Zajal, Arab opera

ZAJAL

Arab opera

Fadia Tomb el-HageGabriel Yammine
Philippe NahonArs nova

the fingerprintEDVD732 – 3760002130194 -DVD

trilingual booklet 100 pages in pdf
Download on Qobuz
Socadisc distribution

Zajal is a form of popular poetry and mediterranean jousting that has existed since ages. For the Lebanese composer Zad Moultaka, the memory goes back to the lost evenings of his childhood where this kind of poetic form was practiced in villages, in mountains, often broadcasted on national television. A universe where poets compete, each supported by his clan, and it is the talent, the imagination, the virtuosity of the protagonists and the enthusiasm of the public who designate the winners. From this ever-living tradition and the fascinating story of one of those particularly memorable evenings, Zad Moultaka creates an opera in which language and languages intertwine in a strange dramatic game. The booklet tells the story of the early twentieth century Chahrour el-Wadi, a young man gone on an adventure for a few years and returns. He challenges his father with a mask, creating a deliciously dynamic and virtuoso exchange. It is a modern Zajal that is proposed by the composer who questions the collective memory and asks about the relationship between tradition and modernity, reflection on popular roots, as well as the possibility of a form of Arab opera. Accessible, funny, nostalgic, poetic, it is also a vibrant and modern homage to the zajal tradition …. This tribute is particularly obvious during the second act in which the appearance and disappearance of the faces and voices of Zaghloul el Damour, Khalil Rouzouk, Zein Sh’eyb and others are strong testimony to the composer’s admiration for these wonderful poets.
Zad Moultaka, believes in the living tradition of zajal, a combination of multiple modes of expression including a form bringing together poetry, music, improvisation, scenography and writing. For years, this matured idea was confirmed by the reading of an anthology of zajal “Le diwan du Chahrour”, published in 2000 by the son of Charhour, Nabil el Feghali (Ed.Joseph D. Raidy , 2000) Zad Moultaka uses texts in dialectal Arabic in their richness, their sonorities, their internal rhythm, …It is in a complex and a virtuoso way that the two opera protagonists, the extraordinary actor Gabriel Yammine and the sublime singer Fadia Tomb el-Hage are happily engaged in this battle and allowing the setting of the zajal, offering its dramatic and musical meaning.

SYNOPSIS

SYNOPSIS
The story takes place in the early twentieth century in the small village of Wadi Chahrour, in the region of Baabda, rich in olive trees and poets and famous for its oratorical contests. The priest Louis el-Feghali, his real name is Khalil Semaan, a great zajalist, receives one day, the visit of a strange person. A young man with a masked face comes to challenge him. The priest Louis, stupefied by the boldness of the stranger, agrees. The village gathers, tables are dressed at the big square stands for the contest. The audience settles with arak glass and some mezzes. Poets go up on a platform. At first, the priest tests the young man, giving him with more and more difficult rhetorical constraints. But the young man is skilled; he gets away with it brilliantly, and turns out to be great among the big ones. He combines poetic dexterity with an extraordinary voice and is admired by all. Nahfétak chahrouryye (You flirt like someone Wadi Chahrour !!!) says the priest.
After a break, the game resumes, the tension increases, the crowd is almost in a trance. The young man will put out his mask. It is actually the son of the priest, gone long ago for the City and disappeared since. Assaad el-Khoury el-Féghali, will obtain his “diploma” of poetry, and it will be said for a long time that he is the one who “bewitched the Arabs” ..

The zajal

From Zajila: singing, humming, raising your voice, talking high, playing, having fun … and Zajalon: which means the popular dialectal poetry but also the game, the noisy joy, the noise, the din … The zajal is a form of popular poetry that goes back to the dawn of time, and for sure to the pre-Islamic times. Social and cultural tradition among the Bedouins tribes of the Arab peninsula, it takes its mtrick trac in Lebanon from the old Syriac language, it is secondly originated from Andalusia during the eleventh century, (the invention of Ibn Quzman, died in 1160 in Cordoba and has been nicknamed as the Prince of Zajal …).
Form of oratorical, poetic and musical contest, may be issued from the tradition of mouwashas, which turned to vernacular languages and spread throughout the Mediterranean basin. It is practiced today only in Egypt and Lebanon.
Traditional forms of zajal
The “zajalist” builds a quatrain, a rhythmic form. He improvises, he repeats his sentence to give himself time to build the next one; there is here a strict submission to unspoken codes that raises the tension. Listeners are waiting for more …
and the fall: the challenge enunciation. When finished, the percussionists (req, jingles, bendirs) will resume his last sentence, in a very code and transcribed form. It is the closing of the word of the first zajal. The second poet then speaks, and so on … Speaking is always done in three movements: matla (sending), dawr (turn), qufl (closing). The themes are simple, dealing with political or historical events of the mountain, exhorting to attack an enemy, getting drunk to celebrate a victory … It is also question of the love, joy, pain, mourning, worries of the everyday life…


The zajal opera

Zad Moultaka, settled in Paris since the mid-80s, has taken the path of musical writing. He sends all his thoughts, even his obsessions to be able to meet with impossible synthesis. Deeply rooted in the Arab world and Western culture, he seeks in this friendly and popular formula of zajal, (and so cultured), a matter to explore in terms of form and writing. An operatic form He reads in the real tradition of the zajal, a combination of multiple modes of expression and in particular a very archaic form of opera bringing together poetry, music, improvisation, scenography and writing. We can finf also the echo of various contemporary concerns, whether it has to do with the text – at Berio, Aperghis, Leroux, Nono … – or within the actual popular musical forms such as rap or slam …
In the state of mind for years, this idea was confirmed by the anthology reading of zajal, published in 2000. The texts in dialectal Arabic are elaborated there in relation to their sound, the dynamics and the rhythmic language, through the words combination, syntactic audacities, lexical choices, hyphenation … These games do not conceal the meaning. There is an acrobatic way of composing and uttering poems, where theatricalization takes on all its dramatic and musical meaning. Hence Zad Moultaka’s project to enrich his reflection on languages, to work from this specific form to such a powerful character, to explore how far it is possible to bring it to contemporary expression, while keeping the substance, the taste of the language, the atmosphere, the primitive dramaturgy.


Opera in 3 acts

• The first act (20 ‘) A character, the father, is on the screen, facing the audience and never leaves it. He starts. The singer and her musicians, representing the stranger and the villagers, answer him. It is he who revives the dramaturgical action. We see him sitting, smoking a cigarette, in an attitude of provocation and indifference. Present and absent. A distancing effect. At the end of the act, the priest declares a break because the poets are tired.

• The second act (12 ‘) gives way to another form of struggle: images arise, made of archives and details – percussion, mallet, rubbing – but they are silent. As if we were in a double space of old and new memories. Like a heterophonic counterpoint between past and present, sonic realities and muted images. The polyrhythm of the image responds to the musical polyrhythm of the musicians. Work on the deep texture of the zajal. Abyss between different layers of the past combined with the dream power of reality. The sleep of the village, like a collective dream …

• In the last act (25 ‘), the story begins again on the place of Wadi Chahrour. It is the act of unveiling and recognizing the son. The image on the screen has disappeared. The presence of the father is signified by electroacoustics and speakers. The game takes on a hilarious and hypnotic party appearance. We are immersed in the crazy atmosphere of the village. As night falls, we enter imperceptibly into the simulacrum …
Note the impertinence of the composer: in Arab and Islamic cultures, female roles are often entrusted to men. Here the composer upsets the norm and sided with inversion. It is a woman with a deep voice, deep and limpid at the same time, who will embody the brilliant Chahrour, whose voice is said to be enchanting … In the same way, the scenic bias of “absent” the father, of to make it exist on a screen or through a soundtrack is also a reversal that allows the Charhour to joust in the open. Here we show what is hidden and we hide what should be obvious.


Prospect

This dramatization can support several readings:

• intérêt historique et patrimonial du zajal, le beau temps des poètes ;

• historical and patrimonial interest of the zajal, the fine weather of poets;

• literary interest: the power of evocation of popular dialectal poetry, the art of Arabic metrics;

• But also an emotional and amusing reading, nostalgic of an previous era that everyone wears in the memory of his ancestors (because all popular traditions have a “family look”) – a story of a golden age;

• At the same time as a reflection on the Oedipal mechanism, on the archetypes and their contemporary expression where the memory of all the past survives.

• More deeply, it is the meaning of the Tragic that is explored without concession or sensibility, in the light of a solar work.

Anaclase.com
“Zajal “, opera by Zad Moultaka

For his new opera, Zad Moultaka continues to explore the vein of East-West hybridization – proven his richness many times. He is, together with the ensemble Ars Nova and his longtime collaborator, contralto Fadia Tomb el-Hage, mixing a Western genre of musical and scenic representation – the opera – and a form of traditional folk poetry, still alive in Egypt and Lebanon – the Zajal, title given to the book.

The curtain rises in the first act on a (suggestion of) competition of Zajal. A stranger – necessarily masked, we are at the opera, after all – arrives on the village square and launches a challenge to one of the wise, embodied by the actor Gabriel Yammine (monumental figure of power, projected on a large screen occupying all the opening of the stage), who preside by far the meeting.Then begins a breathtaking series of declamatory poetic exercises of increasing complexity and delicacy, which will end in a swirling verbal challenge.
After a smoother second act, during which the wrestlers rest and the village falls into a half-sleep, the scene plunges, in a dream like in the silence of Zajal accents, the fight begins again.
The feat of Zad Moultaka is to use the Zajal not only as a source of inspiration, but also as a kind of inspiration. The stranger gives in each of his tirades clues as to his identity, until finally revealing it, in a theatrical gesture, the composer combining myths (Oedipus in the lead) and archetypal figures of the Western art (the return of the prodigal son).
If, by its statism, in particular, in the second and third acts, the scenic dimension of the work can disappoint, the music puts its flavor, perfectly defended by Ars Nova under the direction of Philippe Nahon. Thinking of Kagel’s musical theater and offbeat sounds, it offers the stubborn typical vocalizations of the Zajal, while keeping a distance to better carry the dramaturgy.
Jeremie Szpirglas


Le Devoir (Montréal)

Zajal by Zad Moultaka The village opera by Yves Bernard

Zad Moultaka, a fascinating composer who overturns the codes of scholarly, universal music, reinvents the language of Western opera in Zajal, drawing inspiration from one of the oldest forms of improvised oratorical jousting in the villages of the Levant. Sung by Fadia Tomb el-Hage and recited by the actor Gabriel Yaminne in Lebanese dialect Arabic, the work will be taken off by the winds and the percussions of the ensemble Ars Nova tomorrow evening at the theater Maisonneuve. 
The term zajal comes from the words zajila which means to sing, to play, to speak loudly, and zajalon which means popular poetry but also noisy joy. The Zajal as a popular art is of the same stock as that of the Fabulous Occitan Troubadours. Why was Zad MoultaKa inspired to write an opera? “Because this cultural form has accompanied my youth on television and because it has always been a bit denigrated as a minor art. Yet many poets know the grandeur of its poetry. And it is also a primary form of dramatization. What is so Arabic in this operatic work? The source, the imaginary, the language, its metrics and its rhythmic The zajal has a single rhythm: tac • tacatac • tacatac. I started from this rudimentary form by going towards variations and deconstructions. In addition, I use a lot of micro-intervals, modes and a few bits of melodies. For the composition of Zajal, Zad Moultaka has recorded a famous contest of 1909. A young, masked foreigner arrives in the village, defying a great Zajalist and giving him a hard time. He is his son. In the play, her role is interpreted by a woman, Fadia Tomb el-Hage, a great lady with very pure singing, quite tense, with little vibrato. A gesture of transgression, just like Moultaka’s treatment of percussion and winds of the Ats Nova ensemble. “I wanted to find myself in a fanfare, he says. Before remembering the: village festival …

November 11, 2010


RFI
Culture Vive November 25

2010About the DVD Zajal of Zad, the show is moving in this mix of Zajal and contemporary music and this delicious live version!!!

Extract in Culture Vive from 9:10 am to 10:00 am and rebroadcast from 4:10 pm to 5:00 pm, November 25, 2010. Muriel Maalouf


Music Education

Zad MOULTAKA: Zajal (“The Challenge”), Arabic opera in 3 acts (for singer, actor, harmony ensemble, percussionist, electronic device & video). Ensemble Ars Nova, dir. Philippe Nahon. The Fingerprint (http://e.digitale.free.fr): EDVD 732. Distr. Bee Music. Inspired by an authentic evening of zajal (Lebanon, 1909), the booklet tells an episode of the life of Assaad Khoury el-Feghali (1894-1937), nicknamed “the blackbird of the valley”, which throughout a fascinating poetic game, confronted and defeated the great Zajalist Khalil Semaan – the latter discovering being, at the end of the confrontation, the young Assaad’s own father. It is the wonderful contralto Fadia Tomb el-Hage who plays the role of the young poet, and the comedian Gabriel Yammine that of the old jouster. Admirable musicality of the poems in Arabic dialect (remarkably adapted and expressive subtitling). The partition (sometimes with infiltrated chromatic micro-intervals) does not mention Kurt Weill and Stravinski. Very imaginative governed (capture during the world premiere, Poitiers, April 22 and 23, 2010). A very happy surprise!
Music Education N ° 44 December 2010


The revelation of Zad Moultaka’s “Zajal”
The revelation of Zad Moultaka’s “Zajal” unheard of
THE WORLD | 18.09.2010 at 14:19 • Updated 18.09.2010 at 14:30 | By Marie-Aude Roux – Beirut Special Envoy
The Manufacture des Œillets, Ivry-sur-Seine, she will recreate the magic that has remained of this Zajal, Arabic opera of Lebanese composer Zad Moultaka, seen and heard at the Spring of Beirut, organized by the Samir Foundation -Kassir (Le Monde June 15)
It was June 8 in the open air, in the Roman baths of the district of Grand Serail. An audience massed on the stands, a few curious at the foot of the facades of empty buildings, a handful of soldiers. But the arak glasses that were circulating, the dusk, the flying martinets, the fragility of the decor – a table, a simple projection screen delivered to the wind – had contributed to make the moment unforgettable.
The musicians of the ensemble Ars Nova had settled around the large white table, partitions on desks. That’s when the story began. A story related to the tradition of the Lebanese zajal, this ancestral form of oratory, poetic and musical jousting. “We are used to insulting, beating, crushing skulls (…).

I defy all around the poets who will dare to measure against me! “The massive silhouette projected on the big screen, the truculent voice that catches its breath between two puffs of cigarette is that of the famous Lebanese actor Gabriel Yammine. He skilfully embodies the old jouster Khalil Semaan, a young unknown masked freshly arrived came to challenge.
The composer had sworn to listen to zajal in one of these mountain villages where he still practices. “But every time, it was a zajal against Israel, or pro-Syrians, so I abstained,” said Zad Moultaka. He finally chose this famous 1909 game, reported under the title Al Kanz al Khafi (“The Hidden Treasure”) in a collection entitled Diwan de Chahrour. Pugnace, elegant, virtuoso, the unknown will force admiration by playing the traps set by the old master and wins the nickname of Chahrour el-Wadi (“the blackbird of the valley”). The intrepid is none other than Assaad El-Khoury El-Féghali
In front of the father on the screen, the young man is here played vocally by the Lebanese singer Fadia Tomb El-Hage, an impressive slaughter, whether in the attitude of warrior prince or the endurance of singing. The score devoted to the ensemble Ars Nova (here composed of wind instruments and percussion), doubled with an electronic device, and seems to arise from the language itself. The central part, suddenly, will calm the game. It’s the most intimate part.

The protagonists were put “hors de combat”. Only live on the stage with the musicians back to the audience in semi-darkness, interacting with a silent video. This time, it is a real session of zajal, with its ceremonial ritual (food, drink and guests) and its percussion (req, jingles, bendirs). We can see famous Zajalists without hearing them – Zaghloul El Damour, Khalil Rouzouk, Zein Sh’eyb … but the soundtrack is that of a dreamlike music, with resolutely contemporary sounds.
Third and last part: the fight resumes, put to the test which allows defining the poetic technique of zajal – lyricism, rhetoric, eloquence. Music of words and sounds intertwine, punctuated by the dialectal Arabic said by the comedian who became invisible, chanted and sung by the woman singer, punctuated by the instrumentarium under the direction of Philippe Nahon.
With Zajal, Zad Moultaka says he tried to end the fantasy of the opera. He succeeded. Zajal is a work in itself, unheard of literally, whose energy upsets and overwhelms. Has he also tried to put an end to the fantasy of destruction, who defines himself as a “child of war”?
Moultaka has in any case reconnected with its roots. His father, Antoine Moultaka, is from the small village of Chahrour. The zajal goes back to the lost evenings of his childhood, where this poetic form was practiced, broadcast on national television. Entirely inhabited by the impossible synthesis of Western contemporary writing and the specific characteristics of Arabic music, Zad Moultaka found here a form that builds, beyond cultures and conflicts, a real ark of alliance.


La Vie, Thierry Hilleriteau, september 2010


Musicologie.org

A DVD: “Zajal”, Arabic opera by Zad Moultaka. In the title “opera” and “Arabic” annoy me, but it is a marvel of musical theater and universal poetry, for singer, actor, small harmony ensemble, percussionist, electronic device and video. With Fadia Tomb-El Hage, Gabriel Yammine, the ensemble Ars Nova, under the direction of Philippe Nahon. Subtitles in French. An excerpt in Youtube: http://tinyurl.com/2wft2el


Creation on 22 & 23 April 2010
 in Poitiers TAP national scene music
scenography and staging Zad Moultaka
Book “The hidden treasure”, transcription of an evening zajal, Lebanon 1909. In Le diwan du Chahrour, text established by Nabil el Feghali, ed.Joseph D. Raidy, 2000
Prononciation Joseph Abi Daher
Literal translation/strong> Abbas Torbey
with

Fadia Tomb el-Hage, contralto: the young poet
Gabriel Yammine, actor: the old jouster
ars nova instrumental ensemble: the troupe of zajal
saxophones: Joël Versavaud and Jacques Charles
horn: Patice Petitdidier
trumpet: Fabrice Bourgerie
trombone: Patrice Hic
snorkel: Philippe Legris
percussion: Isabelle Cornelis
Philippe Nahon: musical direction

Régie générale et lumières Jérôme Deschamps
Son Xavier Bordelais & Christophe Hauser
Régie plateau Jean-Louis Dardenne
Spatialisation sonore Jérôme Decque (GMEM)
Video conception and editing Zad Moultaka

Act I Nadim Saoma Images, Gilbert Hage light construction
Act II Archive Images

Artistic coordination Catherine Peillon

Order of the French State and Ars Nova ensemble instrumental.
Production Ars Nova production ensemble / TAP coproduction – National Scene (Poitiers) / Gmem, National Center for Music Creation / Modern Art
With the support of Culturesfrance and Spedidam. SPEDIDAM (Society of Perception and Distribution of the Rights of Artists-Performers of Music and Dance) is a society that manages the rights of the Artist-Performer (musician, singer or dancer) in recording, dissemination and reuse of works.

• 22nd and 23rd of April 2010 – 20h30 – Premiere TAP of Poitiers

• April 27, 2010 – 8:30 pm – La Coursive La Rochelle

• April 30, 2010 – 8:30 pm – Festival Les Musiques Marseille

• May 28, 2010 – 8pm – Hippodrome de Douai

• June 8, 2010 – Beirut Spring Festival, Samir Kassir Foundation. Beirut, Lebanon

• July 21, 2010 – International Hammamet Festival, Tunisia

• July 24, 2010 – Abbey of Fontevraud. Fontevraud

• September 25, 2010 – Paris Ile de France Festival

• November 13, 2010 – Arab World Festival, Montreal (Canada) Paris

null

GEMME

null

VISIONS

null

ZARANI

null

RITUELS

null

OU EN EST LA NUIT

null

ZAJAL

null

MEDITERRANEE SACREE

Verified by MonsterInsights