Four Sketches for Iraq - Karim Sultan
This collection of pieces was originally put together for ShakomakoNET, and featured music and sound (some drawn from a live performance with oud and computer) inspired by and in response to Karim Sultan’s encounters with the music and ideas of Iraq. Amongst the pieces here is a piece that the artist has performed regularly, Abjad, which features a constructed cityscape behind a manipulated recording of the Arabic alphabet.
Part 2 – Het Groote Mekka Feest – Neil van der Linden
Soundtrack for Het Groote Mekka Feest, 1928
Het Groote Mekka Feest is a silent movie from 1928 directed by the Dutch-Indonesian filmmaker Krugers. It covers the journey from Tandjong Priok, the port of Jakarta, then still named Batavia, across the ocean and the seas to the Holy Cities Makkah and Medina, via Jeddah. For the first public viewing of a restored version of the film, the Leiden University requested a soundtrack. For this I used songs celebrating the Hajj pilgrimage by the legendary singers Asmahan, Umm Kulthum and Fairuz (note that Asmahan was Druze, in which creed hajj-pilgrimage is not mandatory, and that Fairuz is Christian) and a range of music from Indonesia, Persia, Egypt and the Arabic peninsula, demonstrating the geographic connections and the atmospheric impressions the journey must have given to the travellers. On two occasions, music with Orientalist themes by Mozart are used to picture the moment the Dutch governor and his dignitaries come to greet the returning ship.
Supracommute and Intracommute - Karim Sultan
Drawn from a diverse collection of field recordings and musical sketches over a two-year period, Intra-commute pieces together and superimposes sounds of transit, radio, music, conversation, and events from Doha, Dubai, Mumbai, Amman, and London into an introverted narrative structure.
An introduction to 5 parts – Neil van der Linden
I started approaching this project from several points. Firstly drawing on progressive Middle Eastern music – such as the ‘artpop’ of Zeid Hamdan, and Yasmine Hamdan, also Dhafer Youssef and Mahmood Schricker (an Iranian living in Canada), also Kayhan Kalhor’s experimental albums and Dariush Dolat-Shahi.
The luminous past; That's Okay; Underwater - Scanner
The pieces Scanner proposed for Safina Radio Project – The Luminous Past, That’s OK and Underwater – all resonate with ideas of memory and surveillance. The recordings of the voices originate from capturing the indiscriminate radio signals that float around us in the ether all the time
Isma3oo No.8 - Karim Sultan
Isma3oo No. 8 features all original production by Karim Sultan. Covering a variety of styles and sounds, the overall approach of the mix draws on reinterpretations of contemporary and ‘classic’ Arabic music, but without nostalgia or romanticisim. Instead, familiar rhythms and elements of melody are drawn through the computer in a series of sketches, outlines, and pieces.
Part 1 – Dissonance – Neil van der Linden
The red thread in my music meanderings is harmony, chord progress, modulation, tension, solution, new tension, dialectics. When I was approached to draw out of my research some further threads of meaning or categorisation, I re-engaged with the fact that Middle Eastern music is conceived as linear and not in chords ...
Part 4 – Origins – Neil van der Linden
In this selection, I try and reveal how many strands of music and culture in the wider region share their roots notably with African cultures, elements which found their way to the region through trade routes. Particularly on the southern coasts of Iran and Pakistan there are palpable communities of African origin, Indian and Persian influences also occur frequently throughout music coming from the Gulf.
