Iran: The Masters of Music, Vol. 2

Description

Master vocalist Mohammad Karimi has drawn from the most authentic source of the radif (classical repertoire), for an intimate expression far from any artifice, in perfect harmony with Mohammad Musavi’s ney flute — a simple reed with an immense breath. Karimi thus presents the mode he has chosen to sing: “Navâ has a specific beauty. It is a gentle, refined, and subtle mode, which plunges the listener into a state of meditation. The melodies that make it up are among the most traditional and have been passed down for at least three hundred years from master to pupil, all the way to my own masters, Davâmi and Hâjji Aqâ.” Mohammad Musavi’s reed flute (ney) also signifies the calligrapher’s pen. Indeed, there is a way of highlighting the singing of a single note like a stroke, of taking up a fragment of it in echo, of seizing a motif to unfold it in arabesque, of organizing its punctuation, which evokes calligraphy and illumination. At this point, two ineffable breaths remain: that of a man, that of a flute. But, as Mowlânâ Rumi suggests, are they not one and the same being?