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BY ALEX HO

In print | March 6, 2008

The Middle Eastern Culture Week came to a sonorous close this past Saturday with “Music and Memory: Legacy in the New World,” a concert of classical and modern Arabic music performed by UCLA professor and ethnomusicologist A.J. Racy and the Philly-based MidEast Ensemble.

LPAC was packed with not only college students, but also many people from the Middle Eastern community of the greater Philly area. A concert dedicated to Arabic music does not seem to be a common sight in the U.S. As one of the members of the audience, Muhamed Almaliky, said of the performance, “This was really very rare.”

Before the audience could get to see Racy and MidEast Ensemble, they were first treated to a performance, titled “Zaman,” by the Al-Bustan Percussion Ensemble, which was comprised of middle school and high school students and led by master percussionist Joseph Tayoun.

The ensemble is a part of Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, a non-profit organization that co-sponsored the event with Swarthmore College’s Middle Eastern Culture Society. Director Hazami Sayed explained in the concert’s introduction that the organization works to “expose children and youth to Arabic culture.”

At the start of the concert, Racy explained that the performance would be the culmination of his only recent collaboration with the MidEast Ensemble. Both Racy and the ensemble members were ecstatic to be working together. Tayoun, who is also part of the ensemble, said, “I can’t tell you what an honor it’s been to work with A.J. Racy. We’ve listened to his music for quite a long time that to be on the same stage with him — it’s almost overwhelming.” After a particularly crowd-pleasing piece, Racy also said, “You can imagine what a pleasure it was to work with them.”

The program paid equal homage to classical music, folk music and more modern stylings, with many pieces being Racy’s own compositions.

Many of the pieces were performed in the form of a medley, which traditionally begins with a solo prelude that is heavily improvised, then brings in the entire ensemble and ends with a lighter, more upbeat tune.

Racy and the ensemble began their concert at the beginning with pieces that “belong to a repertoire that we may refer to as classical music … The style or genres of the performances are very old.” Almaliky characterized the music as from as far back as “Andalusia, when the Arabs were in Spain.”

The program gradually picked up to more recent, folk tunes that had much of the audience familiarly humming along. Among them were “Longa Shahnaz” a popular tune from the Ottoman era and several pieces by Egyptian musician Sayyid Darwish.

With one of Darwish’s songs, the 1919 “Il-Hilwa Dih,” Racy filled in the lyrical content that the audience would not be able to hear, explaining that “the song encourages craftsmen and workers to just work hard and you will find success.”

Almaliky said, “The nice thing was how [Racy] added the percussion, which is such a modern thing, into an old theme, and that made it very interesting. He … transcended many decades, even centuries, and brought them together.” The ensemble’s percussion section was a three-man machine made up of Tayoun and his brother William Tayoun along with Hafez El Ali Kotain.

Towards the end of the concert, the three percussionists performed their own medley, which elicited the loudest audience reaction of the night. Making full use of every one of their fingers, the percussionists had many audience members with mouths agape.

It was not only a masterful performance. The concert was also probably, for many in the audience, a crash course in the various instruments of Arabic music that are seldom heard in other world music. One of the most prominent Arabic instruments is the lute-like ’ud, which was played throughout the night by Roger Mgrdichian.

Racy also introduced a reed flute called a nay. “The Sufis use it,” Racy said, “and they look at that flute sound as something that is conducive to spiritual transcendence.”

Among the other instruments that Racy played, the buzuq, a string instrument with metal strings and a ridiculous number of frets along its ridiculously long neck, might just be any metal rocker’s fantasy.

Finally, there was the mijwiz, a reed double-pipe that “is a typical instrument you find in Arab weddings,” according to Racy.

In taking its audience through the various ages of Arabic music, the concert more than lived up to its name. Racy and the MidEast Ensemble finely presented a legacy that is too often forgotten in today’s world.

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