New Music
New Music
Amerli by Refugees for Refugees and Anda by Melingo.
Dolma Renqingi, one of the refugee musicians on this powerful, crowdfunded album. ©
Amerli
by Refugees for Refugees (Muziekpublique 07, CD + digital)
What can musicians do to help in Europe’s refugee crisis? Not much. But they can send their voices and sounds into the world, hoping that people will listen and feel. You need to hear this album, paid for by crowdfunding in Belgium.
Refugees for Refugees is what it says: the musicians who play on it are all refugees. They have made new lives in Belgium. Simply and beautifully, they play together. There are 14 very varied tracks: different instruments, languages and styles.
There are many highlights:
• the Tibetan songs at the beginning and the end - Dolma Renqingi (vocals) and Kelsang Hula (dramyen, a seven-stringed lute) start with the traditional Tibetan song ‘Chomolungma’ about Mount Everest, with the marvellous Pakistani sarod player Asad Qizilbash;
• the Iraqi qanun player Ali Shaker Hasan;
• Afghan Aman Yusufi’s song for the Nowruz holiday (a celebration banned by the Taliban);
• Tammam Ramadan’s ‘The Second Day of Spring’ is for the victims of the Brussels attacks in March 2016;
• and the final piece, Norbu Tsering’s Buddhist prayer, ‘All Sentient Beings’.
The songs are in Arabic, Dari, Urdu and English.
★★★★★ LG
muziekpublique.be
Anda
by Melingo (World Village 056, CD + digital)
Daniel Melingo.
Daniel Melingo can do so many things. He is Argentinean and plays the clarinet. He also dances the tango. And he is a poet, and actor and many other things.
Melingo sings Gainsbourg’s ‘Intoxicated Man’ in French; and Erik Satie’s first ‘Gnossienne’. Melingo has a great backing band with bandoneon, strings and bouzouki, especially on ‘Volando Entre Las Nubes’, an instrumental that reminds us of Kurt Weill, Ennio Morricone as well as Melingo.
Anda means something like ‘Let’s go!’ And the title song, written by Maria Celeste Torre, Melingo’s wife, is mysterious and quiet. The rest of the album is brilliant and loud.
★★★★ LG
danielmelingo.com
NOW READ THE ORIGINAL: https://www.newint.org/columns/media/music/2016/10/01/mixed-media-music/ (This article has been simplified so the words, text structure and quotes may have changed).