Nubia
Escalay (The Water Wheel):
Oud Music

The parent of the guitar and lute, the oud is an instrument of North African provenance, with roots in cultural traditions that are very old, indeed. The earliest versions of the oud, in fact, go back to around 1400 BCE, where it appeared in Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Babylonia, and Pharaonic Egypt. Its use has been credited to the spread of Manicheism, and it quite possibly served as the prototype for the Chinese pipa, after its arrival there during the Han Dynasty, and for the Japanese biwa. It seems also to have served as the model upon which the Russian balalaika is based and upon which the Indonesian gambus is based. The oud made its way to Europe accompanying the returning Crusaders from the Middle East. Once in Spain and France, it became a vital part of romantic court music, and in England its form evolved into the lute during the reign of Elizabeth I.

On this recording from 1971, as part of Nonesuch’s re-mastered re-release of its Explorer Series, Hamza El Din plays three songs based on the scale system used in Egyptian music. (Strictly speaking, Nubian music is pan-Egyptian and ­Sudanese.) Do not take the spare arrangement for oud and plaintive vocals as representing ageless Nubian music, however. As Robert Garfias points out in the liner notes, the oud belongs to Arab classical music; whereas, “The oud was not used by the people of Nubia.” Escalay is really El Din’s modification of Arab and Nubian musics into a new form of music. The CD would more properly be labeled as a solo album by El Din rather than its implication as representative of both Nubian and “oud music,” whatever the latter may mean.

That said, how does it stand on its own? Relatively well, I think. El Din’s oud playing is fluid, competent, driving, and rhythmic; it’s a pleasure to listen to. The singing on the first two cuts I find off-putting, however: it is disproportionately loud compared to the volume of the oud, and the melody isn’t very interesting. The former complaint I’ll chalk up to technical limitations of the field recording, the latter to cultural bias on my part: perhaps if I knew the music better and the language he sings, my opinion would alter. The third and final cut, “Song with Tar,” does the best job of blending instrumentation and sung line, but on this cut, El Din doesn’t play the oud, he plays the tar, a type of drum.

—Tom Bowden is the Managing Editor of Tech Directions and serves as Contributing Review Editor to The Education Digest.