British composer Sami Yusuf: flamenco has a Center Jap aspect

Fatima Zohra Bouaziz

Fez (Morocco), Might 26 (EFE).- The British composer Sami Yusuf, from Azerbaijan and regarded one of the crucial well-known individuals in conventional music on the worldwide scene, is taken into account in an interview with EFE that flamenco music consists of “deeply a component” of conventional Center Jap Arab music.

Yusuf gave a live performance final Saturday with twenty musicians from completely different nations, and wherein he offered new songs for the primary time with phrases from Spanish mystical poetry on the second night time of the Sacred Music Pageant of Fez, with Spain because the visitor of nation on this twenty seventh version. .

The British musician says that he “loves flamenco very a lot”, a music he stated he found from his childhood in London.

“I felt that throughout the flamenco sound there’s a deep Center Jap Arabic aspect, particularly within the ‘maqam Hijaz’ (which is a part of the musical scale system on which conventional Arabic music is predicated, ” he stated.

Younger persons are all for conventional music

Yusuf began his music profession in 2003 with the non secular album ‘Al-Muallim’, which was then one of the crucial listened to albums within the Arab and Islamic world and among the many Muslim neighborhood within the West , and he was thought-about at the moment because the “king”. of Islamic pop”.

Twenty years later, the artist says his music has advanced into a method that comes with conventional mystical music from all over the world, together with quite a lot of genres. comparable to ‘qawwali’ (conventional South Asian non secular music), Persian classical music, Center Jap Sufi and Western classical music.

“I began my skilled profession with a non secular and religious report, however that was twenty years in the past, so much has modified (…). My music now could be very completely different from 2003, 2004 and 2005. I’m extra all for conventional world music and I’m changing into extra snug on this style,” he says.

With conventional music, Yusuf tries to succeed in younger individuals in a world dominated by Western pop music, which, in response to him, has “the identical codes and sounds” and doesn’t doesn’t go away room for devices and conventional music to be extra seen.

“Younger persons are caught up on the planet of Western pop music but when we give them the chance to take heed to the lute, the qanun (much like the zither) or the ney (…) they respect it. After they take heed to him, a few of my data join with my music, it is a shock, even for me,” he stated, including that many younger individuals come to his live shows.

Yusuf breaks a report at his live performance in Fez

Yusuf’s live performance was one of many essential occasions of the competition, with tickets bought out days earlier than and a report attendance that crammed the 4,200 seats on the stage arrange in entrance of the Merenid gates of the Bab al palace Makina. Dozens of individuals stood within the halls.

Yusuf and his group supplied a musical dialog between flamenco guitar, singing, Moroccan Sufi music and Al-Andalus ‘mawwals’, in a composition that’s a part of the live performance marketing campaign ‘When Paths meet’) launched by the poet in 2019 with the purpose of uniting completely different musical traditions all over the world.

The phrases of a number of of the songs carried out on the live performance included the magical poems of Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), Teresa of Jesus (1515-1582), the thinker Ibn Al -Arabi (1165-1240) and the Andalusian mystic Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtari (1212-1269).

“Come, come my soul” was one of many songs that opened the live performance, impressed by the Murcian mystic Ibn Al-Arabi and carried out by the flamenco singer Spanish Israeli Moro adapts the melodies of flamenco and the rhythms of Moroccan Sufi music.

The viewers was additionally enthralled with traditional songs comparable to ‘Madad’, impressed by Sufi poetry, and ‘Fiyyashiyya’, one of many excellent conventional Moroccan songs.

With greater than 45 albums bought and greater than a billion downloads of his albums, Yusuf has carried out in numerous venues comparable to Wembley Area in London, the Paris Philharmonic, on the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and introduced practically 250,000 an individual collectively in live performance as a complete. air in Istanbul (Turkey).

(c) EFE Group