TribalCon 2010

Another TribalCon successfully completed, and damn am I inspired. For me, this TribalCon was also a great reminder about my love of music, or really, my love of PLAYING music. I took a big step this year and performed a piece on violin for the student troupe's performance of Veselba. It's been a great path getting back into playing violin and Saturday's performance felt great along side the musicians Darbuka Dave, August Hoerr, and Teejei to bring the piece to life for the students. Thanks guys, that really meant a lot to play with you!

This year's Friday night hafla was a great chance to play with some of my favorite musicians. I loved range of music everyone brought to the party, including Balkan, Middle Eastern, and even the Tetris song (Thanks Joachim!). Of course, no hafla would be complete with out a total jam out with our davul line led by the amazing Nevik. That really gets everyone on their feet. ATS fun was had by all, and Denys led and taught folk line dances around the ballroom, yet another basis of dance that belly dancers rarely are able to access.

Every year at TribalCon I am regenerated by the drive, thoughts, knowledge, and artistic expression of the teachers AND attendees. It's great to see so many dancers and musicians taking care of our art form. TribalCon really isn't just about dance, but what the artist needs to complete their training and further their own expression of the art, whether its dance or music. I felt this firsthand for the first time this year through the classes, and it was truly an experience.

Donna's lecture on Thursday evening was invigorating. I love how she is not afraid to cover topics we as dancers need to address to overcome our still existing misnomers of the art form. The lecture bounced from hyper-sexuality, to religion, to history, and back to our practice in the industry today. She challenged us to be informed and take these matters to deep thought so we can be prepared to respond to these issues informed and well spoken to our audiences. Oh, and her reading list is absolutely a must for any aspiring belly dancer. Period.

I loved Asharah's presentation on the history of tribal belly dance, diving into the roots of from Jamilar Salimpour to Carolena to our modern interpretations. I think it's so important to know your history as tribal fusion dancers, and this was presented in such a way that was succinct, and very well thought out. Asharah's workshop made my inner history dork giddy with joy talking about my favorite subject of belly dance in the 60's and 70's in the U.S. She then took us through a series of particular dance moves of the Jamila Salimpour method and how those basics were changed overtime to morph into today's American Tribal Stye vocabulary.

Jen Speiden's anatomy for dancers class has been a TribalCon staple for a few years now. This year was the first time I was able to attend the class - and it was AMAZING. As dancers we need to take care of our bodies to elongate our ability to dance. Jen showed us proactive examples of ways to protect areas that tribal belly dancers use very often, namely our rotator cuffs, abdominals, iliopsoas, and our spine and how they correlate to dance movement. She also explained how our bodies move so that we can avoid injury from trying to torque our body in unsafe ways. It was a great class, and I truly look forward to next year's class.

Sunday also held the music and dance discussions. Both discussions centered around inspiration in music. The dance discussion also touched on the practice regimen of our teachers, how to handle burn out, and how to handle the post-event 'blah's. Across the board, the teachers agreed that cross training, finding new inspiration in and out of the dance form, and knowing your own tolerance limit was paramount to overcoming your dance obstacles, oh and yoga.

Its Sunday night, I'm home, and the hustle and bustle of classes, vendors, and music is still echoing in my head. I'll try not to get the post-event blues, but it'll be hard after this weekend. Gulf Wars is in two weeks, that is something to definitely look forward to. I plan to play music every night with my friends and exchange more inspiration and ideas, so I guess I should go practice now...

Oh, and if you want to know more of what happened this weekend, check out Aziza Nawal's Note on FB

Salons Update

We've been having a great time at the salons. This summer is the trial run for what I hope will turn into a weekly meeting of musicians working on all kinds of Middle Eastern and Balkan music. Here are photos and audio of some of our sessions:


May 10th Recording

May 10th Photos

May 31st Recording

May 31st Photos

If you would like to come to a salon, JUST SHOW UP! We work on a lot of stuff and no you don't have to know how to read music and no you don't even have to know how to play an instrument! Plenty of people come and grace us with their voices. I think the lyrics to these songs are very important, so come on down!

You can either join the Atlanta Gypsy meet-up or the Google group I started to keep up with dates and details:

http://musicians.meetup.com/335

http://groups.google.com/group/memusicatl/

Drum Solo Construction

This past week I taught a drum solo workshop in Orlando, and I had a great time creating a workshop based on “how to construct a drum solo.” I know from personal experience, creating a drum solo that is memorable, show-stopping, and awe-inspiring is a daunting task. What I did notice while researching drum solos, however, is that most Middle Eastern drum solos have common elements if made for a belly dancer, more specifically they will probably have the following elements: Entrance, Answer and call, Pop/slap, Beledi resolution, Shimmy section (could also be finale), Finale punch line.

Entrance – introduces the dancer, the percussionist(s), and sets the tone for the rest of the piece. Could be a recurring rhythms such as ayoub or malfouf, a unique rhythm set that spaces between each riff, or a simple roll to warm the percussionists fingers.

Answer and call – a “power of four set” where the percussionist introduces a riff, and another percussionist (maybe the dancer utilizing zills) answers. Dancers could utilize this section with intricate isolations and musical interpretation.

Pop/ slap – literally referring to the pop and slap technique on the doumbek, these “power of four” sets gives a different texture to the rhythms and riffs the percussionist is presenting. The dancer should in turn give a different texture to her movement with level changes, directional faces, and internal isolations i.e. percussive belly rolls.

Beledi resolution – usually by this point of the drum solo both you and the percussionist have almost pulled all of your “tricks”. The percussionist then starts a basic beledi rhythm as a break for everyone including the audience. Middle Eastern audiences will clap in catharsis and familiarity to this rhythm. The dancer should relax at this point and conserve her energy for the build up to the finale, doing simple or folkloric steps. Awalim has used this break as an opportunity to use ATS in our choreography.

Shimmy section – exactly what it says, the part that everyone waits for. The percussionist will utilize rolls in which 95% of the time the dancer will answer with hip shimmies. Be creative with however you want to interpret those rolls; if you have a mean belly flutter, by all means, dazzle us! I know I was when Zoe Jakes pulled this technique at the latest BellyDance SuperStares show with percussionist Issam Houshan.

Finale – finales are the absolute peak of your drum solo, whether the last section builds or speeds in tempo with a traditional fellahi, or goes crazy with a million poly rhythms: make sure you save your highest point to be your final point. If you have lead your audience as you should with a drum solo, they should jump out of their seat when you end on this high note.

So, what are the pieces I pulled this information from? The following pieces:
Amer’s Drum Solo: Arabesque Dance Company
Naima’s Hip: Hossam Ramzy
Cat’s Meow: Susu Pampanin and the Cairo Cats
Rejoicing in Upper Egypt: Musicians of the Nile
Missr!: Raquy and the Cavemen

More “classic” drum solos can be found from the following albums:
Raquy Danziger – Naked, Jordan
Hossam Ramzy – Sabla Tolo Vol. 1,2,3
Issam Housham – The Dancing Drum
Susu Pampanin– Dancing Drums
Carmine Guida – Shake ‘Em Up Belly Dance Drum Solos
Sohail Kaspar - The "Magic" of John Bilezikjian
Mary Ellen Donald – Gems

Sheet Music Craziness!

I read sheet music. I was trained as a musician to read sheet music. Learning pieces by ear has been a challenge to say the least, learning Middle Eastern songs by ear? HA! I need some guidelines before I can dive off that cliff. Over the last couple of weeks I've bought some Arabic sheet music compilation books and CD's with sheet music files. I found these on all corners of the inter-webs and beyond. I'll share my initial thoughts with each as I become mroe familiar with each through practice and usage. Some initial thoughts include:

Mimi Spencer's song book (pink book pictured) is great for developing belly dance sets, very clear and to the point with clear notation. Can't wait to accumulate that entire collection of music.

Maqam.com's sheet music book (blue book on left) has a lot of pieces from the Levant which is nice as most of these song books carry a lot of Egyptian pieces. The lyrics are inlcuded in Arabic, which is useful if you can read Arabic. Transliteration only goes so far in my opinion, and if you're going to play and especially sing Arabic music, start learning the Arabic language. You'll be surprised at how much you miss out when you don't. I'm not fluent but I see this as an excellent way to practice and learn.

I've leafed through most of the others, but haven't had a chance to really dive into them. I'll be figuring out a better format of posting reviews and will start those soon.

Next post: Important terms for Arabic music: do you know what iqaat, muwashah, qasida, takht or wasala mean? My next post will include a glossary of terms for Arabic music.

Play in the Park

This weekend was just delightful. I sat in Piedmont Park for about 4 hours playing tabla with some other drummers at the Atlanta Burners Play in the Park event. I met some very cool people and worked on my slap for a while. I almost have it...We played around with a couple f rhythms I'd never tried before which was nice. We kept the rhythms going for a good length of time feeding off one another's variations of the rhythm. I guess you could say my "ess" was on! This is one of the pics I found from Facebook, one of the only times I switched my tabla for this other drum.



Then to top off a great day, my family and I went and had dinner at a new Arabic restaurant in Woodstock called Mediterranean Buffet. The name is horribly cheesy but the food was fantastic and not only because they had malfouf! After dinner we hung out with the owner and smoked sheesha. Victoria came over for a while and I took out the tabla again and did my first attempt at a drum solo for a belly dancer, all relaxed and non-showy. It was really fun, and gave me inspiration to work harder on tabla. The restaurant was fairly large and I hope it works out as the owner is very nice and wants to create a community...we'll see if that can happen with a Middle Eastern restaurant in Woodstock, GA.

Video Clips from trip

AUC Folkloric Troupe August 2008



Randa Kamel - Nile Maxim December 2008



Sufi Troupe at Al Azhar Park November 2008

Maybe, just maybe

Plans are in the works to go back to Misr with my friend Dave for the month of November...!!