23 May 2012 — Henning Lahmann
Last night, our dear friends over in Brooklyn, Coco Zaobi and Luke Carrell (
International Tapes,
Coco's OCD,
Zinenblogen,
Ad Hoc,
Impose, you name it) unveiled the truly astonishing
Nablus Project, a collaborative effort and compilation of twelve artists, among them NFOP favorites such as
Lee Noble,
David Kanaga,
Arc Light,
MEGAFORTRESS, and
Meadowlands, based on and built around this:
During a stay in
Nablus, Palestine (or, depending on your political affiliation and/or degree of inherent political correctness: West Bank, Occupied Palestinian Territory, "the Area", Samaria, every single one of those a very telling denomination, but this is not the place to discuss the entailing issues), Paris-based sound recordist Pierre Gauthier captured the old city mosque's Muezzin. And, as the initiators explain, the "shape of the valley in which Nablus rests creates a massive composite reverb effect that gives his recitation an otherworldly feel as it booms out from the mosque in the city's center".
After finding themselves spellbound by the sheer dignity and sublimity of the recording, Coco and Luke asked a couple of musicians to create musical pieces that are centered around segments of the Muezzin's call to prayer (read about it in more detail
over here), and the overall result is nothing short of breathtaking, wildly diverse and unanimously original, yet always deferential to the religious deed - like the whole project, as the curators point out (though we believe and hope that an actual disclaimer is far from necessary):
Rather than aiming to be sacrilegious and demeaning, we hope this project will help spread awareness of an amazing piece of global culture that often goes unheard or is brutally caricatured. It is the only thing that's been left intact in a town scarred by bombings and occupation.
Stream the whole compilation below and purchase a digital copy over at
bandcamp. All proceeds from the compilation will go to charity.
