Reviews
Burda: Contemporary Arabic Maqam Suite
This album showcases the remarkable talents of Egyptian-born oud player and singer Mustafa Said and his youthful Beirut-based collective, the...
Reviewed in issue December/2015
Kerwanê
Kardeş Türküler celebrate their 21st anniversary with this ‘Best Of’ compilation. They have become such a feature of the musical...
Reviewed in issue December/2015
The Rough Guide to the Best Arabic Music You’ve Never Heard
Compared to many other regions, the amount of Middle Eastern music released in the West is very small. And most...
Reviewed in issue December/2015
The Best of Soapkills
In 2009 I spent a week in Beirut lecturing on music journalism and asked each of my students to bring...
Reviewed in issue Aug/Sep/2015
Forty Martyrs: Armenian Chants From Aleppo
Last year Jason Hamacher, a punk drummer from Washington DC, released NAWA: Ancient Sufi Invocations & Forgotten Songs from Aleppo,...
Reviewed in issue Aug/Sep/2015
Mania Regressia
You can only get away with a name like this if you are Jewish, of course, and Jewish Monkeys consists...
Reviewed in issue Aug/Sep/2015
Pomegranate Tiles
Dafarahn is an interesting pair of European musicians researching the art music of the Middle East. Francesco Iannuzzelli is an...
Reviewed in issue Aug/Sep/2015
El Fill del Llop
Although Efrén López is Spanish-born, he mostly plays various types of Turkish saz and tanbur (long-necked lutes) as well as...
Reviewed in issue July/2015
Music from Iraq
There's something reassuring about putting on a CD called Music from Iraq and it sounding just like that – music...
Reviewed in issue July/2015
Adana
Vardan Hovanissian & Emre Gültekin
Duduk player Vardan Hovanissian is clearly a master of the instrument and the soft plangent tones of the Armenian oboe...
Reviewed in issue July/2015
