by Rebecca Sachs Norris
What is “body”? We speak about bodies as though we know what we are referring to, but we really don’t know what they are.
Category: Articles
Meditation in Motion
by Kabir Helminski“Sema is to struggle with the notion of one’s self, like a dying, bloodstained bird, fluttering in the dust.” -Jalaluddin Rumi.
Till Death Do Us Part / The Marriage of the Feminine Sensible to the Masculine Transcendental in Rumi’s Masnavi
by Safoura Nourbakhsh
“In the woman’s view of life, the outer world and the inner world, the words and the actions, the “sensible” and the “transcendental” must inform one another.”
The Dancer is in the Dance / Body Listening for Heart and Soul
by Susan Skeele
“All traditions of reverence are practiced here, in this body.” – ZULEIKHA
The Dancer is in the Dance gives an introduction to Zuleikha, performer, humanitarian, and social activist.
Mercan Dede
Turns the Tables on Sufism
By Michele Rousseau
Sufism has few ideas, but an inexhaustible wealth and variety of illustration. Among a thousand fluttering masks the interpreter is required to identify each old familiar face.
~ R.A. Nicholson, 1898
Internationally renound musician and DJ, Mercan Dede, is beloved by many nations of the world but his home country, Turkey, houses his harshest critics – those who feel that his contemporary appropriation of Sufi music, whirling dance, and ethics are an erosion of the traditions of the path.
Michele Rousseau balances the anxieties of Dede’s critics with her own experience of his music, and his extraordinary power to bring people of all walks of life together to partake in a shared experience, a “contemporary sama.”
(Photo Courtesy Yagmur Kizilok)
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Shamanic Traditions and Sufism
Oruç Güvenç and the Healing Power of Music
by Azize Güvenç with Yousef Daoud
Most of us know first-hand the transformative power of music and sound to create a profoundly calming or emotional experience, and readers know our previous issue of Sufi was dedicated to sacred encounters through music.
In their carefully researched essay Shamanic Traditions and Sufism, authors Azize Güvenç and Yousef Daoud take us into the amazing life and work of Dr. Rahmi Oruç Güvenç, a Sufi shaikh and master musician of Turkey who provides healing to the sick through music therapies that fuse Sufism with ancient shamanic practices from Central Asia.
Güvenç and his musicians combine music, movement and dhikr to awaken body, mind and soul. And researchers in Europe, the United States and Turkey are studying the positive effects of Güvenç’s sound and movement therapies on patients suffering from cancer, bone fractures, depression and other maladies.
(Photo courtesy of Azize Güvenç)
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Daf
THE SOUND OF COMPLEX SIMPLICITY
by Ali Nourbakhsh
Based on references to the instrument in early literature and on depictions in ancient sculpture and illustrations of musicians playing the daf, it is widely believed that the daf has been used in the Middle East for at least 2,000 years.
(Photo courtesy of Foad Tohidi)
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Lian Ensemble
MUSICAL COLLABORATIONS AND BEYOND
by Sholeh Johnston and Richard Barton
Listen to each of the ten albums that Lian Ensemble has produced during its 16 year recording history and one of the first realizations that strikes you is the quality of the guest performers and the rightness of the fused sounds. Again and again one is struck by unexpected musical combinations that nonetheless have a timeless quality, enveloping listeners in a cloud that transports them beyond themselves
(Photo Courtesy of Lian Ensemble)
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