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HIGH NOTES
Two contrasting videos affirm the power of the art to keep the human spirit alive and bring cultures closer at the time when despots are erecting Barriers
The further collapse of the city's transportation infrastructure has made it even more unpleasant than usual for people to travel through the city. Online music thus became a substitute for the traditional concert tour.
In addition to the regular Hindustani and Carnatic fare, two striking musical videos of a different genre – both seemingly viral – brought relief to urban gloom. One is a video of half a dozen young Palestinians dancing, and the other of an Indian singer.
Palestinians make the dabke, a traditional communal dance of the Levant: the region roughly occupied today by Israel and the Occupying Territories, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Normally, dancing is practiced in groups during festivities, such as weddings.
Simultaneously graceful and athletic, the basic sequence of the dance consists of six stages, but it has tons of variations and can become very complex. An integral step is a light kick and trampling, which some say goes back to the origins of the form as a group activity to tamp down the soil on which people have built homes. Played online or in a circle, the dance form seems to allow considerable improvisation. Dancers in a particular formation may in turn lead others.
The sequence in the video is as seductive as it is threatening. Palestinians, including a young woman, danced not at a merry ceremony but at the border of the Gaza Strip with Israel on June 29. The inhabitants of what is often called the largest open-air prison in the world have protested the refugees and their descendants are returning home to Israel.
The ongoing protests also demand the end of the Israeli blockade of Gaza and other policies that the Palestinians deem hostile to a peaceful settlement of the conflict between them and Israel. In this period, Israeli forces killed at least 135 Palestinians and wounded another 15,000 in the Gaza Strip, according to Al Jazeera
The best video quality I could find was Russia Today The site of the song, entitled "The great dance of return". A curtain of smoke forms the backdrop and gunshots can be heard on the music. There is a group of basic dancers, but others walk by joining for short periods: this form of dance is clearly a deeply rooted part of the culture.
The dancers wear keffiyehs and everyone twirls a rope, the kind Palestinians use to throw stones across the border – a sign of how the dabke has evolved into a symbol of Palestinian nationalism and a form of resistance against Israeli occupation. This video shows the immense ability of music and dance to evolve and keep alive the human spirit.
The other video, highlighted a little earlier, offers a stark contrast: it is warm to the heart and is sweet. Here, Indian singer Chandana Bala Kalyan performs Take Five one of the most popular jazz standards in the world, in carnatic music. This piece, composed by saxophonist Paul Desmond and recorded by his group, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, in 1959, becomes a great success
Brubeck, the pianist of the group of the same name, seems to have been inspired by Turkish music. He traveled through Turkey in 1958 and was charmed by a traditional folk song that street musicians played. This folk song, in turn, was supposed to contain elements of Bulgarian music
Take Five was repeated several times. Now he has emerged in another avatar, in the incredibly clear and resonant voice of the Indian singer. While she accurately interprets the note, she sings it in a complete carnatic style – gamakas and everything. The air corresponds fairly closely to Keeravani, except for one or two forbidden phrases in the carnatic raag, such as sa-ga-ma and pa-dha-sa.
Brubeck himself has a carnatic connection. During a trip to India in 1958, probably the same tour as the pianist in Turkey, he and drummer Joe Morello landed in the All India Radio studio in Chennai to play with the great Mridangist Palani Subramania Pillai. According to The Hindu the jazz duet was stunned by the play of Pillai, and by Carnatic rhythm in general.
At a time when authoritarian rulers erect barriers, a song inspired by a Turkish folk song with Bulgarian influences and reinterpreted in the Carnatic idiom validates the irrepressible ability of music to bridge cultures.
(This column appears every other Tuesday.)
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