02007-11-02 | Music
Rahim AlHaj – Home Again is now available in the ListeningLounge.
Barrett Martin’s label Fast Horse Recordings is releasing the CD, which should be in stores on the 13th.
Rahim will perform in Albuquerque and Santa Fe this month to celebrate the release of the new album.
Oud Solo & Oud with Baghdad ensemble (with Jon Gagan on contrabass)
November 16 @ GIG Performance Space in Santa Fe
November 17 @ Outpost Performance Space in Albuquerque
Allow me to draw your attention to the song “Iraqi Lullaby”, which I find very beautiful and moving. I first heard the song when Rahim performed it at GIG a few months ago.
02007-08-05 | Music, Performance, Santa Fe
Went to see Rahim AlHaj at GIG this evening. I took the above photo during soundcheck. He was in great form and played from 8PM until a quarter past 10PM. A new song called “Iraqi Lullaby” was especially beautiful, I thought, as Rahim sang along with the oud-melody. The combination of the quick-dying ephemeral sound of the oud with the voice was wonderful.
Another highlight of the evening was the very last piece. Rahim showed the audience a little riff and said that after he performs a little intro he will play this riff at which point he would like people to call out any Middle Eastern or Arabic country and he will play a traditional melody from that country that fits the maqam. I think we had “traveled” through 8 or 9 countries by the time the music stopped.
Afterwards we went to the only restaurant in Santa Fe open past 10PM, the Atomic Grill.
Barrett announced that our album (Rahim AlHaj, Jon Gagan, Barrett Martin and myself) will be released on March 11, 2008. I told Rahim I would like us to come up with song-titles that resonate with Naruda and Rumi or Hafiz – a friend gave me “I heard God laughing” by Hafiz while I was in Miami, and I am enjoying the book very much.
Other Rahim AlHaj news:
– in August Rahim will record a duet-album with Bill Frisell
– in September Rahim will record an album with a Sufi theme and four percussionists
– in November a new solo album will be released by Fast Horse and will also be available from the LL. (In fact Barrett and I are talking about adding all of the Fast Horse catalog to the LL.)
02006-08-22 | Music, Recording, Santa Fe, Studio
Day two of our recording session at Jon’s studio. We have recorded about two hours of material so far. Much editing lies ahead… Some of the most precious moments happened spontaneously. At one point yesterday I started playing some chords and Rahim began to sing beautifully. Then the music drifted toward a 6/8 rhythm and Rahim started playing the oud. Lucky for us that Jon was recording! Rahim told us today he could not sleep until four this morning because he kept hearing that piece in his mind… With me it was the other way around: I woke up at four and could not go back to sleep. When we listened to the piece today, I could not remember playing the music. It was like listening to somebody else’s performance…
This evening I started playing guitar without wearing headphones, thinking that Barrett and Jon were working on something in the control room. Rahim played the oud and some magical stuff started happening. To our surprise Jon had quickly captured the whole thing…
Barrett has a great feel on the drums and it is great to hear him with Jon. It’s funny, Al Masocco was my product manager at Epic Records and since he was also the Screaming Trees‘ product manager Barrett and I have heard about each other for about a decade, but we only met yesterday.
