Today we saw and heard the 3rd and final of this weekend’s concerts of Islamic music (the previous two were Sheikh Habboush and Khaled). All three were part of a “Ramadan Nights” programme organised by the Barbican to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. East London’s Muslim population is sizeable, and these 3 nights offered something for everybody: “classical” Arabic music and modern groovy North African rai for the Arabian Muslims, and today Sufi music for the Pakistani Muslims (and there are a lot of them around where we live).

This night’s concert was a triple act. The first, Sain Zahoor, was a bizarre fellow… described as a “dervish minstrel”, he resembled a fairy-tale evil wizard: golden clothes, golden shoes with curled-up toes, bright red turban, and so many strings of garish tassels hanging off his string instrument that they swung like a blanket when he was dancing. The music was OK to good; the sound again far too high (although not as extreme as yesterday’s).

He was followed by two brothers, Goonga and Mithu Sain, playing large drums, one each. These two looked like Punjabi rock stars: tall and skinny like scarecrows, long hair, bright red shalwar kameez with fair amounts of glitter, and big bling-bling gold necklaces. Plus when they really got going, one of them actually started headbanging. The only thing missing from true rock star style would have been smashing his instrument when he was done.
The drumming itself was quite varied, ranging from intricate to fast and furious. They could get surprisingly different tones out of a single drum each, using two different-shaped drumsticks + their hands, and each end and edge of the drum had a distinct sound. Very focused – they didn’t say a word to the audience nor look our way – and therefore very engaging. (And completely unamplified! Yea!)

The last and main act was Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s qawwali music. The sound technician was again making every effort to make the music hard to enjoy – gradually turning up the volume as the evening progressed, cranking up the higher tones to piercing sharpness until they were starting to sound distorted even to my untrained ears; loud drums which everything else had to compete with, and the backing chorus turned up to a point where they became an indistinct din. Would have been intolerable without earplugs.

Despite this, the music was so good that all of that could be overlooked. The programme included several excellent songs that I recognised from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s CDs. Qawwali is always great, and live qawwali even more so. Melodious, with dramatic singing, swaying and throbbing rhythms, it builds from a slow start to an ecstatic finish. Even though I don’t understand a word of it – or perhaps because I don’t understand a word of it – it swallows me completely, given enough time, and I ignore everything else around me. A great finale for the weekend.

PS:
From reading my recent posts in the Music category, one could get the impression that Asian music is all we listen to. Actually I listen to gipsy music, klezmer and tango too. No, seriously, while we do listen to a lot of so-called “world music”, we go to other sorts of concerts as well. It’s just that there has been a concentration of Asian music recently. We did hear Thea Gilmore last week, but her concert was disappointing (due to the venue and sound quality) but in such an uninteresting way that it wasn’t even worth writing about.