Arab  Music

Al-Takht

World of KZ

Personal  Prespective

Musical  Forms of  Libya

Aicha  Redouane

The Voice of Arabic Art Music
 (CD Review) By Alfred Madain
 

In the desolate void of which Arab music has become, a flower in the desert has bloomed. With the death of the Ustad Saleh Abdul-Hay in 1962, It was thought that the Syrio- Egyptian musical form known as Arabic art music was to be forever lost, and in 1975 with the death of the great legend whom maintained the last form of that vocal technique Al- Sayyida Umm Kulthum, the last grains of sand were poured over the coffin of a musical form which one thought would never be opened again. Unlike The music of India and Persia which manifested contemporary forms of the twentieth century along side their forms of art music, the large degree of incorporation of western musical forms into contemporary Arabic music would wipe out its original form completely.

In the 1930's the two grand young voices which had the hope of carrying this art form into the 20th century were caught up in the new hype of the western musical films. Orchestration and new rhythms incorporated into Hollywood films like the rumba and waltz would spark up the creativeness of young musical innovators and performers like Mohammed Abdul Wahab, causing him to abandon the standards of his teenage idols like the Sheik Salama Higazi, and to dawn the suit of a young Hollywegypt pioneer. This new film craze would dominate the media mediums of the Middle East, and as a new generation of a largely rural world were introduced to advanced forms of the music which spoke their tongue, the music would be the contemporary works of Abdul Wahab and Farid Al-Atrash. Artists who clung on to art music as their form of expression like Saleh Abdul-Hay were soon pushed under, and listened to only by a few.

When I heard Aicha Redouane on CD back in 1993, an automatic smile stretched itself across my face, for here was someone who was adhering and attempting to preserve the form of Arabic art music. Born in 1962 in Morocco to an Imazight ("Berber") family, Aicha began to sing at a young age at social functions. Aicha's family would move to France while she was young .While in college Aicha would meet with other Arabs from Tunisia and the Near East, where she was introduced to other musical forms including early performers and masters of Arabic art music like sheik Yusef Al-Manyalawi, and sheik Ameen Hasaneen. Aicha left her studies in architecture in pursuit of her dream, of preserving Arab art music. She continued to study voice and eventually began to study the qanun. To master the Arab scale system, she would continued her studies in Egypt where she was trained as a Quranic reader (Mujawid).

Her debut CD released on Ocora records from France features three waslas based on the Arabic wasla standards of the Ottoman Court, Beginning with a samai leading into a dulab, a muwashshah, taqâsîm and layali and ending with a qasida or a dawr. Although many of the forms in the beginning of the wasla are maintained today by Large ensembles such as Kan Zaman, a community ensemble based in Southern California, it is the qasida or dawr which Art music bases itself upon. More precisely it is the embellishment of Arabesque vocal ornamentation which is the creative inspiration of the art form.

Although Aicha Redouane's voice does not carry the debt of Umm Kulthum’s or the beauty of Al Manyalawi’s. Her ornamentation ( Ilq'a) ranks with that of the old masters especially her favorite Abd Al-Hay Hilmi, and her work to preserve this style is one that is surely appreciated.

*This recording can be found on Ocora radio France CD # C 560020.