(Hit the back button on your browser to return to product listing.) Billboard A long-running entrant in the ethno-musicological field is New York's Lyrichord Records. Says president Nick Fritsch, "Our music must be either traditional, or in a contemporary expression based on traditional music and performed on traditional instruments." The label's decision to eschew world beat/pop fusions has not affected their acceptance among record buyers seeking the unusual. "Ancient Egypt," by Ali Jihad Racy, as sold more than 25,000 copies since its 1977 release. -May 13, 1995 Transcript-Telegram Although I love to travel, I don't often get the chance. Books, magazines, TV documentaries, and recordings are frequently my substitutes. Lately, the Lyrichord World Music Sampler* has been my musical ticket to faraway places. There are 17 tracks on this budget CD, with music from Asia, India, South America, Africa, Australia, and Europe. There's no pop music here, the electric guitars and synthesizers so common in today's music have been left at home. Some of the performances sound as if they were taped outside of the studio, which gives them a more authentic sound. That's fine with me; I like to imagine the musicians in their towns and villages, performing the music as if they weren't being recorded. Ancient Egypt," is a departure from the other recordings. It was composed by ethnomusicologist Ali Jihad Racy for the exhibit of Tutankhamun's tomb. How did he create this exotic music? My guess is that he examined the remains of ancient musical instruments, looked at paintings of Egyptian musicians done in ancient times, and studied the folk music of present-day Egypt for performance clues. The result is haunting music which suggests images of the pyramids and the Sphinx. - Dan Margolis, Holyoke, MA, March 19, 1992 Audiotapes & Discs: Worldviews This musical tribute to ancient Egypt was originally composed n 1978 for the King Tutankhamun Exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. Created by Ali Jihad Racy, an accomplished Arab artist who captures the essence of Near Eastern sound and presents it in a contemporary innovative musical idiom, the music on this compact disc was played continuously during the exhibit, suffusing the museum with a haunting and meditative aura of music that embodies the sounds of Gregoerian chants, Chinese and Indonesian melodic systems, and pentatonic scales. Only traditional Near Eastern instruments were used in making this recording. The breathy sound of the nay, an open-ended flute, can be heard throughout. Other instruments include the salamiyyay, a small reed flute that accompanies Sufi songs and dances in Egypt, the buzuq, a long necked-fretted lute with metal strings (featured in a long solo in selection no. 2, :The Land of the Blessed"), the tar, a large frame drum, the sajat, small brass finger cymbals, the mijwiz, a double clarinet made from reed, and the mizmar, a type of oboe made from wood. The accoustical capabilities of these instruments are explored and expanded in this work. Novel tone colors are created by harmonics and by nontraditional instrumental groupings (such as in selection no. 3, "Hymn to Osiris"); unconventional playing techniques are also employed (e.g., "trumpet fanfares" are simulated by blowing into the stem of the mizmar without the reed). The music created by performer/ethnomusicologist Ali Jihad Racy links three different worlds: antiquity, the contemporary Near East, and the electronic age. The artist's unusual facility with his instruments and the infiite possibilities offered by recording technology made this unique work possible. - January-June 1999 |