2024-06-19 00:05:36
Mussels in tomato sauce with onions and garlic are such a delicacy that Egyptian fishermen wrote a complete tune about them. “Oh, recent mussels / Scrumptious mussels for which I do not want a fishing internet / They only roll like that within the effective sand / They style so great,” they sing in Arabic, often at house by the Mediterranean. This weekend, mussels will rejoice in an distinctive method by the Vltava.
Ten bands, every from a unique nation, will play on the world music Respect competition, which can happen on Saturday and Sunday within the open air on Prague’s Štvanice island. The group of Egyptian musicians, fishermen and dock employees El Tanbura is among the many most anticipated. And never as a result of its members romantically confer with themselves as “guardians of the oldest melodies” enjoying devices “from the time of the pharaohs”.
El Tanbura truly defies unique clichés. Its members seem in denims, black glasses and caps extra typically than in lengthy coats and conventional fits. They did not go to any conservatories, they discovered from the elders. And he would not make a residing from music. The 2006 movie reveals how they work within the kitchen or bag store, promote fruit or drive a taxi. However after they get collectively within the night, they create charming music filled with dance and improvisation. Singers and percussionists will even be joined in Prague by Arabic flute gamers, and above all by musicians who grasp massive stringed devices referred to as tanbura and simsimija.
El Tanbura brings the music of fishermen from the Egyptian port of Bur Stated (pictured). | Picture: Profimedia.cz
“He was very well mannered, prepared, grateful for each point out. He did not play or sing with them on stage, however he was the impresario within the background, with out whom El Tanbura wouldn’t have been created,” describes world music skilled Jiří Moravčík of the group’s founder Zakaria Ibrahim, whom he met at overseas festivals.
Ibrahim fashioned the band in 1989 within the Egyptian port of Bur Stated, which is situated on the northern finish of the Suez Canal. His aim was to save lots of the normal types being displaced by pop music. “He was very decided, certainly for ten years he looked for connoisseurs of the normal repertoire and the final surviving gamers of devices such because the simsim to go that information on to the youthful ones. He managed the band by way of his Cairo institute and organized live shows for it. Whereas saving outdated music, he fought towards prejudices, extinction gamers and civilizational pressures,” sums up Moravčík.
From Egypt to Prague and again
El Tanbura sings concerning the scrumptious style of mussels, the great thing about the Suez Canal and the Prophet Muhammad. However his repertoire additionally consists of employees’ songs, music related to Sufi therapeutic ceremonies and trendy protest songs. These are associated to the wars of 1956 and 1967, during which Egypt first fought towards the alliance of Nice Britain, France and Israel, and the second solely towards Israel.
World music skilled Jiří Moravčík was the dramaturg of the Colours of Ostrava competition for years. | Picture: ČTK / Ivan Prokop
“Inhabitants of Bur Stated, together with Zakaria Ibrahim, even had to enter exile for a number of years in 1967, when the Israeli military occupied the jap facet of the Suez Canal,” Moravčík recollects, how the exiles saved their reminiscences of town alive by way of songs performed with the lyre. “These protest songs helped them survive,” he says.
The band El Tanbura introduced this music into the brand new millennium. She was on the peak of curiosity in 2006 with the album Between the Desert and the Sea, which she offered on a European tour of prestigious locations such because the Womex honest. The final time she was heard of was when she sang protest songs throughout the Egyptian revolution in Cairo’s Tahrir Sq. in 2011. Then her path is misplaced. “From what I’ve discovered, since then they have been performing principally in Egypt. I do not know that they had been affected by the repression after the Arab Spring, however they did not go to Europe. I am wanting ahead to going backstage with them in Prague to ask for particulars, ” provides Moravčík, who’s making ready a contribution about Zakaria Ibrahim for a colloquium of world music consultants. The founding father of the group himself will now not go to Prague. He died of a coronary heart assault at first of the yr, he was 72 years outdated.
In response to competition director Borek Holeček, organizing El Tanbury’s arrival at Respect was exceptionally difficult. He brings the group on his personal. “Years in the past I already did it like this with the Ethiopian singer Mahmoud Ahmed. After all it is regular to cope with the band’s supervisor or the reserving agent who organizes the entire tour. Nonetheless, these had been each circumstances the place I needed the band so much as a result of it appears important to me, and he or she did not have any she did not plan a European tour. So I had no selection however to prepare it myself,” describes Holeček.
The Czech consulate refused to concern visas to Egyptians for the primary time. “In the long run, every thing turned out nicely. They solely come to the Respect live performance after which return to Egypt,” explains the organizer.
El Tanbura had her greatest success in 2006 when she toured Europe with the album Between the Desert and the Sea. | Video: Mamdouh Elkady
Return to Štvanice
Borek Holeček based the competition on the finish of the 90s of the final century at Prague Fortress throughout the period of Václav Havel. Since then, Respect has moved a number of occasions. Its persistence can also be illustrated by the truth that, as one of many few musical occasions, it additionally befell in each pandemic years 2020 and 2021.
Now, after 12 years, he’s returning to Štvanice, the place he was final washed away by floods. “Simply final yr we had been on Rohanský ostrov, the place the event has progressed and there are already residential buildings there,” explains Holeček.
The island has modified because the time when the competition space on Štvanice was naturally bordered on one facet solely by the Vltava. Holešovická lávka has grown up there, so this yr Respect will settle a bit additional away, on the website of the Mystic Sk8 Cup skateboard competitors.
Nonetheless, the house for round a thousand individuals ought to look the identical as in recent times. At Respect, the viewers all the time mingles with the performers. Folks dance or lie within the grass, canines and youngsters run amongst them. These within the again, with their faces painted in Brazilian masks, are entertained by a bubble shooter or sights like a merry-go-round. African meals and garments are offered, there’s a tea room and stands of non-profit organizations, and prior to now there have been additionally artworks by Krištof Kintera and Čestmír Suška.
Respect, which introduces Czechs to music aside from that from the radio, will likely be in its twenty seventh yr this yr. Ustad Noor Bakhsh, a veteran from the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, in addition to the Mongolian group Khusugtun mastering the strategy of throat singing, the Kurdish bard Ali Doğan Gönültaş and the Voices of Yemen group reviving the songs of the Jewish tribes from Yemen come to him.
In neither case is it an inexpensive unique. Holeček invitations bands from world gala’s, the place he has collected contacts over three many years. He chooses revered performers, and infrequently goes forward of traits, as when he found desert blues or music from African Mali to the native viewers.
Jah Wobble, a former member of the punk group Public Picture Ltd and a pioneer of so-called international music, may maybe be thought of a “star” within the conventional sense of the phrase this yr. However the competition doesn’t depend on the celebs, the afternoon performers are typically simply as essential because the night headliners.
On the final Štavanica Respect in 2012, the then overseas minister and later presidential candidate Karel Schwarzenberg was among the many viewers. This yr’s version is devoted to the politician, who died final yr on the age of 85. “Prince Schwarzenberg was on the beginning of the competition at Prague Fortress, the place he beforehand served as chancellor to Václav Havel. Within the first years, he helped us fairly basically, and for the subsequent many years, Respect was all the time held underneath his auspices. That is why we needed to commemorate him,” explains Holeček.
Lately, the Respect competition has been held on Rohan Island. He’s returning to Štvanice this yr. | Picture: Lukáš Bíba
Jail visits
And simply as Respect is returning to Štvanice this yr, additionally it is returning to its roots. It was created within the Nineties as a response to the racially motivated homicide of a Sudanese scholar from Žižkov, Prague. The aim was to familiarize the Czechs with otherness and supply them a unique perspective than what they’re already aware of. This yr, performers of Egyptian protest songs will convey it to the nation, which has historically sided with Israel. And never solely them.
Already on Saturday, guests can anticipate a efficiency by the Manchester duo The Breath, which consists of Irish singer and flutist Ríoghnach Connolly with guitarist Stuart McCallum.
She carried out for a very long time within the group Afro Celt Sound System and received the BBC People Singer of the 12 months ballot in 2019. He labored within the in style band The Cinematic Orchestra, as well as he has a doctorate in composition and teaches on the Royal Academy. Collectively, they launched a number of albums in a bigger line-up, however on the present one referred to as Land of My Different, they play alone. And it’s on this recording that Ríoghnach Connolly reveals the previous of her father, whom she all the time spoke of as an Irish piper.
Within the tune, referred to as Letters from Lengthy Kesh, the singer confides how, as a baby, she visited her father within the most safety jail the place Tarlac Connolly was sentenced to life in 1992 for a terrorist assault. In it, this member of the IRA navy group murdered three policemen and a nun. He was freed because of the amnesty related to the Good Friday Settlement, which ended three many years of battle in Northern Eire in 2000. Till his current loss of life, the terrorist devoted himself to people music.
“Ríoghnach Connolly’s lyrics on the brand new file had been a shock even for her guitarist, as a result of for the primary time in her life she got here out with the reality about her father like this,” emphasizes music journalist Jiří Moravčík, who wrote a information to this yr’s Respect program for UNI journal.
Moravčík heard The Breath live performance final yr on the Womex honest in Spain. “Ríoghnach Connolly spoke there about how her father’s loss of life, the beginning of her personal daughter and the strained feelings throughout the pandemic compelled her to come back out with all this. She advised, for instance, how she needed to conceal her origin as a baby, how she was afraid that somebody would kick within the door and the entire household with eight siblings will likely be murdered in retaliation for the assassination,” describes the skilled, based on whom the revelation enhances the already sturdy impression of The Breath live performance.
“She speaks in a Manchester dialect that is nearly unintelligible, however when she begins singing and enjoying the flute, it is extremely highly effective. And her singing about how her father was a terrorist to others, however a beloved father to her, simply reveals , what human tragedies can generally be,” provides the journalist.
Video: The Breath zpívají Land Of My Different
Duo The Breath will current the present album named after the tune Land Of My Different on the Respect competition. | Video: Woodburner Stay