Sufi Trance of the Whirling Dervishes of Damascus

This album from the formidable Ensemble Al-Kindi is their first release since the untimely death of their founder Julien Jâlal Eddine Weiss in 2015. For 40 years Al-Kindi have been interpreting the Arab classical repertoire in a traditional takht format (a small chamber orchestra made up of qanun, oud, ney and percussion), and over the years they have collaborated with some of the best singers of the Arab world. Here they are joined for the first time by Sheikh Hamed Daoud, a Quranic reciter from the Great Mosque of the Umayyads of Damascus.

The performances here, recorded at a classical concert hall near Avignon, France, are wonderfully intimate, capturing the mystic atmosphere of this music which dances between the concert stage and sacred space. Daoud starts the proceedings with a call to prayer, ‘Azaan’, before we are treated to four waslat. A wasla is a musical suite composed within a single maqam featuring sections of instrumental and vocal improvisation (taksim and layali respectively), metred instrumental prelude (sama’i), metred song (muwashshah), and improvisation on a classical poem (qasida). The music is courtly and understated. Daoud's voice is rich and the instrumental playing is superb. While there's the rather important missing visual element of the live performance – the whirling dervishes – the music somehow manages to conjure the mental image of the dervishes’ tenure (white robe) and outstretched palms, particularly in ‘Wasla Hijaz’ when a subtle, rhythmic breathy chanting churns below call-and-response singing. It's nice to hear Al-Kindi are still going strong in the memory of sorely missed Weiss.