Birds Requiem.

My Clematis running wild.

Thursday morning: I was up and about quite early today. I ventured out into my garden to feed my fishes and my feathered friends. The clematis looks amazing, in full bloom and climbing all over my fence and my little shed. The camellias have got quite a few flowers on them as well. I potted those sunflowers far too early though. I put them out on my bench to toughen them up, but I can’t risk planting them yet because of the fear of frost. After I had done the washing up and a couple of other bits of housework that I’ve neglected lately, I sat in the kitchen to give full attention to my new album which was recommended to me by a friend of mine.

It is called Birds Requiem by Dhafer Youssef. He was born in a small fishing village in Tunisia in 1967 and moved to Europe in 1990 to pursue a career in Jazz. He is a singer and Oud player. I didn’t know what an Oud was, so I looked it up. It is a short-necked stringed instrument very similar to a lute. This album was recorded in Gothenburg Sweden & Istanbul in 2013. I didn’t know what to expect. I thought it would be mainly North African type instruments but apart from the Oud and the Kanun (A Kanun is a stringed instrument, a bit like a zither or a psaltery) there are clarinets, trumpets, electric guitars, electronics, piano, double bass and drums. Four of the tracks are part of a suite called Birds Requiem. I must say the vocals of Dhafer Youssef are quite astounding, he can hold a note for an eternity. 

An Oud.

The voice is used as a major instrument to stunning effect. I love the piano playing of Kristjan Randalu particularly on track 2 called Sweet Blasphemy. Some tracks such as Blending Souls And Shades I would describe as jazz-rock. While I was listening to the music, I was aware of the birds singing in my garden. It wasn’t a distraction, I liked it, they seemed to complement the music. The music was about birds after all. Track 5 was called Whira and is an elegy for Dhafer’s mother. I loved the delicate double bass playing. The intro to Track 7 called 39th Gulay really rocked out. That track is dedicated to the city of Istanbul where east meets west, and this album certainly does that as well. Seudah is dedicated to Jon Hassell who is a trumpet player influenced by Miles Davis. He is also influenced by minimalism & World Music. Jon Hassell has worked with Terry Riley whose Rainbow In Curved Air I bought last year. That is all further evidence for everything being connected as I said recently.

A Kanun.

 I also enjoyed track 10 which is called Ascetic Journey. As you know Asceticism is a journey towards spiritual transformation, where the simple is sufficient and the bliss is within. This album proves that is true on many tracks. In fact, some parts of the album reminded me of the Tony Scott album for Zen Meditation that I was listening to recently, where less is more, and you can enjoy the silences between the notes as much as the music itself. Silence becomes an art form if it is nicely framed. The final track Whirling Birds Ceremony I had heard once before on YouTube and I liked it so much I decided to buy the album. If you scroll down you can listen to it and judge for yourself. I think you will agree that it is brilliant.

Dhafer Youssef.

Dhafer Youssef - Whirling Birds Ceremony

Mustt Mustt

Mustt Mustt.

When I got up this morning, I spent the first half an hour just staring out of the kitchen door at all the comings and goings. The blue tits seem to have definitely taken up lodgings in the bird box. They were flying to and fro with great beakfuls of nesting material. I will issue them with a rent book in due course! When I finally got motivated, I went for a walk up town because I didn’t set foot outside the house yesterday and I had run out of food. On the way back from the supermarket I had a look in the Sue Ryder shop. I was pleased to find two nice books. The first is called Kiss Me, Judas by Will Christopher Baer. It is a first USA edition from 1998. I had never heard of him before, but I bought it because it was only £1.00 and also it was signed. 

When I got home, I looked him up on Wikipedia and it says he is an American author of neo-noir fiction. He published a trilogy of novels in five years beginning with Kiss me, Judas and hasn’t published anything since. He has quite a cult following apparently. The book is about a detective called Phineas Poe who wakes up one morning to find that one of his kidneys has been removed and replaced with a bag of heroin. Crikey! If you look on eBay you will see that some people in the USA are asking up to £70 for a signed copy of this book. I wonder if I’m the only person in the UK with a signed copy? Anyway, I think it was a good find. The other book was a first UK edition of South And West by Joan Didion. I have heard of Joan Didion because I have another book by her called Slouching Towards Bethlehem. The book I found recounts her travels in Mississippi, Alabama & Louisiana in the 1970’s. In a review for The Guardian, Peter Conrad noted that Didion describes the South as "a metaphorical landscape, America’s heart of darkness"; "colonial, obsessed with disparities of “race, class, heritage”"; and its wilderness as "rank, malevolent, encroaching everywhere”. Anyway, it had to be worth a £1.00.

It is afternoon now and I am chilling out to an album that arrived a few days ago. It is called Mustt Mustt, by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. When I wrote my piece about the healing power of music a couple of weeks ago. I mentioned Sufi music and two of my friends whose views I respect made suggestions. Bent Sorenson recommended that I check out Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, so I did, and I ordered this CD. I must must! say I love it. It is the first Qawwali fusion album collaboration between singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and guitarist and producer Michael Brook, although the album is credited purely to Khan. It was Peter Gabriel who suggested that Brook and Khan work together. It was released in 1990 on Gabriel's Real-World Records label. It was recorded just down the road from here at Real World studios in Box.  As soon as I heard the opening title track, I liked it. It is very danceable which must be why it was remixed by Massive Attack and was a club hit in the United Kingdom, being the first song in Urdu to reach the British charts. It was later used in an advert for Coca-Cola.

Nasrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Many people consider this as a classic album. Mustt Mustt was voted one of the Top 100 albums of the 1990s by American music magazine Alternative Press. It reached #14 on the Billboard Top World Music Albums chart in 1991. David Lynch of The Austin Chronicle called the album a "seminal fusion". British musician Nitin Sawhney said that it "changed the face of British music forever". It is considered a "secularized" or "Western" version of Khan's other Qawwali albums. Thank you very much to Bent Sorenson because I am really pleased I discovered the music of Nasrat Fateh Ali Khan. Later in the week I’ll let you know what I think of Birds Requiem by Dhafer Youssef.

A message from Krishnamurti for March 20th.

The Rainy Streets Of Bath.

Great Pulteney Street.

 The weather was a lot better yesterday so I thought I’d have a look around Bath for a couple of hours because it is such a great place and there is always something to see. Outside the abbey there was a lady busking and singing jazz. She was very good, and I listened for a couple of songs. When she finished What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong I threw some change in her bucket and she said, “Thank you very much”. She told me that this was the first time she had ever busked in her life. I asked if she knew any Van Morrison songs. She didn’t, but asked what song I was thinking of. “Well, Moondance is tailor made for you”, I replied. She promised to learn it for next time. I’ll look out for her next time I’m in Bath.

Then, as usual I looked in a couple of charity shops. I was pleased to find a very nice biography of Celine. No, not Celine Dion!,  this is the French writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1894-1961) His book Mort Au Credit (Death On The Instalment Plan) is one of my favourite novels. He was very influential on the likes of Henry Miller, Kurt Vonnegut and the Beat Generation. After that I got bored with charity shops. I had a look in the Victoria Art Gallery, but I got bored with that as well because I was there back in August with my good friend Rhonda Batchelor from Canada and I have seen it all before. They had something special on called The Sharmanka Travelling Circus, but you had to pay to see that which I wasn’t prepared to do.

The sky had turned dark and it was drizzling rain when I emerged from there. I crossed Pulteney Bridge and I thought I would have a look in the Holburne Museum which I could see in the distance. In all the years I have lived in this area I’d never been in there. It is a beautiful Georgian building and I’m glad I went in. There are some fabulous 18^th & 19^th century British paintings including works by the likes of Gainsborough, Stubbs & Turner. I ended up chatting to one of the staff for about half an hour. I should mention the gardens as well which are known as Sydney Gardens and are the only original 18^th century pleasure gardens still surviving in Britain. They provided a favourite walk for Jane Austen when she lived in nearby Sydney Place and feature in her novel Northanger Abbey.

As well as their permanent collection there was also a special exhibition on by a contemporary British artist called George Shaw. I had never heard of him before but was very impressed. He was born in 1966 and brought up in the Tile Hill area of Coventry which features in a lot of his paintings. He is unusual in that his favourite medium is Humbrol enamel paints which are best known for painting model airplanes. The paintings are very detailed and on first glance could be mistaken for photographs. Urban decay and neglect seem to feature in many of the works. One work I was very taken with depicted an art-deco style pub that was built in the 1930’s to serve a local estate but now abandoned and derelict.

Sunrise Over The Care-home by George Shaw.

 Another work showed an English flag fluttering defiantly on a flag pole behind a high security fence which is obviously a statement about modern Britain. Some of the paintings do have that Edward Hopper feeling of loneliness and alienation. Some works also had a David Hockney type feel to them. I tried to take some photos, but the staff told me that I wasn’t allowed to for copyright reasons. That seems a bit silly to me because you can find his paintings quite easily on the internet. I didn’t argue with them because they were all volunteers and nice people. I had to content myself with buying a couple of postcards in the gift shop. It was gone 4.00 when I left and I scurried along the rainy wide pavements of Great Pulteney Street and headed for the station and that was the end of my afternoon in Bath.

Ash Wednesday 8.00am by George Shaw.