Palestinian Delights

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGKUeHTSe3s&feature=related
The story of the lute is one that parallels the story of the Renaissance and the spread of knowledge, especially scientific and technological knowledge, from Asia and the world of Islam across medieval Europe. Thus we can follow the etymological development of the word lute, or so the story goes:

One of the most popular instruments in Arabic music even today, the 'oud (pron: /aoud/) is an ancient, pear-shaped, large bodied, unfretted, plucked instrument, usually with eight strings in four double courses.

Given its prominence in Muslim musical culture the 'oud would most likely have been carried into Spain during the early part of the Islamic occupation of the Iberian Peninsular. This began in 710AD, when the Berber first began to take an interest in Visigothic Hispania, and came to an end nine centuries later, in the early part of the fifteenth century. In Spanish the Arabic, al 'oud (the 'oud, if you will) soon became el oud.

From Spain the instrument was carried into France and taken up by troubadours and their like, and so in the course of time, there being many a morphological slip twixt cup and lip, el oud became l'ute.

Comprenez-vous? ...Oui? Bonne.

Anglo-French history being the sorry and fractious tale it is we are now but a short and sadly inevitable step away from our charming Gallic minstrel being bashed on the head and robbed of his main means of earning a crust. And so, among other assorted plunder and an interesting dose of the Auvergne itch, l’ute was thus brought home to the shires.

“What do you call that when it’s at home?” someone asked. “Well, if memory serves, I think the bloke said it was a lute. Just before we put him to the sword, it was. Anyone for a sing-song?”

And there you have it; but as I was saying, unlike its European counterpart the ‘oud is still very common in Arabic music, and rightly so. Musically and visually the 'oud is a thing of great beauty and a treasure to behold. Among its best present day exponents are The Trio Joubran, three Palestinian brothers, and the fourth successive generation of their family to be noteworthy players and makers of the ‘oud.

In The Trio's other, mainly instrumental works, you get lots of virtuosic fireworks for your money, and what may once have been an important ingredient in the origins of flamenco.

The song, "Ahwak" (I Love You), was made famous by the great Egyptian singer/actor, Abdel Halim Hafez (1929 – 1977), and remains one of his most popular songs, still known to virtually everyone in the Arab world today. Hafez was himself so popular that it is said fourteen women committed suicide when news of his death was announced in Egypt and that his funeral in Cairo was attended by millions of people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR2YT9xYY38

N.E.X.T. spells...

Like almost any decade you can shake a stick at the 70s was an odd period in British fashion history. It was downright uncomfortable for those of us who lived through it as fashion conscious but self-consciously lumpen youths. Let's face it, flared trousers do not flatter the fuller figure, and as for 'slim fit' shirts, I believe the label speaks for itself, but let's leave them in the closet, shall we? The flowers and the pacifist pretensions of the late-60s had withered and died away to be replaced, among other things, by brickies in drag. There was Slade and The Sweet and there was... well, there was that bloke who dressed in tin foil, too. But they were strictly for the kids - and oh, how innocent we were. For the more mature in taste, and the art school crowd there were also the early manifestations of David Bowie and Roxy Music, and somewhere in the middle, yet ever so out on a limb, there was also The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. No art school graduates these, I'll be bound. The Sensational Alex himself was a wee Glaswegian jewish hardnut and tenement funster of the old school. His rhythm section looked like complete barmpots too, and then just for good measure, there was that guitarist... Don't let that clown's costume and the mincing about on stage fool you for a second, hen...

More than anyone else who's dressed up as a pirate in the name of popular entertainment before or since, ha, ha, me hearties, Alex Harvey just might have been the real deal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqx5j-FuqeI

"Next" was written by Jacques Brel, and so it's well suited to the seedy, cabaret setting The SAHB gave it - and with what decadent gusto and crumpled pathos! It's a song with a story to tell, a one act tragedy set to a sinister, edgy tango and Alex Harvey succeeded in making it sound like a distressing reality. Scott Walker made the same song sound, well, just very well sung, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q_T0jehqpQ and with a vastly overblown orchestration that makes the whole tale insipid. Walker's voice is often a wonder to behold, but it isn't the voice of a man who's ever held a small and dirty army towel around his belly. Likewise Brel's own on stage clowning went too far and rather undermined the song's robust content.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=354293676441565679#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58Qc6LK15hU&feature=PlayList&p=7ABE43251C69BFA4&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=9

Say You Don't Mind - a song from the 70s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-wekAq-s34

The jaunty string arrangement is perhaps the key; that and Colin Blunstone's voice, a rare combination of lightly smoked restraint and soaring to whatever part of the stratosphere helium exists more plentifully in. Another in a long-ish line of English choirboys gone off the rails.

The song has a polite charm and, although I don't think there's anything specifically Edwardian about it, in spite the formality of those strings, you kind of get the feeling that this is a song that might be sung by a chap in flannel bags and striped blazer while luckier fellows chink tea cups and promenade their best girl fol-de-rol of a sunday afternoon.

On paper the lyrics look pretty daffy:

"I realise that I've been in your eyes
Some kind of fool..."

To take just the opening two lines... I realise that I've been in your eyes somekind of tortured grammatical inversion, but there's poetic licence for you. Anyway, in the context of the music it sits comfortably, so what the heck. In my experience it rarely pays to look at song lyrics on the page, or scrutinise them for much in the way of profundity of meaning, as in all genres including the most highfalutin, they're really apt to seem a bit drippy out of context. There are however some fine phrases to conjure with, and the odd cracking line that it might pay one to recall at those times when a bon mot would be just the thing you're looking for. Here for instance I rather like, "What I did, stupid fish, I drank the pool." Well, I'm sure we all know that feeling.

The song came from Colin Blunstones' 1971 album "One Year", and was written by Denny Laine. This was Blunstones' debut outing as a solo performer, he'd formerly been singer with 1960s exciting new English beat comb, The Zombies.