What are you listening to?

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HAVASI - The road
 
Uncharacteristically for me, the best thing I heard all last year was this simple, live bluegrass (the current term for actual country music, since "country" is now so modernized and diluted by other influences) performance. Wow, the voice, the sentiment, the phrasing, and that signature riff and verses in Chinese pentatonic scale - all quite unusual. Brilliant. And she grew up on grunge rock music.
 
Some time ago, I found an Iranian-American group NYAZ founded by Azam Ali and Loga Ramin Torkian. They gave an interesting IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW where they cover a lot of ground in terms of producing music, art, in fact sharing other talents too.
Here are some examples of their work:
Azam Ali - Shahr Khaali (Empty City) a song FOR Afghanistan
Azam Ali -Azam Ali- O Vis Aeternitatis (12th century by Hildegard Von Bingen) in Latin
NIYAZ- "Vafa" from the album SUMUD a love song based on a traditional poem by 11th century Persian poet Baba Taher.

This is a song performed in response to the lockdowns: This House is on Fire (Natalie Merchant Cover)- Azam Ali
LYRICS:
This house is on fire!
Kick off your boots, come sit a spell.
Listen to me worry, come and listen well
All you better best come and lean in boys,
I don't dare raise my voice
I've been sitting here for the longest time reading all the warning and the danger signs
I don't have the gift of the prophecy,
Telling everybody how it's going to be
Soon come, soon come the day this tinderbox
Is gonna blow in your face

I don't have the gift of the prophesy,
Telling everybody how it's going to be
You go passing wrong for right
And right for wrong
People only stand for that for just so long
It's all gonna catch like a house on fire,
Spark an evil blaze and burn higher

Well, I don't have the gift of the prophesy,
Telling everybody how it's going to be
You go passing wrong for right
And right for wrong
People only stand for that for just so long

I don't have the gift of the prophesy,
Telling everybody how it's going to be

Personal notes from Azam:
"Two decades ago when I first heard this song by Natalie Merchant it resonated for the most obvious reason…the lush Arabic strings juxtaposed against Natalie’s songwriting in one of the more successful fusions I had heard.
Two weeks ago, lazed in current isolation, enjoying some red wine, I succumbed to nostalgia & started listening to my old catalogue of music when this song came on. Having not heard it for so many years what strangely resonated this time were the lyrics. This is the power of great songwriting…when carefully crafted words are relevant to any time.
It takes A LOT of reason & clear intent for me to perform a cover of another artist’s song. This one I did because listening to it after so many years, with relocated perspectives, especially at his moment in time when we are all besieged by lies, I felt this political piece of art deserved a new call to listen. I pray I have done it justice…
Thank you to my beloved friend & collaborator Sinan Cem Eroğlu for bringing the stirring Middle Eastern melody to life, as well as my life long muse Loga Ramin Torkian who embellished the track with his soulful Electric Kamaan.
Hope you all enjoy" 🦋

The original is Natalie Merchant - This House Is On Fire, which is a live performance from Germany in August 2002, Natalie Merchant gave a fascinating interview explaining how she worked with her texts, in Natalie Merchant - Leave Your Sleep Interview For instance, she researched and found a poet in the 19th century who wrote that his song needed a melody. It was a poem about explaining death to a child, but the song had never been written until Natalie then found the notice from the poet and his poem. She reached back in time, and the past reached out to her, that is how she felt it. Having read a number of afterlife reports, that description is meaningful.

It would appear that both NYAZ and Natalie Merchant share this quality of redressing old poetry in new music.
 
I put a long jam by The Comet is Coming on the meteor/music thread, but I also have to put a shout out to this phenomenal 3 piece band here too. This is a mini set showcasing their immense power as a unit. Space Jazz, that's what it is.

 
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