extracted from "Totally Shuffled-A Year of Listening to Music on a Broken iPod"
August 14th
Arahamic Wedding Chants-Merchant
Street, St James’ Church, Valetta, Malta 24th January 2010
There’s
some obscure stuff on the iPod-Pygmy music from the 1950’s being a prime
example, as well as assorted Japanese avant-garde/hardcore music- but this one
tops the list. It’s not particularly old or really from the other side of the
world. After all, plenty of people go to Malta for (fairly sedate) holidays and
January 2010 is only two and a half years ago from today. So, what’s so obscure
about this then? Everything. The whole thing only lasts just under twenty minutes,
being comprised of four “tracks”. None of these tracks are named and I have no
idea what they are about. They all last about 5 minutes or so and are comprised
of chanting and rhythmic drumming and percussion. There’s a variety of voices
and although it all sounds like it’s just women chanting, the sounds rise and
fall, high and low over the twenty minutes or so.
There isn’t a moment when you
can hear a single voice-as one voice falls away, another one picks up the
chant, followed by yet more until they fade and then the whole thing is picked
up again. It’s like a waving, rolling ocean; an undulating sea with waves that
never fully break. This is not a professional recording either; it’s nothing
that has ever been released on CD, there’s no connection with a record company
and it’s just here for one reason only. Someone, ( I know not who, but I’m
eternally grateful to them) came across this wedding ceremony outside a small
church in Valetta on a day in January 2010, decided to record it and put it
out to the world. It wasn’t really put out to the world though-just uploaded to
a small music site. I’ve looked back on the site and it’s just gone-there’s no
trace of it. It’s as if it was never there. I only have a CDR with the details
at the top of this piece written in my scribbled scrawl. I’ve racked my brain
to remember anything else about it, but all I’ve got (and this may be a bit of
a false memory) is that whoever recorded it just came upon it by chance. It
wasn’t a professional performance by professional musicians, but guests at a
wedding spontaneously bursting into song. I think that the performance was split
fairly arbitrarily into four tracks-listening to it all there doesn’t seem to
be any particular point within the whole twenty minutes or so when the
performance shifts to different songs; it just seems to be one whole twenty
minute rolling chant.
I suppose in the end that the question is what prompted
me to download it? Well, I guess that I’m always going to fall for something as
esoteric as this-after all what did I really have to lose? There was inevitably
a fair chance that it would be utter rubbish and something I’d never listen to
again. If that was the case,well, I’d just put it down to experience. By that
measure though, there’s many more traditionally “rock” albums I’ve got hold of
after hearing them hyped to the eyeballs, and then been disappointed. So this
wasn’t really too much of a punt, and, as it turns out, is one of the most
unexpectedly brilliant things I’ve ever heard.
Get/read/see the rest of Totally Shuffled here:
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