhow Countries Music Academy, the Palestinian Al-Urmawi Centre for Mashriq Music, directed by Khaled Jubran, and Alfred Gamil's Egyptian Quithara Music Group. Attended by a vast number of people, logistically hampered by Lara Baladi's Photo Cairo installation (which has yet to be removed), the Friday concert -- with ongoing, football-match-style commentary by Alfred Gamil -- was more of a showcase of work done in the context of Ufukwe than a premeditated performance; which made it all the more informal and immediate. Yet insofar as it might have been intended to reflect an actual musical collaboration, the concert failed to provide much evidence of the artists working together. Collaboration mostly reduces to exchange or, simply, sharing; and in much the same way as the workshop reportedly consisted of these musicians playing for each other, the concert was largely an extension of this practice. Improved sound and light as well as the presence of the audience must have exercised a regenerative influence, however; certainly the musicians seemed to be in their element as they displayed not only their individual prowess but their most cherished sounds.
"It all started with the founding of the Dhow Countries Music Academy," Khaled Jubran, Ufukwe's general director explains. ("Dhow," it is worth mentioning, is an ancient sailing vessel, in use to this day, which was the principal mode of conveyance through which the Arab, Farsi and Indian influences that have shaped contemporary Zanzibar music reached the island's originally African inhabitants.) "Zanzibar is a melting pot of cultural influences, and in the language as much as the music Arabic words and phrases permeate the ether. Much of this dates back to Omani rule, which also influences the costumes as you will see. The founding of this academy was the expression of a desire to preserve and develop this musical heritage. They wanted to train music teachers; and one way in which they decided to do that was to draw on the expertise of Arab musicians. So it was that we went to Zanzibar in June, spending three weeks at the academy. Then we had the present workshop in King Maryut, Alexandria." A multiform event that drew on Jubran's own experiments in modernising classical Arab music as well as Gamil's repertoire of classic songs, the workshop also capitalised on the inimitable talents of the Cairo-residing Sudanese singer Salma El-Asal, whose knowledge of such relatively abandoned aspects of the Sudanese heritage as the Haqiba tradition helped enrich the experience. "The workshop was intended as a training and education opportunity, and the concert evolved organically out of it. But it is not as if we had any clear goal in sight at the start. We just met and played."
Some menu items -- Gamil's delightful attempt to jazz up classical set pieces for the traditional takht, for example -- seem to have evolved specifically out of the encounter, or at least to have been encouraged by it. Their triumphant harmony notwithstanding, direct interactions -- El-Asal singing to the music of Al- Urmawi, an Academy artist singing a muwashah played by Quithara -- were few and far between. Indeed the presence of the Zanzibar orchestra seems to have restricted the scope of interaction to some extent, even as it presented the predominantly Egyptian audience with familiar tunes rendered in an unfamiliar way, or sung in Swahili rather than Arabic. The intercultural dimension was more obvious within each of the group's performances: the Mahur mode, for example -- played by Quithara -- incorporates scales from a number of musical cultures all at the same time. The Zanzibar tradition of Tarab, the namesake of an Arabic word meaning (musical) enchantment, supplied a beautiful Swahili version of the classic Arab song Lamma Bada Yatasanna. For his part Jubran provided stimulating, "funky" renditions of traditional modes.
But El-Asal's solo number on the dallouka (Sudanese drum) aside, it was the essentially African kidumbak tradition -- a joyous style of singing accompanied by a dance that can quite sensibly and with impunity be described as "backside culture" -- that solicited the greatest excitement from the audience. Even here the influence of belly dancing was evident, however, and by the time Quithara and Al-Urmawi had reverted to a sedate instrumental piece with which to end the concert, the audience was too excited to listen. Spectators lit cigarettes, filing slowly out of the New Space. But however culturally disoriented, they must have sensed, however tentatively, the many-hued colour of their own cultural identity. It is this and the rare delight of a powerful evening of live music that make Friday night so memorable.
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