Ancient Sufi Invocations & Forgotten Songs From Aleppo

When Jason Hamacher, a punk drummer in Washington DC, read William Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain, he contacted the author to ask where he could find a recording of the world's oldest existing Christian chant, as described in the book. Dalrymple emailed back to say there were no recordings and he’d have to travel to Aleppo, Syria and find the music for himself. Hamacher made his first trip in 2006 and has returned regularly since to record the prayers and rituals of not only the country's ancient Christian Armenian, Syriac and Assyrian churches but also Jewish and Sufi spiritual traditions. He's documented his trips in a film and a photographic book. Now he's launched his own record label to release his field recordings in a multi-volume series, Sacred Voices of Syria. The first release features the nine-strong male Sufi choir known as Nawa.

The recording was made in 2010, shortly before Syria erupted into the civil war that scattered the group's displaced members across Europe and the Middle East. The powerful recording includes timeless examples of dhikr (devotional chant), lengthy vocal maqam improvisations and mowashah, which are secular settings of classical Arabic poetry, sung in deep and resonant baritone and bass voices of profound spiritual mystery.