{"id":165,"date":"2003-01-04T10:00:13","date_gmt":"2003-01-04T15:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=165"},"modified":"2003-01-04T10:00:13","modified_gmt":"2003-01-04T15:00:13","slug":"music-from-jerusalem-to-cordoba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=165","title":{"rendered":"Music: From Jerusalem to Cordoba"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I heard <a href=\"http:\/\/www.naturalchant.com\/\">these folks<\/a> tonight at Casa de Luz.<br \/>\nFrom the promo email:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nMusic, chants, and texts from Mediterranean sacred traditions.<br \/>\nA musical voyage through history and spirituality.<br \/>\nCatherine Braslavsky, chant, drum, dulcimer;<br \/>\nJoseph Rowe, texts, oud, drums, tampura, mbira, Tibetan bowls.<br \/>\nHildegard of Bingen, Gregorian chant, Troubadours, Ibn Arabi, Yehuda Halevi,<br \/>\nJudeo-Spanish, and original compositions<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Good: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Braslavsky&#8217;s beautiful voice<\/li>\n<li>Musical illustration of cultural influences and differences in Christian, Arabic and Jewish songs from Andalusia<\/li>\n<li>Cross-cultural themes of spiritual openness, in liturgical poetry by Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen, Ibn Arabi (Sufi)<\/li>\n<li>Meditative atmosphere (also see not-as-good)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Not-as-good:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>High seriousness. The performers strode onto the stage seriously, Rowe ringing a meditation bell. Rowe narrated the performance in * a * serious * performance * voice. There were Judeospanish and Arabic pieces that could have been celebratory. There were Sufi pieces that could have been done with more energy. <\/li>\n<li>Western-european style. The vocals were beautiful, the instrumentals were fine accompaniment; they complemented the singer and  created atmosphere without overshadowing the vocals. But the rhythms, phrasing, and tonality were westernized. This isn&#8217;t a big complaint because it sounded good, and because cultural purity is exactly beside the point.<\/li>\n<li>Uniformly meditative pace. Her specialty is Gregorian chant;  he&#8217;s studied with Hamza El Din, so it stands to reason.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Experience:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The concert was held in a performance space of Casa de Luz, a local macrobiotic restaurant and community center. The average audience age was about 50; a central-Austin ex-hippie crowd.  One can imagine such concerts being held at the estates of monarchs and nobles in Andalusia; this was good American pay-at-the-door democarcy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I heard these folks tonight at Casa de Luz. From the promo email: Music, chants, and texts from Mediterranean sacred traditions. A musical voyage through history and spirituality. Catherine Braslavsky, chant, drum, dulcimer; Joseph Rowe, texts, oud, drums, tampura, mbira, Tibetan bowls. Hildegard of Bingen, Gregorian chant, Troubadours, Ibn Arabi, Yehuda Halevi, Judeo-Spanish, and original &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/?p=165\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Music: From Jerusalem to Cordoba&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prDRq-2F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}