From Night To the Edge of Day – Azam Ali’s New Album
April 10, 2011 - Posted by wizraeli

Every once in awhile, an album makes me stop and just appreciate. Such is the case with Azam Ali’s new creation, From Night To the Edge of Day. Azam is the lead singer of the band Niyaz and part of the successful project Vas. If you haven’t heard their music you are up for a treat. You might recognize her voice from collaborations with Greg Ellis, Juno Reactor and many others. Her new solo album is acoustic, personal and intimate. On her journey of becoming a mother, she discovered the power of the lulibay and dedicated the album to it.

“I discovered that lullabies are so much more than just musical and rhythmic tools to soothe a child,” she explains. “They are in fact a powerful medium by which a mother can send direct messages to her child about life, nature, joy, pain, love, beauty, etc.”

The album will be released April 12th, 2011 by Six Degrees Records. You can order the cd directly from the label here.

Our friends at Six Degrees gifted us with a free track from the album (so cool!), give it a listen and let in her magical and soothing voice accompanied by the mystical drums of centuries.

Snippets from the press release:

From Night To the Edge of Day includes lullabies that have been sung for centuries, such as the Turkish folk song “Neni Desem,” as well as one written specifically for Ali and her son by the Palestinian oud player and singer Naser Musa.  Here, songs from groups that have a history of conflict occupy the same musical and spiritual ground — Turks and Kurds, Persians and Arabs, Tajiks and Azeris.  Some, like the opening track, “Noor-E-Cheshmanam,” are slow and expansive, full of longing and tenderness.  Others, like Naser Musa’s “Faith,” are gently rocking – which is, after all, the motion that often goes with singing a lullaby.

From Night To the Edge of Day: A Collection of Middle Eastern Lullabies has taken on a larger meaning for Azam Ali. She returned to Iran in 2002 to bury her mother, and since then, she says, “I have spent a great deal of time in the Middle-East, and sadly discovered that our long standing internal prejudices in terms of religious and ethnic hierarchy have blinded us to the fact that we are one people.” This collection of lullabies is a reminder of one of the timeless bonds that all people share.  And for the many exiles from what remains a conflicted part of the world, Azam Ali’s album offers a particular message: “We are people of the east, and although our paths led us far from the land we belong to, our legacy runs deep like the oldest of trees, and our songs tell many stories which should never be forgotten.”