Post: #26 Title: Re: Ahmed Abdul Malik ุฃู ูุฑููู ( ุณูุฏุงูู) ู ู ุฃุนูุงู ุงูู ูุณููู ุงูุงู ุฑูููุฉ! Author: ุนูุงุดุฉ ู ุฎุชุงุฑ Date: 08-16-2012, 04:11 PM Parent: #25
Performing on the oud (the Arabian short-necked lute) and the tar (the ancient single-skinned frame drum of the upper Nile), along with his gentle voice and original compositions, Hamza combines the subtleties of Arabic music with the indigenous music of his native Nubia. He has single-handedly forged a new music, essentially a Nubian/ Arabic fusion but one in line with both traditions and informed by Western conservatory training. His music has captured the interest of listeners worldwide. First discovered by Western audiences through his performance at the Newport Folk Festival, the U.N. Human Rights Day and Vanguard recordings in 1964, his 1971 Nonesuch recording, Escalay: The Water Wheel is legendary among musicians and connoisseurs. The Escalay album, 1971 Nonesuch recording, was re-released in 1998. His best known recording in the U.S. is Eclipse, produced and engineered by Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart. Hamza's music has also appeared in movies soundtracks including the Black Stallion, You Are What You Eat and, The Passion in the Desert. Hamza has appeared regularly with the Kronos Quartet, which included Escalay: the Water Wheel on their chart-topping Pieces of Africa album (Elektra/ Nonesuch, 1992). From 1995 to 1997, Hamza toured most of the world. Hamza's 1996 album, Available Sound: Darius debuted from Lotus Records (Salzburg, Austria) and was nominated for the European #####alent of the Grammy, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplatten Kritik. A new CD A Wish by Sounds True was released in May 1999. Hamza's compositions were performed by many ballet companies such as Maurice Bejart Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Molissa Fenley Dance Company and Lines Contemporary Ballet in San Francisco.
BIOGRAPHY
Hamza El Din is considered the father of modern Nubian music. He was born in Toshka, Nubia, Egypt. Hamza studied at King Fouad University (now the University of Cairo), then enrolled in the Popular University and at Ibrahim Shafiq's Institute of Music (Shafiq was renowned as a master of Arabian music and of the Muwashshah rhyme forms). Following graduation, he continued his studies at the King Fouad Institute for Middle Eastern Music, mastering the oud. Later, with an Italian government grant, he studied Western music and classical guitar at the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome.
Next he emigrated to the U.S., where he lived and worked as a recording and concert artist, and taught as an ethnomusicologist in several American universities, including the University of Ohio (Athens), the University of Washington (Seattle) and the University of Texas (Austin). Aided by a grant from the Japan Foundation, he went to Tokyo to make a comparative study between the Arabian oud and the Japanese biwa during the 1980's. Today He resides in the San Francisco Bay area, and continues composing, teaching, recording and keeping a busy worldwide concert schedule. Hamza El Din composed music for the Kronos Quartet and for the play "The Persians" (directed by Peter Sellars). In recent years, he performed at major festivals including Edinburgh, Salzburg, Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Montreux, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Monterey and Festival Cervantino (Guanajuato, Mexico).
Press Clips
Hamza El Din, who has made his life's work reinterpreting the songs of his native region of Nubia on the oud, performed intense music with extreme quietude at Symphony Space on Saturday night... Ben Ratliff The New York Times, Reviews, March 2, 1999
Music doesn't get much starker than the songs of Hamza El Din, the Nubian musician who performed Saturday night at the Triplex Theater .... He is a virtuoso, but one who uses his technique toward clarity rather than display. Jon Pareles The New York Times, Reviews, April 19, 1989
(Hamza) began to evolve new musical forms by drawing the moods and colors of Nubian music into the vast technical and aesthetic structure of Arabic classical music. The result is not a loose amalgamation of tow variant forms of music but an entirely new mode of expression. What is especially significant is his full command of the technical possibilities of the Oud combined with new musical patterns and ideas, growing out of the vocal music and drumming of traditional Nubia. Elizabeth Fernea, Liner notes of Escalay: the Water Wheel, Nonesuch 1998
El Din establishes a skittering rhythm and a melody alternately intoned by oud or voice. The melodies come and go with microtones and scales... SF Weekly, Music Reviews, February 18-24,1998.
Hamza El Din is a world music giant, an international emissary of Nubian music and culture and an artistic pioneer in the recording of world music. Rhythm Music Magazine, October 1997.
His playing, rich in overtones, is more relaxed, subtle and intricate than that of the typical oud virtuoso. San Francisco Chronicle, July 7, 1996
A warm cloud of silence seems to envelop the hall whenever this Nubian born Tokyo resident comes to town, A few impossibly elegant beats on his tar frame drum, some timeless notes plucked from an oud, or a couple of reedy vocal phrases, and you're off to a virtual Upper Nile desert. A more exquisite and less taxing holiday would be tough to conjure. Village Voice, (New York) March 8, 1994
Hamza El Din is one of the greatest ambassadors for Nubian and Egyptian culture ... [his] sound is so rich that it is sometimes hard to believe that only one man is playing. Al Ahram, (Cairo) January 20-26, 1994.
This was not some sort of exotic ethnic music, these were the songs and instrumental pieces of a great composer, steeped in the musical language of his Nubian heritage and gifted with the power to transform it into a shapely, sophisticated art form without destroying its own sense of place. LA Weekly, September 3-9, 1993.
Bypass this rare solo performance only at risk of extreme cultural impoverishment. San Francisco Bay Guardian, February 5, 1992.
In a harrowing beautiful 12-minutes piece called" Water Wheel" Sudanese born musician Hamza El Din creates a lament for his village, which was flooded, and its people forced to relocate, after the Aswan High Dam was built. Entertainment Weekly, February 28, 1992.
...El Din was renowned long before the new generation of hip young world music buffs "discovered" his haunting rhythm and surging lyrical instrumentals. Pacific Sun, February 7,1992.
The Sudan has not figured prominently in the most faddish recent preoccupations with world music, but native son, Hamza El Din, has been an important influence in the reclamation and forward progression of indigenous Nubian traditions. In addition to mastering the TAR, he adopted the OUD and became virtuoso, playing in the both its traditional as an accompaniment to mesmerizing, chant like singing and as solo instrument. The SF Bay Guardian, Critic's Choice, January 2, 1992
...Hamza's soaring lyrics, sang in the ancient Nubian Language, and his droning 'Ud hauntingly evoke the spirit of his home land. Louis Werner, Aramco World, July-August, 1992.
He sang and played in masterful form... The Japan Times, (Tokyo), November 13,1988.
Post: #27 Title: Re: Ahmed Abdul Malik ุฃู ูุฑููู ( ุณูุฏุงูู) ู ู ุฃุนูุงู ุงูู ูุณููู ุงูุงู ุฑูููุฉ! Author: ูุดุงู ูุจุงูู Date: 08-17-2012, 01:38 AM Parent: #25
Post: #28 Title: Re: Ahmed Abdul Malik ุฃู ูุฑููู ( ุณูุฏุงูู) ู ู ุฃุนูุงู ุงูู ูุณููู ุงูุงู ุฑูููุฉ! Author: ุนูุงุดุฉ ู ุฎุชุงุฑ Date: 08-19-2012, 02:53 AM Parent: #27
Hamza el Din - Escalay: The Waterwheel - for String Quartet ....... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9OJkltMIfg&fe...ure=player_embedded#! Performed by: Berneck Quartet - January 2012 - Switzerland (Charity Concert) Violin: Lyonel Schmit, Christop Brรผggemann Viola: David Quiggle Cello: Viturin Döring
Water Wheel is a complete description of the experience of the boy who keeps the water wheel going. He rises early, before dawn, and begins, sleepily, to hitch up the oxen, adjusting the tension so that both animals are pulling equal weight. As the wheel slowly begins to move, the huge wooden gears of the wheel creak and groan. Gradually, lulled by the warmth of the morning sun, the movement and the sound of the wheel, the boy tending the oxen begins to hum to himself. As the wheel turns more quickly and strongly, he begins singing more loudly, merging the sound of his own voice with that of the wooden gears. Eventually even his song is lost in the drone of the wheel. One gear, like one note, meshes with the other gears, and increasingly complex overtones develop like the movements of a great fugue. And the fugue grows, like waves from a pebble dropped into the water. The waves move out, touch the shore and return, making new waves until all the water is ruffled and moving. Soon the boy sitting on the water wheel becomes entranced, hypnotized by the insistent song of the wheel and he sits staring vacantly into space, only awakened from his trance by someone calling to him to keep the animals moving. In this work, Hamza El Din demonstrates clearly his mastery of the oud and his innovations in the use of this instrument. Note especially that while he plucks the bass string continually in one rhythm, he hammers with the left hand on two other strings, and uses alternatively the remaining strings to set the pattern of the melody against the other rhythms. This creates a harmonic whole, which describes perfectly in musical terms the hypnotic humming of the water wheel.
Hamza El Din war ein nubischer Oud- und Tar-Spieler und Sänger. Er wuchs im nubischen Teil Ägyptens unter dem Eindruck traditioneller nubischer Musik auf. El Din studierte an der König-Fouad-Universität in Kairo und am Musikinstitut des Ibrahim Shafiq. Am König-Fouad-Institut fรผr mittelöstliche Musik erlernte er das Oud-Spiel, danach studierte er westliche Musik an der Accademia di St. Cecilia in Rom. Anfang der 1960er Jahre unternahm er erste Konzertreisen durch die USA, wohin er 1964, nachdem sein Heimatort in den Fluten des Assuan-Staudamms versunken war, รผbersiedelte. Hier entstanden Alben wie Escalay: The Water Wheel (Wasserrad), das als Schlรผsselwerk der World Music gilt und Einfluss auf Komponisten wie Steve Reich und Terry Riley hatte.
Wasserrad ist eine komplette Beschreibung der Erfahrung des Jungen, der das Wasser Rad in Bewegung haelt. Er steht frรผhr auf, vor Sonnenaufgang, und beginnt, noch halb schlafend, die Ochsen anzuspannen, die Spannung zu pruefen, damit beide Ochsen mit demselben Gewicht ziehen. Während das Rad langsam beginnt sich zu drehen, das Riesen Getriebe des Holzrades beginnt zu ächzen und zu stöhnen. Sich um die Ochsen kรผmmernd, geborgen in der aufgehenden Morgensonne, und dem Klang des sich Bewegenden Rades, beginnt der Junge langsam zu summen. Mit steigender Geschwindigkeit des Rades singt der Junge lauter und lauter, seine Stimme mit dem Klang des hölzernen Getriebes zusammenkommend. Manchmal geht seine Stimme im rhythmischen Geräusch des Wasserrades unter.
Die Komposition wurde fรผr die Oud, ein mittelöstliches, langhalsiges Saiteninstrument - Vorgänger der europäischen Laute - geschrieben und aufgenommen. 1992 wurde die Tondichtung fรผr das Kronosquartett adaptiert.
