Reviews
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
Turning Back
It's not often that a Middle Eastern CD comes along for review that is jointly sponsored by the Norwegian Ministry...
Reviewed in issue July/2015
Revelation
One of the less comfortable truths for fans of Middle Eastern music in the West is that most CDs released...
Reviewed in issue June/2015
