Dawning Saffron

We say: Persian poetry in a slow-burn fusion setting.

A curious one, this. Poetic recitation with musical accompaniment is something not many of us are familiar with. When it is the Sufi poetry of Maulânâ Jalâl al-Din Muhammed Balkhi, better known in the West as Rumi, it is fair to say that we probably need to have our hands held for a while until it clicks.

The first track "Dawning" begins slowly and cautiously—ripples of piano, plangent soprano sax, yearning sitar. It's a drawn-out and deliberate beginning but, as a musical interpretation of the day's dawning, perhaps it is reasonable to expect a slow build—this one is certainly in no hurry to go anywhere. After a few minutes, the vocal comes in, not sung but dramatically evoked spoken poetry in Persian, that most sensual of languages. This is all well and good but, without knowledge of the words spoken, our ears wander in search of something to grasp onto. Finally the listener's patience is rewarded and as, as tabla drums enter the fray around the ten minute mark, the piece starts to move inexorably forward, pulsing gently.

The intention here, exemplified in the use of instruments like piano and sax, sitar and tabla, is to engage both East and West, to create the sort of unity that is at the heart of Rumi's poetry. And it works. With musicians from both traditions — Shujaat Khan on sitar and Abhiman Kaushal on tabla, both classical Indian musicians, and composer Kevin Hays on piano and occasional Rolling Stones horn-man Tim Ries on saxophones — the resultant sound is a gentle coming together of both worlds. The only member of the ensemble able to understand the Persian lyrics is Iranian-American vocalist Katayoun Gourdarzi and so it is an important exercise in intuition for all concerned, although Gourdarzi admits to sketching out the general mood and content of each of the poems to her collaborators beforehand.

"Dawning" is just the beginning, so to speak. "The Inquisitor," the 16-minute track that follows, demands a similar sort of fortitude from the listener, patience that is amply rewarded if we ignore our 21st-century instinct for instant gratification. The odd thing here is that while three of the first four tracks are in excess of 15 minutes duration, somewhat perversely, the last three tracks — "Overcome," "Trembling," and "Nomad"—all run for around just four minutes each. Slow build, fast decay, you might say, but the truth is that the running order pretty much reflects the same order that the tunes were recorded in, and so Dawning evolves in much in the same way for the listener as it did for the musicians who recorded it.