A'HAZEEJ
Files
Abstract
“A'hazeej” - meaning songs or the songs they sing in Arabic - is a study of musics from the Arabian Peninsula. The project documents these rich musical styles, never commercialized outside the Persian Gulf and, using Jazz idioms, works to create a unique experiment in new Arabic Music, enriched by the Jazz tradition and approach. A'hazeej simultaneously seeks to create accessible information about these sparsely-researched musical styles, making important material available to a broad audience. The project as presented here is a case study based on five songs: three from the “Sea Arts,” one a mix of Bedouin music and music brought to the Gulf by slaves from East Africa and one an Urban Art. I approached the work as a performer, educator and composer, not as an ethnomusicologist nor theorist. First listening, transcribing, and internalizing the melodies and complex polyrhythms, I then arranged and composed two songs and three instrumentals for a ten-piece jazz ensemble. Moving forward, A’hazeej will focus on women musicians and women’s “art forms” in order to highlight their buried contribution to this old tradition.
Publication Date
7-1-2019
Campus
Boston Campus
Recommended Citation
Rantisi, Tareq, "A'HAZEEJ" (2019). Global Jazz. 78.
https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-global-jazz/78
Comments
Project Components: paper (.pdf), presentation (.pdf), audio files (ZIP file containing 5 .wav files), videos (ZIP file containing 3 .mp4 files), scores (ZIP file containing 5 .pdf documents).