During the early part of the Middle Ages, the Iberian Peninsula was a meeting ground of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian people of all classes and races. On these two discs, the early music group Altramar attempt to recreate the music that would have existed in this highly mixed society. This work is a triumph of the highest order, simply one of the most crucial discs that I have ever heard.
Let's begin with the first song on the second disc, "Yahni-kum, Yahni-kum!" After starting with a shawm (an Arabic woodwind) and a rebec (bowed instrument) playing in sinuous layers against each other, recalling the Muslim call to prayers, a relentless drum beat kicks in, with a rhythmic vocal line adding both counter-melody and poly-rhythm to the mix. Not bad for a song whose words date to the 11th century! Contrast this with "Dona si totz temps vivia" on the first disc: a song from the troubadour tradition, featuring a solo female voice in neo-Celtic richness, backed by a vaguely Kyoto-like harp. Or "Rase 'am 'et hitassef," also from the first disc, a song of Hebrew origins, with raga-style percussion and a strong Andalusian-influenced vihuela d'arco (bowed pre-cursor of the cello) backing the melody.
There is true wonderment to this disc. While not only drawing the listener into a world suggested by the music -- hot, musty, and joyous -- it provides us with a portrait of musical fusion from a point in civilization's history where we would never consider such a fusion happening. Consider Volume II's "Ball de la Mort," based on a 14th century piece. A gentle yet forceful bowed and plucked melody, almost reminiscent of a lost Brahms work, slowly builds, with almost Minimalist precision, through a Brittany reel feel, culminating into almost a jig; all the while retaining a klezmer-like set of notes and backing percussion straight out of Egypt. The solo vocal piece "'ahalay yikkonu darakay" veers from Gregorian to Islamic and back again, from drone to complex melody, creating a hypnotic feel worthy of the Pakistan tradition.
It is really difficult to pinpoint how this incredibly rich and complex mixture works so well. "Eno sagrado en Vigo" (Vol. I) jumps from jaunty Northern European forms to Arabic call-and-response so many times in its 4:31 duration that the listener almost loses sense of the beat, and yet it flows so seamlessly together that the juxtaposition seems natural. Likewise, "La Afrenta de Corpes" (Vol. II), a ballad almost Norwegian in form, contains elements that remind myself of the music of France, Qatar, the Bedouin and the Mongol, with musical backing on vihuela da mano (a guitar pre-cursor) somewhere between bluegrass, flamenco and Chinese devotional music. These discs almost belong in the world music section of your local retailer, so diverse sounding are the contents!
There is one fault to these recordings. The wonderful liner notes suggest that these recordings were done live in a church: as a result, the vocals are often unbalanced, with background vocals louder than the lead vocals, and often the backing tracks (especially percussion) drowning out the vocals entirely. I also have a problem with the vocalists themselves: although they can sing the melodies, those very melodies often ask more of their voices than they are capable of delivering. I have a similar problem with Altramar's CD Crossroads of the Celts, but it is much more prevalent here, perhaps because the Arabic stylings of the vocals require more vibrato than Celtic music would. The vocals never fall completely flat, but they often fall short.
I'm also not sure of why these discs were released separately. Although each stands well alone (Volume II in particular), they are so related and connected to one another that it's hard to imagine why this wasn't simply released as a double disc. (I've stated this problem before; perhaps music marketers are wary of the costs of 2-CD sets.) The liner notes are extremely informative, encompassing several languages and with translations. However, while the two discs share the same basic outlining notes, Volume I also contains photographs of the instruments used, whereas Volume II simply lists them.
We cannot write this music off being too old to be relevent in the modern world. It almost begs us to incorporate it into what we hear happening today, to push the boundaries of what we consider "eclectic" music to encompass not only many cultures but many time periods within those cultures. This disc set is so beautiful, and yet so timely that anyone who even remotely likes or is interested in "world music" should pick them up. Altramar has succeeded in giving us the rarest of all recordings; a true jewel, something which will stand the test of time for at least as long as the original songs themselves have. I guess the old adage "to prepare for the future, one should study the past" is true.
