Dok (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} cyberinsekt) wrote,@ 2007-01-22 10:49:00 |
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Maleem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders - Hamdouchi
Of late, I've found myself listening to more and more Pharoah Sanders. I've been loving this so much that I've decided to finally give up on my unofficial "no more than one track by any one artist" rule, and have lined up several of his tracks for posting. This is a good thing for you, as you get to hear lots of Pharoah Sanders, and a good thing for me, as I don't have to delve into ever dustier and deeper corners of my music collection to keep this blog going.
Over a forty-year career behind the reed of his saxophone, Sanders has played with people like Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Bill Laswell and Sonny Sharrock. On the 1994 album The Trance of Seven Colors he's collaborating with someone rather more distant from his jazz roots, master gnawa musician Maleem Mahmoud Ghania. Gnawa is something of an oddity, a sub-Saharan music that was uprooted by the internal African slave trade, and has found a new home in Morocco. It's a trance music, often with ritual purposes, and borrows from both Sufi and traditional African sources.
So here we have Sanders as he joins in with Ghania and his troupe. They provide guimbri (a bass lute), vocals and percussion, and he adds some north African-influence sax over the top. On Hamdouchi, they're joined by a pair of dueting harrazes. I've no idea precisely what makes a harraz a harraz, but it's clearly a shawm of some kind. This is terrific, intense stuff. If you want dynamic range, you won't find it here, just full volume hypnotic ecstasy from start to finish. Rave on.
Of late, I've found myself listening to more and more Pharoah Sanders. I've been loving this so much that I've decided to finally give up on my unofficial "no more than one track by any one artist" rule, and have lined up several of his tracks for posting. This is a good thing for you, as you get to hear lots of Pharoah Sanders, and a good thing for me, as I don't have to delve into ever dustier and deeper corners of my music collection to keep this blog going.
Over a forty-year career behind the reed of his saxophone, Sanders has played with people like Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Bill Laswell and Sonny Sharrock. On the 1994 album The Trance of Seven Colors he's collaborating with someone rather more distant from his jazz roots, master gnawa musician Maleem Mahmoud Ghania. Gnawa is something of an oddity, a sub-Saharan music that was uprooted by the internal African slave trade, and has found a new home in Morocco. It's a trance music, often with ritual purposes, and borrows from both Sufi and traditional African sources.
So here we have Sanders as he joins in with Ghania and his troupe. They provide guimbri (a bass lute), vocals and percussion, and he adds some north African-influence sax over the top. On Hamdouchi, they're joined by a pair of dueting harrazes. I've no idea precisely what makes a harraz a harraz, but it's clearly a shawm of some kind. This is terrific, intense stuff. If you want dynamic range, you won't find it here, just full volume hypnotic ecstasy from start to finish. Rave on.
