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Feature: Middle East |
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A Tough Call in the Middle East
by Bill Badley
What do veteran English folk rockers Steeleye Span, Spanish girl group Las Ketchup, modern Italian lute player Federico Marincola and German ethno-prog-rockers Dissidenten have in common? Beyond all being musicians of sorts.. nothing very much at all: different genres of music, different audiences, different countries of origin.
However, this is exactly the same sort of apparently random selection of artists that find themselves arrayed against one another in the Middle East section of the Radio 3 World Music Awards. The judges will have to decide who is 'best' from an Iranian classical kamancheh player (Kayhan Kalhor), a Moroccan pop singer (Samira Said), an expatriate Turkish contemporary folk singer (Omar Faruk Tekbilek) and an Iraqi-Israeli oud player/composer (Yair Dalal). Such an undulating playing field will make the decision a very hard task.
It's interesting to note that, though they are all musicians of the finest order, only Samira Said has any real status within the Middle East. A quick click on the listening icons of the Radio 3 Nominees page will reveal that her music is a very different cup of mint tea. Compare her highly produced, utterly unashamed pop music with Yair Dalal's intense musical reflections on the agonies of the Peace Process. And guess who sells caravan-loads of CDs from Agadir to Muscat? Tellingly, Samira is the artist nominated by producers from the 大象传媒 World Service - people from the Middle East, in touch with the music that is being listened to in the cafes of Damascus and the souks of Algeria.
Traditionally, Middle Eastern music has been under-represented in the Western music shop racks. Initially it tended to be academic field recordings, though a new breed of Oriental musicians who have actively pursued a career beyond their homelands has now replaced this. Both Kayhan Kalhor and Omar Faruk Tekbilek are now resident in the USA and have built reputations abroad through collaborations with Western artists. The music that is actually bought and listened to in that part of the world gets almost no exposure here at all.
This does then beg the wider question, 'What is World Music'? On the basis of the Middle East category, it would seem to be a genre all of its own: a music that is simultaneously influenced by, and yet outside, national boundaries. Only two of the four Middle East nominees in this category (Said and Dalal) even live in the region. The one thing that does seem to unite all of them is that they are, to some extent, musical refugees (be that political or economic). Even Samira Said, darling of the Nile Delta hit factory, is a Moroccan living in Cairo. This is nothing new: be it Guillaume Dufay in 15th century Italy or an itinerant kora player in modern West Africa, musicians have always travelled widely and been quick to borrow and assimilate new ideas. Whether they, or any of the nominees for the Radio 3 awards think themselves to be 'World Musicians' is another matter altogether.
The Radio 3 World Music Awards Middle East nominees may be a disparate bunch but such variety is in the nature of that endlessly intriguing part of the world. The genres that aren't represented at all are legion - but these four would certainly be a very good place to start discovering the delights that are to be heard there.
Bill Badley is an English lute player who first discovered Arabic music when researching his instrument's origins. He has spent several years touring the Middle East, collaborating with and learning from musicians in over a dozen countries between Morocco and Oman. He taught for a while at the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus, Syria and presented & co-produced the Channel 4 documentary, Music in the Line of Fire about Palestinian musicians. Bill contributed much of the Arab section to the latest edition of The Rough Guide to World Music.
More Middle Eastern music on Radio 3:
Desert Techno in Leicester
Persian music in Birmingham
Iranian vocalist in Leicester
Kurdish pop in Birmingham
Kurdish harpist in London
Why awards? read on
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