Mike - 7-18-2005 at 07:07 AM
Hey everybody,
Sorry I've been out of the loop lately, but I'm at the tail end of a remodel project at my home. Should be back to normal for me in about another week
or so.
Anyway, I just wanted to let you guys know about some new oud CDs. First, two new CDs for Mamdouh el-Gbaly. We have a video for him on the videos
page, and he is the lead oud player for the Cairo Orchestra. You can get his CDs from www.rashid.com. I will most likely update the MP3 page with one of his new tracks. The other CD is for Haytham Safia. You can order his new CD
from a link on his website, www.haythamsafia.com.
Take care,
Mike
John Erlich - 7-18-2005 at 11:13 AM
Hi Meeka,
I hope your remodel project is going well--my "day job" is in a city planning & building department.
Another interesting new oud CD: Yousra Dhahba, a woman Tunisian oudist, just came out with a recording. I like her style, and her story is worth
reading (her parents, school, and teachers tried to dissuade her from becoming a professional musician).
Info: http://store.discerningreader.com/yodhrhforlu9.html
Ordering: http://www.worldmusicstore.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&Pr... or
http://www.cdroots.com/hm-dhabi.html
All the best,
John
billkilpatrick - 7-18-2005 at 11:58 AM
i took the liberty of putting the following french review of yousra dhahbi into one of the on-line translation services. the results are predictably
stilted but you can follow what's being said. thanks for bringing her to my attention. i think a woman playing any chordophone - particularly an oud
- has got to be one of the most soulful and appealing images ever:
The sultana of the lute: Yousra Dhahbi Longtemps the Arab instrumental music was marginalized, victim of the supremacy of the songs of varieties. It
is only in the Thirties, and at the instigation of Sharif Muhyiddine Haydar, founder of the academy of music of Baghdad (first official school of the
Arab world), that the practice of oud(1) in solo could develop. Tunisian Yousra Dhahbi asserts this filiation. During family festivals, it saw her
brother having success while playing of the lute. Also, as of the college of girls of the street of the Pasha, in Tunis, will try it, in vain, to take
courses until one second year of academy finally enables him to touch the object of its dreams. His/her father however feared that a too important
investment in the music does not divert it studies known as "traditional". A paradox, when it is known that itself, singer soufi, wire of a mother
rented for the beauty of its voice, raised his/her children at the rate/rhythm of the evenings of songs and repetitions of its musical troop. In any
case, this priority will be maintained after its baccalaureat, because it began medical studies before turning over definitively to the music. After
six years of academy, it will pass successfully the same year the Arab diploma of music and the diploma of lute. A blow of head this time divided by
its family and encouraged by her father. She launched out then in a career of soloist. Throughout its experiments, Yousra Dhahbi did not cease
being interested in the various schools of lute by listening to the largest lutists, like Sharif Muhyiddine Haydar, Jamil and Munir Bashir, Ghanim
Hadda (Iraq), Riad Sunbati and Mohamed Al-Qasabdji (Egypt), Khmais Tarnane (Tunisia). It acknowledges: "For my part, I always try to be sincere in my
work" testifies to It a sober and gracious play, influenced by the school of Baghdad and the Egyptian tarab. Yousra Dhahbi was plunged in an
investigation of the Tunisian musical inheritance from the point of view of a thesis of bearing doctorate on the Tunisian music, since the Twenties
until the creation of the Tunisian radio, in 1957. And it was caught of passion for Al arbi, a local oud composed of four cords, smaller than the
Eastern one, and which requires a technique of play completely different from those of the other schools.