#Maleem Mahmoud Ghania

[radiophd]

maleem mahmoud ghania with pharoah sanders -- the trance of seven colors

[jt1674]

[onetwofeb]

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders- The Trance Of Seven Colors

[forty5sixty]

Cryptic Shadows // Church of Sound

Music has always been a great conduit for exchange. Be it culture, language, beliefs, and beyond, it's astonishing what a hand full of notes can achieve. Based within the hallowed surroundings of St James The Great Church in east London, Church of Sound continues to be a channel for the transfer of musical ideas. Having hosted the likes of the late, great Tony Allen to Fatima & The Eglo Live Band and many more diverse luminaries in between, Church of Sound is the place to see groundbreaking acts in a splendour setting.

The latest installment featured Majid Bekkas from Morocco and London supergroup Waaju.

Bekkas is a long-time purveyor of the Gnawa sound that comes from the North African nation. The genre is a form of Moroccan music comprised of religious melodies and rhythms filled with ritual poetry, prayer, and chanting. Bekkas's musical journey has seen him take the Gnawa baton from the likes of Maleem Mahmoud Ghania, Ba Houmane, and run with it, seamlessly collaborating with musicians such as Joachim Kühn, Ablaye Cissoko, and now Waaju.

A groove-laden world music ensemble formed from the bedrock of London's prominent jazz bands, Waaju has been making waves since being formed by percussionist Ben Brown. Meaning "to inspire" in the Bambara dialect from Mali, Waaju's sound is foremost influenced by West African music. Mixed with the best elements of free jazz, Waaju's live one-night stand with Bekkas was spiritual, as our snapshot above illustrates. So go check out Church of Sound, Majid Bekkas, and Waaju in whatever incarnation they appear in next.

<end>

article and video: Maya Olatunji

(281 words)

[theparanoid]

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania With Pharoah Sanders - The Trance Of Seven Colors

(1994, full album)

[Gnawa, Spiritual Jazz]

[nofoodjustwax]

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders - The Trance of Seven Colors

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders – The Trance of Seven Colors

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Dr. Pete Larson

Dr. Pete Larson runs Dagoretti Records now, he’s gotten there by an unusually long and winding road. Earlier in his career, Larson fronted 25 Suaves and Couch and ran BULB records. He also trained as an epidemiologist and spent time in Kenya studying the transmission of malaria. While in Kenya, he developed an interest in a lute-like eight-stringed instrument called a nyatiti and studied it with the master player Oduor Nyagweno. All these interests collide in a striking first album from Dr. Pete Larson and His Cytotoxic Nyatiti Band, where the nyatiti “cuts through a haze of electric rock distortion, pinging rhythmically and restlessly against floating euphorias of ululating vocals,” per Jennifer Kelly’s review. Here he lists some favorites from several continents.

I have been asked to create one of these lists for Dusted and here’s what I came up with. Making these lists is kind of difficult. I have a hard time remembering what I’ve been listening to at any moment, but here is a collection of old and new that get frequent airplay in my home. I play a Kenyan lyre, so this heavily leans toward lyre and harps and East African music in general, with some other choice cuts thrown in.

Musicians Of The National Dance Company Of Cambodia — Homrong (Real World Records)

I think I got this record (CD) back in the early 90s when I was selling music to Caroline Records. A friend sent me a box of CD promos, most of which wasn’t very interesting, but fortunately, this one was included. I don’t really know anything about Cambodian music, but for some reason, this collection of mid-tempo Cambodian court jamz plays every couple of months. Lots of weird sort of lurching rhythms and chorus singing with an erhu like instrument over it. A great listen.

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania w/ Pharoah Sanders — Trance of the Seven Colors

The Trance Of Seven Colors by Maleem Mahmoud Ghania w/ Pharoah Sanders

Trance inducing this is. Maleem Mahmoud Ghania is (was) one of the 20th century masters of Moroccan Gnawa music, a sort of spiritual, bass-heavy, rolling kind of music of Morocco. Any recording by Maleem Mahmoud is going to impress, but this mash of up of Gnawa with the great Pharoah Sanders is another level. If you are familiar with Gnawa music, it is a little disorienting to hear Sanders howl over the slow burn trance jamz but you are quickly drawn into what a perfect matchup this ended up being. Released on CD in the 90s, it fortunately has finally gotten a proper vinyl release.

Momoyama Harue — “Lullaby for the mother demon’s baby” (桃山晴衣* ‎– 鬼の女の子守唄)

I was playing the shamisen for a while (a three stringed lute from Japan) and found Momoyama Harue as part of my research. Shamisen is kind of a folky instrument for drinking parlors and entertainment of old Japan. The instrument and the music was nearly dead but saw a revival in the 1960s, similar to folk revivals in the US that brought the banjo back. Momoyama, however, was kind of an outlier, more arty than folky, and more poetry than song. Rather than box the music in an imagined past or try to hopelessly smash it into amplified rock music, she pushed it forward, blending it with ambient synth along with Indian and Middle Eastern musics. One of her best collaborations was with the great Egyptian oud player Hamza el Din that was nearly dead until the 1960s. All of the songs on this record are haunting (as the title suggests), but these tracks with el Din are truly singular. I have been searching for a vinyl copy of this record for years; one day I’ll get lucky.

Lucas Odote — “J. Oreng”

Nyatiti Singles Volume 1 by Lucas Odote

I spent several years in Kenya learning to play the nyatiti, an eight stringed lyre historically played by a group of people in an area around Lake Victoria. I also spent time collecting records, searching for hours in dusty boxes for Kenyan traditional music records. One of my best finds was at Jimmy’s Records in Kenyatta Markets, this record by the great Nairobi based nyatiti player Lucas Odote. Most nyatiti records are just a guy playing solo and more ethno than funky. But this one seems to be Lucas teaming up with what I think to be Nairobi funksters, the Loki Toki Tok band. At least that’s what I can guess. My copy is beat to hell. It took some doing to get some sound out of it, but this is one of my faves in my collection.

Siti Muharam — Siti of Unguja (Romance Revolution On Zanzibar)

Siti of Unguja (Romance Revolution On Zanzibar) by Siti Muharam

I swear I saw Siti Muharam sing on the deck of a hotel bar while vacation in Zanzibar several years ago. I can’t be certain, but I am pretty sure it was her singing for the band I saw. The traditional form of Taarab music is something to be experienced. Taarab music comes from the Arab coast of East Africa, and is this fantastic mix of local feel and Arab sounds, overlapped with heart wrenching songs of lost love and longing. I think there are some foreigners involved in this production, but this is an excellent document of Taarab music at its best.

Grandmaster Masese — “Orogena rwa Baba”

Grandmaster Masese: New African Soundz Singles No.1 by Grandmaster Masese

It might be gauche to put records from your own label on a list like this, but I am first a music fan and second a musician and third a music seller… so this one stays. G-master is a friend of mine from Kenya and one of the best humans I know. One of just a handful of people who play the Obokano, a giant 8 stringed lyre that emits an unforgettable sub-bass buzzing sound and this was his first release in the US and one of my favorite records ever. We recorded this in his kitchen in Nairobi with just a couple of mics over dinner. G is a cool guy. You should listen to his music.

Yagi Michiyo — Seventeen

Yagi is another Japanese musician who specializes in what one would think is a “traditional” instrument, but who brings much more to the table than one would expect. Yagi is a koto player by training. You have probably heard koto in the background music for scenes of Japan in American movies. The version you hear there is mostly lifeless and flat, kind of like a plastic chair in the corner. Yagi, however, plays the 17 string bass koto, invented in the 1920s or so, to try and give new life to the instrument. Yagi creates weird percussive, dissonant music that I can’t really get enough of.

Asnakech Worku (featuring Hailu Mergia) — Asnakech

Asnakech by Asnakech Worku

Asnakech Worku was a lot of things; pioneer, actress, but most notably a female Krar player. Certainly there might have been other female Krar players in Ethiopia at the time, but Krar players are mostly men. The Krar is a lyre from Ethiopia, mostly played with one hand, though there are several playing styles out there. Worku plays haunting sounds on her Krar on this record, backed up by famous Ethiopian keyboardist Hailu Mergia, who really needs no intro.

Ogola Opot — “Domtila Ogola”

This will probably be the only 78 on this list. Ogola Opot is considered the grandfather of the Kenyan nyatiti, coming to prominence in the 1960s and 70s, and creating the genre we know as Siaya style “traditional nyatiti.” If someone asks me what nyatiti music sounds like, this is probably where I would have people start. I include this first because it is a great record and second because it was my holy grail for a while (though I always have new holy grails) and managed to find a pristine copy for sale from a place in France recently. I am not going to say how much I paid for it.

Sosena Gebre Eyesus — S/T (Little Axe Records)

Sosena Gebre Eyesus by Sosena Gebre Eyesus

I bought this record off the net because I am a huge fan of Begena music, this haunting, trance inducing music from Ethiopia that appears to be the go-to for Ethiopian Christians… but this record explained nothing of that. Just a picture of a lady with a begena and no other info…. It took me a while to put together what the record was and where it came from, but the sounds contained within are impeccable. Just 40 minutes of weird undersea tones on a giant bass lyre.

[goodbysunball]

Best of 2019

Happy new year, y’all. Here’s a handful of favorites from yet another ridiculously robust year for music from zee underground and below. Joshua Abrams & NIS was a no-brainer for me, a nearly perfect release all the way around, but the Bobby Would and Mount Trout albums were probably the two I listened to the most this year. Bad Breeding, SCAN and Asid kicked my teeth in, I zoned way the fuck out with Crazy Doberman, K-Group and the Dead C/the Never Quartet, and that Maleem Mahmoud Ghania record is now probably the best sounding record I own. I like that Siltbreeze only puts out one record per year now, I like that Jim Shepard's vaults were cracked, and if you like that legendary Keggs 7″, let me introduce you to the Society’s 7″. Lots of great stuff didn’t make the cut, and I’m still discovering more in the lists/recommendations of other trusted sources (like this Anadol record, or this Extended Hell mini-LP), so keep ‘em comin’. I didn’t do as much writing as I’d like this year, but that’s gonna change soon. Onward!

LP

Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society, Mandatory Reality (Eremite)

Krypts, Cadaver Circulation (Dark Descent)

Bobby Would, Baby (Low Company)

Chronophage, Prolog For Tomorrow (Cleta Patra)

Bad Breeding, Exiled (Iron Lung)

The Dead C, Rare Ravers (Ba Da Bing!)

Sempiternal Dusk, Cenotaph of Defectuous Creation (Dark Descent)

Crazy Doberman, s/t (Mastermind)

Itchy Bugger, Double Bugger (Low Company)

C.I.A. Débutante, The Landlord (Siltbreeze)

...and six more:

Fabulous Diamonds, Plain Songs (Alter)

Carla dal Forno, Look Up Sharp (Kallista)

Monokultur, s/t (ever/never / Förlag För Fri Musik)

The Pheromoans, County Lines (Alter)

The Stroppies, Whoosh (Tough Love)

Yellow Eyes, Rare Field Ceiling (Gilead Media)

7″/12″/Cassette

Asid, Pathetic Flesh 12″ (La Vida Es Un Mus)

Euromilliard, "Elève Modèle” b/w “Indolore” 7″ (Pollymaggoo)

Forra, Mostrame Lo Peor 7″ EP (La Vida Es Un Mus)

K-Group, “Accueil” b/w “Over-Future Shop” 7″ (I Dischi Del Barone)

Mount Trout, Shelter Belt cassette (Rough Skies)

The Never Quartet, “1.001.006″ b/w “1.001.007″  7″ (I Dischi Del Barone)

Ossuary, Supreme Degradation cassette (Darkness Shall Rise)

Overt Hostility, s/t cassette (Loki Label)

Pinocchio, s/t 7″ EP (Toxic State)

SCAN, s/t 7″ EP (self-released)

Skiftande Enheter, s/t one-sided 12″ (Levande Begravd)

Reissue/Archival

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders, The Trance of Seven Colors 2xLP (Zehra)

Jim Shepard, Heavy Action 2xLP + 12″ (ever/never)

Smelly Feet, Left Odours cassette (Independent Woman)

The Society, “You Girl” b/w “Lonely” 7″ (My Mind’s Eye)

V/A, Heavy Space Records - Anthology Vol. 1 cassette (Ikuisuus)

Above: Bill Direen at the Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN, Nov. 17

Shows

Jon Mueller at the Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN, January 23

Gong-trance heaven

This Is Not This Heat at the Mill & Mine, Knoxville, TN, March 23

Best show of the year, no contest

BIG|BRAVE and Primitive Man at the Earl, Atlanta, GA, June 17

One of the most punishingly loud shows I’ve ever seen

Cube at the Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN, June 20

Danced like a fool to his cracked techno

Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society at the Diana Wortham Theatre, Asheville, NC, August 24

Now with faster tempos - brilliant

Bill Direen at the Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN, November 17

“I’ve always been a mistaker”

[anamon-book]

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders The Trance Of Seven Colors Axiom

[disolvente]

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders ‎– The Trance Of Seven Colors

[twistedsoulmusic]

Morning soundtrack Maleem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders The Trance Of Seven Colors.

[deepartnature]

Pharoah Sanders – Live In Paris (1975) (Lost ORTF Recordings)

“When Pharoah Sanders played tenor saxophone with John Coltrane in the 1960s, his tone was harsh and wild. Soloing alongside Coltrane on records like Ascension, Om, and Live in Japan, Sanders’ horn would shriek and howl and cry, reaching a pitch of earth-shaking intensity on pieces that pushed jazz to the limits of legibility. But after Coltrane’s death in 1967, Sanders began exploring a different path. Playing with Alice Coltrane on Ptah, the El Daoud and Journey in Satchidananda, and on his own albums for the Impulse! label, his sound was still searching, but now it was lyrical, and his musical settings often included trance-inducing grooves. After a half-decade enduring the blast furnace of free jazz, Sanders’ style grew more spiritual and cosmic and started looking to music from around the globe for inspiration. ...”

Pitchfork

W - Live in Paris (1975) (Lost ORTF Recordings)

LondonJazzCollector (Audio/Video)

YouTube: Live In Paris (1975 - Album)

2015 December: Maleem Mahmoud Ghania With Pharaoh Sanders - The Trance Of Seven Colors (1994), 2016 January: Ptah, The El Daoud - Alice Coltrane & Pharoah Sanders (1970), 2016 November: Tauhid (1967), 2017 May: The Pharoah Sanders Story: In the Beginning 1963-1964, 2017 November: Let Us Now Praise Pharoah Sanders, Master of Sax, 2018 February: Anthology: You've Got to Have Freedom - Pharoah Sanders (2005), 2018 February: James Blood Ulmer & Pharoah Sanders - Live 2003, 2018 May: How Pharoah Sanders Brought Jazz to Its Spiritual Peak with His Impulse! Albums, 2019 January: Africa (1987), 2021 December: Promises - Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra

[zhanteimi]

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania With Pharoah Sanders – The Trance of Seven Colors

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania With Pharoah Sanders – The Trance of Seven Colors

Morocco / USA, 1994, gnawa / spiritual jazz A couple of Americans hop a plane for Morocco to play some gnawa music, except one of those Americans is Pharoah Sanders, and the place they decide to play is someone’s house, where Ghania is surrounded by many of his family members as they all make a field recording album, half of which is traditional, ritualistic gnawa songs, along with a Ghania…

[zeruch]

#sketchbook September 2022. The impeccable grace of free and spiritual #jazz titan Pharaoh Sanders has left the mortal plane. His playing was both gentle and roiling. His was a gigantic tenor sound, and as a leader and as a sideman (e.g. John Coltrane) his presence was obvious. In particular I had loved some of his more recent releases, like his collaboration with Graham Haynes and Bill Laswell on "with a heartbeat", and with Moroccan #Gnawa icon Maleem Mahmoud Ghania, "trance of seven colors". This was started as a few semi-blind contour #drawings then I worked a facial likeness. It's all Cretacolor graphite pencil. #art #PharaohSanders (at SoFA District) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci7NgyWuOA0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[fearnoarts]

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania with Pharoah Sanders - The Trance Of Seven Colors

[dustedmagazine]

Joseph Burnett 2017 Review: Nostalgia for the Light

Back in days of yore (well, the 19th century), nostalgia was believed to be an illness so debilitating it could compromise the fate of an army were too many soldiers “infected.” One Russian general even threatened to bury his troops alive if they came down with nostalgia. It’s hard to imagine what the clearly charming general would make of our current times, so steeped are we in waves of competing nostalgia.  

I’m one to talk, of course. The below list of albums shows that retrenchment into the past has at times been a great escape for me, musically, as 2017 quickly resolved itself into a right shitter of a year both personally and in the grander scheme of things. I’ve found myself actually nostalgic for the tiny, damp and claustrophobic apartment my ex and I used to rent because we were at least — in my mind — happy then. But that’s the thing about nostalgia: it doesn’t allow for a very nuanced image of what reality was. We certainly did have some good times in said bolthole, but surely the problems that swam into heartbreaking focus only a year or so later (and in a much nicer flat) were already there?

In politics — and this doesn’t get mentioned enough — nostalgia seems to have become a driving force. Trump vows to make America great again, without really elaborating on when it was that America was great in the first place. If one is to believe Roy Moore, it was that glorious period when slavery was a reality and you could still kill gays. But at least there was cholera and high levels of infant mortality to offset the troublesome fact that people were owned as goods and chattel. A similar vein of nostalgia has animated the Brexit debate on this side of the pond, as right-wing Brexiters hit out at “political correctness” and the European Court of Justice’s human rights laws along the road to the UK leaving the EU. Again, one can’t help but feel that the glorious past they pine for mainly revolved around being able to use ethnic slurs and homophobic insults on their way to a packed church on the edge of the village green armed with a blue passport. As with my domestic situation and Trump’s supporters, this nostalgia conveniently ignores unpalatable truths: the fifties right-wing nostalgics dream of actually included polio, rationing and the threat of nuclear annihilation. So it’s not really that different to today, except the polio bit. In that context, I’d say a bit of opprobrium directed towards racism, homophobia, transphobia and antisemitism represents progress.  

So once again, as a wave of distorted nostalgia in part propels us towards an uncertain, even scary future, music has felt like a refuge. It’s becoming a tiresome leitmotiv, really. But the past is threaded through the below list, either as a nostalgic signpost or as a fictionalized unreality. Richard Dawson, on his superlative Peasant, reimagines medieval life in a series of epic, unfathomable and beautiful songs. The folk resurgence remains steady, despite the best attempts of lacklustre Mumford & Sons-like mainstream acts to dilute its potency. June Tabor’s Quercus released Nightfall, the most authentically “folk” album to have emerged in 2017, despite its jazz flourishes, with classic traditional songs echoing through the ages like ghosts. Similar phantasms crop up on Sarah Angliss’s Ealing Feeder to tell the hidden, murky story of London. Like the camera movements in John Sayles’ Lone Star, the past swirls around us listeners on these records, as well as on the crystalline chamber jazz of Tarkovsky Quartet’s Nuit Blanche whilst Elodie’s pair of superb instrumental albums are suffused with the nostalgic atmosphere of Proust. And there have been few more haunted albums of late than Áine O’Dwyer’s Gallarais.  

Over on the dance floor, experimentation remains a vibrant way to concoct new sounds, with some of the most exciting producers around taking their already impressive music to new levels. Lee Gamble, Jlin, Actress, Laurel Halo, Shackleton, Arca: all released superb albums in 2017 that dragged the field of electronic music forwards, even those that looked into the past (the Ghost Box label continues to fascinate as it mines old TV music, computer game imagery and found sounds, with ToiToiToi’s Im Hag successfully reinventing the label’s perpetual motion wheel).

 But in a world of Trump and rising right-wing populism, defiance has resonated most powerfully for me as an emotion. Irreversible Entanglements channeled the spirit of Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite and Jeanne Lee’s majestic invective on Conspiracy to deliver a monumental invective against white privilege and the mistreatment of African Americans throughout time. Jlin’s Black Origami maintained the politically-charged, hyperactive energy of her debut Dark Energy and Mhysa contorted notions of gender and sexuality with an inventive form of r’n’b.  

Even in such illustrious company, one voice seemed to soar out of the abyss most forcefully. A strain of disillusionment has always run through Gary Mundy’s work in Ramleh or other projects, but on his latest solo outing as Kleistwahr he has hit new heights of despondency and despair. Determined to champion his own outsider status, Mundy baptized his album  —a wondrous swarm of haunted guitar and seething electronics — Music for Zeitgeist Fighters. It’s a beautiful cry of rejection as the zeitgeist becomes the plaything Trump and Spencer, Farage and Murdoch, a call to arms for all who abhor the views seeping into the mainstream to scream “not in my name!.”  

The great Chilean documentary director Patricio Guzmán’s most celebrated film is called Nostalgia for the Light and it traces that country’s traumatic history through the prism of the Atacama desert being one of the best places on earth to observe the stars. In that context, nostalgia becomes a way to reconcile oneself with the past and, perhaps, start looking for new light in the future. Maybe all who oppose the rise of right-wing demagoguery, be they musicians, activists, politicians and even lowly journalists, can find ways to look backwards to build a better tomorrow. If the world is going to be swallowed by pernicious nostalgia, it must be fought with a hopeful variety of that Russian general’s bugbear in turn.  

Kleistwahr — Music for Zeitgeist Fighters (Nashazphone)

Jlin — Black Origami (Planet Mu)

Nadah El Shazly — Ahwar (Nawa Recordings)

Richard Dawson — Peasant (Weird World)

Áine O’Dwyer — Gallarais (MIE Music)

Elodie — Vieux Silence (Ideologic Organ)

Actress — AZD (Ninja Tune)

Tarkovsky Quartet — Nuit Blanche (ECM)

Irreversible Entanglements — Irreversible Entanglements (International Anthem)

Laurel Halo — Dust (Hyperdub)

Shackleton & Vengeance Tenfold — Sferic Ghost Transmits (Honest Jon’s)

ToiToiToi — Im Hag (Ghost Box)

Forest Swords — Compassion (Ninja Tune)

Félicia Atkinson — Hand in Hand (Shelter Press)

Saz’iso — At Least Wave Your Handkerchief at Me: The Joys and Sorrows of Southern Albanian Song (Glitterbeat)

Colin Vallon — Danse (ECM)

Lee Gamble — Mnestic Pressure (Hyperdub)

Elodie — La Porte Ouverte (Faraway Press)

Skullflower — The Black Iron that Fell from the Sky, to Dwell Within (Bear It or Be It) (Nashazphone)

Pan Daijing — Lack (PAN)

Arca — Arca (XL)

Quercus — Nightfall (ECM)

Dopplereffekt — Cellular Automata (Leisure System)

Aaron Dilloway — The Gag File (Dais)

Yair Elazar Glotman & Mats Erlandson — Negative Chambers (Miasmah)

Maleem Mahmoud Ghania — Colours of the Night (Hive Mind Records)

The Necks — Unfold (Ideologic Organ)

The Belbury Circle — Outward Journeys (Ghost Box)

Sarah Angliss — Ealing Feeder (self released)

Mhysa — fantasii (Halcyon Veil)

Reissues 

Tony Conrad — Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain (Superior Viaduct)

Anne Briggs — The Time Has Come (Earth

Lal & Mike Waterson — Bright Phoebus (Domino)

Henry Flynt — You Are My Everlovin’ (Superior Viaduct)

The Belbury Poly — The Owl’s Map (Ghost Box)

Battiato — Fetus (Superior Viaduct)

Akira Rabelais — Spellewauerynsherde (Boomkat Editions)

Luc Ferrari — Hétérozygote / Petite symphonie… (Recollections GRM)

Zos Kia/Coil — Transparent (Cold Spring)

Jon Gibson — Two Solo Pieces (Superior Viaduct)