In many "Great Nights of Rumi" notable jewels emerged- improvised collaborations between readers & musicians. Here, Roger Housden takes a Coleman Barks translation & brings it into illuminated fruition. Oud & tabla explore a rhythmic phrase from Marcel Khalife in a sobbing, passionate ode to Shams-i-Tabrizi, life, & love.
Thanks to Dan & Dale Zola, Brad Van Cleve, Randy Roos, Sheldon Brown, Claude Palmer & Roger Housden for the music & inspiration.

Dostiblis Posts: Rumi Poem: "It's Dawn, Huzzam!"  (This We Are Now!)

Night Owl Intro to Descendre

documenting an arrangement;
an attempt to find a feeling

Bint al Shalabiya Impressions

This is for you, Amy. I started a bluesy piece last summer, sparked by the words "Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?" Did not know the actual melody of the song. Sections emerged: the "Round Midnight" quote; the obtuse "SuperFreak" quote; the waltzy secret agent intro. The melody also was influenced by Larry Coryell's "Treat's Style" with Jimmy Garrison & Elvin. I thought of Amy the whole time: her jazzy knowledge; her "Stronger Than Me" with just guitar; the blues, & especially jazz in all its forms no matter what Miles or Mingus might have said about the word "jazz." This is for you, Amy, and everyone who digs you deeply, with love and unprotected life.

Winehouse (take 2)

Is there too much focus on the suicidal?
Sylvia read with so much power. She drew this piece of music to her.
"I made a model of you!"  
One wonders if the husband whose lip she bit at first meeting
may not have been another 'Daddy,' perhaps a younger, poetic
fascist. I have nothing against Sylvia or her husband.
This is just a garageband demo. Anybody could have done it,
should they have been hit with the right glass of wine, the right sunset, the correct combination of energies on the azymuth of sound, vision & baraks.


"Daddy" (Sylvia Plath recites her poem w/Kraftwerk music 'The Model' by Balanescu String Quartet)

Source material from Paul Bowles composed together with music.
Aicha Qandicha is the source of the stories.
Interesting mix of Islam, Morocco, pre-Islamic brotherhoods, stories.

"He of the Assembly" Paul Bowles speaks

The final melody in a long dialogue about war & Vietnam.
I long ago wrote the "Vietnam Suite," a very early musical sound-picture of 4 compositions: "Prayer:" "Dienbienphu;" "Uncle Sam Goes Home;" & "Saigon Fever." Three of these are still in my repertoire on oud. They were written in a very short burst of primitive pianistic passion, then played by Continuum, our orchestra of the time- where I was the junior and least experienced member.
Later, "Vietnam in My Arm," a poem set to music, rather like a drug-addled movie.
"Victory in Rags" followed, a not-very-complete pop song, quite earnest.
THIS melody, honestly, came from a synthesizer line quickly improvised by my studio landlord in NYC, 1984. He was showing me how the synths & drum machine fed into the sequencer. He used a "santur" patch. Later he heard the piece, with vocals, & suggested I immediately stop singing! I did! Over time, after composing poetry to the song & singing it, I reduced it to a two-part repeating cycle. Here it is just oud. 
The unheard words are: "Going down the Perfume river; we're going down the Perfume River. Going down the Perfume River, we're going down, going down." 
The river is real, in Vietnam, inside Hue. It runs red certain times of year, not with blood, as some soldiers believed. Please correct me if I'm mistaken about these last statements! Thank you Hamza El-Din, for influencing the feeling from deep in the spirit!

("Going Down the) Perfume River"

African-American poets are under the radar in the American canons of "modern poetry."
If you look at the anthologies, you will find a wealth of history, culture, & the truth of the African-American community in the poetry.
I have chosen Brooks because of her proud & compassionate view of youth & her own children unborn. In her voice you can hear youth & the matriarch; the mother, the sister, the wife- and a woman alone, confronting poetry, racism & life with rich humor & insight.
This is a rough but loving collage of two poems, one well-known, the other not so well-known. I found her voice & added sounds from Garage Band.
She & Etheridge Knight are two of my favorite poets- both hard to take at times, because they are so straight-up; both African-American, both now passed. Bless them!

Pool Players 7 @the Golden Shovel/To Her Children: Tribute: Gwendolyn Brooks, African-American Poet

We met Etheridge in the Midwest in 1976 (Tumbleweed Tour!) He talked about the prison songs & rhymes that were rich & old in tradition- and how the emerging Black music- even then- drew on these rhythms & lines. The backing is from Trane's "Tunji." Titles: "The Idea of Ancestry"/"HardRock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane." All respect. The first poem returns at the end; the final section.

Etheridge Knight: The Idea of Ancestry/Hard Rock Returns to Prison.......

Losing her lover, who was her therapist, became a poem of deep expression.
To the male gaze (or ear) the emphasis may seem to be her pain and weakness.
Look further into the words and her voice, and see that this is not "feminist" in any black/white sense, but a ritual of "cutting through" in order to live: facing the naked pain, naming it, sharing it, and living on.
The emphasis on the wife is terrible in its scathing description: (what is the chapel?)
Yet it is not hate, but seeing with a terrible irony and truth the reality of the end of a love, so important and improbable.
"We're only going to get loaded...!"

"For my lover returning to his wife"

First found a picture of Cinon in the JFK University library (California.)
Research: H was the last Shaman of the Eagle Clan, 
Santa Ysabel Dieguenos, California.
He was a Toluache Shaman, which means
he conducted datura-based "coming of age" ceremonies
for adolescents, with individual colored sand drawings.
This image is a sculpture made from the photograph.
I dedicate the chant to him AND Bhimsen Joshi, who died near the time I recorded. Thanks to Peter Brown studio.
I recognize that it is only nominally "in-tune."

"Cinon Mataweer Duro"

The 31st. of January is "Amartithi,"
or the day of dropping the body & merging with the infinite.
Meher Baba's Amartithi is this day, 1969.
I offer the Arti (song/prayer) of his lovers, without words.
"O Captain of our ship..."
The picture show Baba's chair in Meherazad, India.

Gujerati Arti for 'ud & tamboura

Oud  (al 'ud) devotee & lately, composer based in Berkeley, CA. Posting pieces that are in process- to help shape them with feedback or just the energy coming in on the antennae, so to speak. Will be posting more poetic-based pieces
 and solo pieces.

Dostiblis

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