Tag: Music

The Illusion of Self

Discourse_Water_DANCE_2

by Alireza Nurbakhsh

Each of us tends to think of him- or herself as a distinct being, a “self” that is both separate from other people and separate from our bodies and our perceptions, thoughts and feelings.

Mercan Dede

Mercan DedeTurns 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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The Fez Festival of Sufi Culture, 2011

A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

by Fitzroy Morrissey

Five different Sufi orders performed on successive days during the Festival.  A Sufi tariqah is by its very nature autonomous, distinct and traditional.

In this thoughtful and beautifully written article, Fitzroy Morrisey narrates his personal experience of the 2011 annual festival of Sufi culture in Fez, Morocco.   Beginning with a succinct exploration of the dichotomy between Sufism as it is commonly conceived and Sufism as it is actually lived, the author devotes the rest of the article to a thrilling description of the God-intoxicated music of diverse Sufi musicians, including classical singers, professional Sufi groups, and five Sufi tariqahs from Morocco and Turkey.

(Photo by Thierry Beauvir, beauvir.com)

 

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Sama

by Dani Kopoulus

One lonely string is plucked, and plays.
The tone is utterly intimate, though never heard before.
It opens the door and welcomes, knowingly.

Dani Kopoulus takes us on a journey deep into the mind and soul of one darvish meditating upon god and the master, swept up in the sounds of the music of a sufi sama session. The transcendent melodies and rhythms that surround her bring forth a stream of thoughts and images that flow from a burning heart and return to the silence of the breath.

 

(Photomontage Martin Harris)

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Silence

THE BREATH IS PRECIOUS

 
It was written in beautiful Persian calligraphy and was placed above the door of the old Tehran khaniqah. I first noticed it when I was a child: sokout dam ghanimat ast, “silence: the breath is precious.”