"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Another Music Video

But maybe not what you were expecting from me. I have some acquaintance with Indian music and slightly more with early and traditional Iberian and Balkan music in which the Islamic influence is apparent, but I don't know all that much about music from the Middle East. This is wonderful -- the video is almost eight and half minutes, and you don't notice:



From a reader at Daily Dish:

The Iranian trio Niyaz blends traditional Persian music with a modern electronica sound. Azam Ali, Carmen Rizzo, and Loga Ramin Torkian are very cool ambassadors of their culture, IMHO. This performance is one of my favorites, filmed a couple of years ago in LA.

The lead singer, Azam Ali, is a great artist in her own right. She has been a featured vocalist in many film scores in recent years, notably "300" and "Matrix Revolutions". (Also see her earlier work as half of the group Vas, with whom she made 4 albums.) I don't know how popular Niyaz or Azam Ali are in Iran, but their music is absolutely superb - not to mention sensual, even erotic - and I'm a fairly picky classical musician working for the Catholic Church.


As far a music is concerned, I'm fairly omnivorous -- my collection at this point contains everything from reconstructions of Greek banquet music, ca. 450 BCE, to John Luther Adams, Terry Riley, Richard Einhorn and Michael Nyman to German medieval electropop to country rock to classic '80s pop to Celtic and Nordic trad (and not so trad) to Mozart, Mahler, Beethoven and Brahms to Native American-based New Age and on from there.

Check out the post -- there's also a clip from the 300 soundtrack.

And leave a comment -- What kind of music do you have in your collection?

2 comments:

Piet said...

Don't have anything before about 1500, but from then on it's all over the map. Not much jazz but a little, some great old blues recordings, orchestral and instrumental Romantics of course, some opera, some ballet, quite a lot of musical comedy and operetta (I was in the business for a few years), some spoken word, some folk, some church music from various periods. Not as much variety as you, but plenty for me. I don't use music as background as so many people do; I like to put on a recording and really listen, like a concert in my living room, so I don't have as much time to listen to music as I'd like.

Hunter said...

Jazz is the one area that I just don't comprehend, for some reason, although there are particular artists I've enjoyed.

About half my collection is review copies -- reviewing music has been a great learning experience for me, but then my attitude has always been "it's all music."

I'm one of the music-as-context people, but that's a variable -- sometimes I need silence, sometimes I'll sit down a focus on a piece, but a lot of the time it's my alternative to having the TV one -- I can't stand talking when I'm writing or reading. (Besides, I don't have a TV.) I have a CD wallet that goes to work with me -- I'd go crazy at the front desk if I didn't have some music at hand. And that's likely to be anything from Brahms to Arvo Part to Nickelback or Evanescence. Depends on my mood.