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~ Boulder Bach Beat hopes to stimulate conversations about the ways Bach’s music succeeds in building bridges between populations separated by language, culture, geography and time.

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Tag Archives: oud

Vivaldi with a Bit of Oud

15 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by Edward McCue in Audio Recordings, Bach's Predecessors, Bach's Successors, Bach's Works, Organology, Other Artists, World View

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Abercrombie Street, Arabic, ARIA Awards, Australian Chamber Orchestra, folk music, Four Seasons, Hercule Poirot, Illawarra Mercury, iPhone, Joseph Tawadros, key, melody, moustache, oud, popular music, Redfern, Richard Tognetti, riq, Salvador Dalí, tambourine, The Wiggles, Vivaldi, world music

Joseph Tawadros

Joseph Tawadros and his oud

Winning three consecutive ARIA Awards – for best new world music album – is not something many people achieve. But Australian musician Joseph Tawadros, a virtuoso on the oud, a pear-shaped Arabic string instrument, says it’s largely because he writes so many songs.

And besides, he knows he still has a way to go to catch the Wiggles with their seven straight.

“It’s hard for pop people to pull out an album a year,” Tawadros told the Mercury. “I’m pulling an album a year, so I can get up for it again. I’m writing so much. Every year I have about three albums’ worth of repertoire.”

Aided by technology and a fertile mind, he is prolific. “When I’m touring, sometimes you’re just stuck in the room with your instrument – I’m just writing,” Tawadros said. “I’m always coming up with themes, and with the invention of the iPhone, I can record these themes. “Now my phone is full of little sketches. I probably record about three sketches a day, especially with this Vivaldi music.” By that, the 31-year-old Sydneysider means the material for his next tour, with Richard Tognetti‘s Australian Chamber Orchestra, playing the Four Seasons.

“I’ve always been a big fan of Vivaldi, and the Baroque period interested me in Western classical music, because it was the closest thing to Arabic music I found,” Tawadros said. “I always identified Vivaldi and Bach – especially in the minor keys, and especially in the harmonic minor keys – as Arabic; I always thought they were Arabic melodies. That’s why they’re so much more accessible to an Eastern ear. There’s no big leaps; the intervals are shorter. The melodies are linear.

“My background was Arabic traditional music and folk music, but Bach and Vivaldi were real eye-openers to the classical music world. . . . Vivaldi is my absolute favorite in the classical world.”

Born in Egypt, and moving to Australia at the age of three, Tawadros, 31, grew up in Redfern and still lives within a few kilometers of Abercrombie Street. He has learned how to play several instruments, aided by regular trips to Egypt and having a brother, James, who is an expert on the Arabic tambourine called the riq and who is also joining the orchestra on this tour.

With his immaculate dress sense, a cheeky sense of humor and an upturned moustache like a cross between Salvador Dalí‘s and Hercule Poirot‘s, Joseph is likely to stand out on a classical music stage.

Apart from Vivaldi, the rest of this program is mostly Tawadros’ original music, with the orchestra’s contribution to these pieces arranged in collaboration with Tognetti.

Tawadros said he plays a complementary role – until it’s time for his own music. “I think [the orchestra’s] interpretation of the Four Seasons is lively enough and amazing,” he said. “So what you need is just to color that, to add a little bit of spice.

“The oud is just to add to the greater picture. And I think that’s the great thing about the Four Seasons. It’s such a group thing, and I’m just assisting in some spice.”

Ben Langford – Illawarra Mercury

Jennifer Grout’s Talent

11 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by Edward McCue in Bach's Successors, Music Education, Other Artists, World View

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America’s Got Talent, Arabic, Arabs Got Talent, Baeed Anak, Beirut, Boston, Brahms, Cambridge, Christina Aguiler, comedian, Daryl Grout, Dubai, Fairouz, French, German, globalization, hip-hop, Italian, James H. Burnett III, lute, Marrakesh, Matthew Ellis, Mazen Hayek, MBC Group, McGill University, Montréal, Mozart, Najwa Karam, Natick, opera, oud, popular music, Raleigh, Sarah Lawrence College, Spider-Man, Susan Montgomery-Grout, The Boston Globe, Therese Sevadjian, Umm Kulthum, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, YouTube

Jennifer Grout

Jennifer Grout

She’s blond, claims English, Scottish, and Native American descent, and doesn’t speak Arabic, but twenty-three-year-old Jennifer Grout, who grew up in Cambridge, MA, has emerged as an unlikely favorite in the finals of this year’s Arabs Got Talent contest in Beirut. Her rise is fueled not by heritage but by her gift – an astonishing voice that has wowed millions of viewers in the Middle East and northern Africa with her soulful renditions of classical Arab songs.

Not all in the region are thrilled, to say the least. It rankles some that an American woman with no connection to the culture – except a love of its music – might take home the top prize in the Arab world’s version of America’s Got Talent. Mazen Hayek, spokesman for MBC Group, the Dubai-based media conglomerate that produces and airs the show, dismisses the criticism. “Jennifer’s popularity is expected, well-earned, and deserved,” he said. “She’s a young American woman with a remarkable singing talent and a great voice in any language.”

Grout will face eleven Arab finalists, many of whom will be performing more Western-style acts, including comedians and hip-hop dancers, and one acrobatic dancer with a routine inspired by Spider-Man. She will be the only contestant performing classical Arab music. Since June, Grout has waded through a series of auditions and elimination rounds in the contest, which requires participants to either be citizens of an Arab nation or have an act with Arabic cultural roots.

Throughout, the judges have been largely effusive about her singing and her skill with the oud, an Arab lute that she sometimes plays. In her September debut round after performing Baeed Anak (Away from You), a love ballad by Egyptian singing legend Umm Kulthum, Najwa Karam, a popular singer and one of the judges, exclaimed, “You don’t speak a word of Arabic, yet you sing better than some Arab singers.”

How does she do it? “I learned the song and many others by listening to them and embracing them,” Grout said in a phone interview from Beirut.

Long before Umm Kulthum, there was Bach, and Mozart, and Brahms for Grout, who was born in Boston and attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and Natick’s Walnut Hill School for the Arts. Her parents, Daryl Grout and Susan Montgomery-Grout, who both work in technology but have music degrees, say she began singing at age four and performed with them in church choral groups. But up until a few years ago her focus had been Western classical music.

“There was a period when I was a little girl where I wanted to be a pop star. I wanted to be Christina Aguilera,’’ Grout said. “But my first love and only love until a few years ago was classical. It was while I was studying at McGill University in Montreal that I developed my love for Arabic music.”

Grout recalls that she read an article in 2010 about Lebanese singer Fairouz, which prompted her to explore other Arab stars and eventually led her to have an oud made in Syria. Within months of discovering Fairouz, Grout was playing her oud in a Syrian restaurant in Montreal, and then she began learning to sing the songs. “After about three months of learning to play, I sang my first note,’’ she said. “It was beautiful. I tell people often that it was magical. Until I found Arabic music, I had not thought of music as a performance career.”

But as her passion for Arabic music developed, friends and colleagues began advising Grout that she would need to learn to speak Arabic to advance her career. “Other people saw it as a problem, but I never did,” says Grout, who asked her parents for a one-way ticket to Marrakesh, Morocco, after graduating from college so she could start absorbing a culture that birthed some of the music she had embraced. After living in Morocco for a year, Grout heard about Arabs Got Talent and flew to Beirut to audition.

“The reality is that in the classical genre it’s common to sing songs in languages you can’t speak,’’ Grout explained. “Opera singers do it all the time, singing in Italian and German.”

Therese Sevadjian, Grout’s voice coach at McGill, said that Grout’s voice and her control and range allow her to capture the nuances and rapidly changing landscape of classical Arabic music. “Our music students are required for finals to perform in four different languages – in her case, English, German, Italian, and French,’’ Sevadjian said. “And she always excelled in those exams. So she may not speak Arabic, but her ability to feel and interpret languages paired with her natural vocal talent are why she has done so well in this competition.”

While Grout has received much encouragement, her appearance in the contest has triggered some controversy. One commenter on an 18 September 2013 YouTube video about Grout and her appearance on the show wrote, “Beautiful voice but she speaks Arabic and the jury is pretty aware of that fact. It’s a trick in order to gain publicity.’’ Another opined, “She’s great, but this is Arabs Got Talent, not America’s.’’

One persistent theory on the Internet is that Grout really knows Arabic and that the judges are covering for her. “It is unfortunate that some critics – largely on the Internet – have made ridiculous accusations against Jenni and have complained about her,” said Daryl Grout in a telephone interview from Raleigh, NC, where he and his wife now live.

Part of what fuels speculation about her true roots is Grout’s hard-to-place accent when she speaks English. “I have been asked about my accent a lot,’’ she said with a chuckle. “I’m not sure what to say. It’s mine. It’s unique. I’ve always spoken differently, since childhood.”

Beyond the controversy and rumors, a number of commentators have noted that Grout’s performance may mark a watershed in East-West cultural exchange. “Especially in an age of increasingly globalized popular culture, where so-called Western cultural forms have crossed all kinds of geographic boundaries, it was striking to see the directional arrow point the other way. Instead of Middle Eastern artists seeking to emulate American music, this time it was the other way around,’’ said Matthew Ellis, a Middle Eastern studies professor at Sarah Lawrence College.

Whether she wins or loses Saturday, Grout says she plans to continue her Arabic music career. “My biggest hope is to go on performing it for an audience on a bigger scale and eventually form an ensemble to perform with and travel with,’’ she said. “I think that’s the only way – live, intimate performance – to demonstrate that music really is a universal language.”

James H. Burnett III – The Boston Globe

* * *

Jennifer Grout was eliminated minutes before the contest ended on 7 December 2013, ultimately placing third. The Syrian dance troupe Sima won the top award.

Learning Music in Arabic

15 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by Edward McCue in Bach's Successors, Music Education, Other Artists, World View

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ahram Online, Arabic, Ayham Abu Hammad, Bisher Abu Taleb, drums, El-Rumm, English, guitar, oud, piano, Rowan El Shimi, Skype, Tarek El-Nasser

Brainchild of Jordanian musician Bisher Abu Taleb and video editor Ayham Abu Hammad, www.i3zif.com provides an online platform for learning musical instruments via video lessons. “The project came from our own experience with music,” Abu Taleb told Ahram Online over Skype. “To learn an instrument, first you have to purchase it, pay for classes to learn to play it – all of which is expensive and not always accessible in the Arab world.”

Abu Taleb explained that these obstacles might get in the way of people learning musical instruments. “The Arab world could be missing out on the next Bach,” he said.

The online venture, now with five thousand registered users, attempts to bring music production closer to people. They offer a cheaper alternative to classes, and guarantee the value of the lessons through selecting talented music teachers to share their knowledge of guitar, drums, oud and piano. “Learning music is easier than people think – if one practices and gives it time,” says Abu Taleb. He continues by saying that “most musicians are self taught, so if people have that passion and motivation we are providing them a tool as an alternative to learning centers.”

The website advertises its professionalism, with teachers carefully selected to make sure they have a strong background in music and at least ten years experience.

“Our collaboration was perfect for this project,” Abu Taleb commented regarding his relationship with Abu Hammad, with one having a strong background in music and the other in making videos. Abu Taleb, an established musician himself, was part of El-Rumm group from 2001-2011, a group run by award-winning composer Tarek El-Nasser.

According to Abu Taleb, most of their traffic comes from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, with the United States following. “Many from abroad want to learn the oud,” Abu Taleb said. “We hope to offer oud courses in English in the future.”

After studying similar models of the venture abroad, the duo created their platform. Besides carefully edited videos of instructors, showing a split screen with the keys of the instruments, users can ask questions by email or arrange Skype lessons with their instructors.

The creators would like i3zif to become a one stop shop for musicians in the Arab world. Besides adding more instruments and instructors to their network, i3zif hope to sell instruments online along with original records by Arab artists.

Rowan El Shimi – Ahram Online

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