fredlag@noos.fr
09-06-2006, 15:26
The art of qasida 3ala al-wahda in the case of Abd al-Hayy Hilmi appears as an original, sui generis type of rendition. As Najib pointed out in a recent post that no riqq is clearly hearable in almost all qasida recordings. It must be made clear, at first, that there are different kinds of wahda, the basic wahda and the wahda sa’ira or wahda bi-ribat, the syncopated kind, that can be heard for instance in Salih Abd al-Hayy’s marvelous 1950s version of Araka 3asiyya al-Dam3.
D = dum ; T = tak ; S = fillable silence : ° = absolute silence, 4/4 cycle :
basic wahda :
D°/S°/T°/T°/ or D°/T°/T°/T°/
wahda bi-ribat :
D°/ST/°S/T°/ or D°/ST/S°/T°
In almost all the early 20th century recordings, the riqq is either unhearable or absent, and the qanun is in charge of the metric. It almost always accounts to a 4/4 ostinato of the basic wahda type, one time out of 4 being slightly more accentuated (representing the dum)
/DTTT/DTTT/DTTT/DTTT/DTTT etc...
Most singers, and particularly mashayekh, respect this meter and perform acrobatics in order to fall back on the dum (Manyalawi, Higazi, Safti, Abu al-Ila, etc). Meanwhile, Abd al-Hayy, not a shaykh trained in inshad (which demands respect of metric cycles) and utterly uninterested by compulsory rythm anyway, has his own qasida 3ala al-wahda rules. The aesthetics of the melodic sentences is still comparable to Manyalawi’s, although less imaginative in terms of maqamian construction and exploration, but the border between qasida 3ala al-wahda and qasida mursala tends to blur at times with Abd al-Hayy. The instrumental ostinato hardly marks an accentuated time anymore, it sometimes turns to 4 equally accentuated times.
A la fi sabili-llah by Abd al-Hayy is no exception to the rule : just listen to his slurring deeena of 3andena in the dulab el-3awazel. Strange sikah insistence at the beginning. On the second side, the wonderful short 3anki at 3’55, completely disruptive as Abu Ala’ would say, almost dissective, again at 4’52, dha / dha t-tarki... Nice shuri color at 5’00. disruptive fa-hal / hakimun fil-hubb.
Do not miss at 5’47 the funny Ya Sharikeh, in Bani Suwayf accent : Hilmi is actually insulting the Gramophone Company for not paying him enough !
?
Gramophone 14-12605/06, matrix nb 1377/1378y (recorded by A. Clarke in May-June 1910, Cairo)
عبد الحي حلمي
قصيدة ألا في سبيل الله
شعر ابن أبي عيينة
D = dum ; T = tak ; S = fillable silence : ° = absolute silence, 4/4 cycle :
basic wahda :
D°/S°/T°/T°/ or D°/T°/T°/T°/
wahda bi-ribat :
D°/ST/°S/T°/ or D°/ST/S°/T°
In almost all the early 20th century recordings, the riqq is either unhearable or absent, and the qanun is in charge of the metric. It almost always accounts to a 4/4 ostinato of the basic wahda type, one time out of 4 being slightly more accentuated (representing the dum)
/DTTT/DTTT/DTTT/DTTT/DTTT etc...
Most singers, and particularly mashayekh, respect this meter and perform acrobatics in order to fall back on the dum (Manyalawi, Higazi, Safti, Abu al-Ila, etc). Meanwhile, Abd al-Hayy, not a shaykh trained in inshad (which demands respect of metric cycles) and utterly uninterested by compulsory rythm anyway, has his own qasida 3ala al-wahda rules. The aesthetics of the melodic sentences is still comparable to Manyalawi’s, although less imaginative in terms of maqamian construction and exploration, but the border between qasida 3ala al-wahda and qasida mursala tends to blur at times with Abd al-Hayy. The instrumental ostinato hardly marks an accentuated time anymore, it sometimes turns to 4 equally accentuated times.
A la fi sabili-llah by Abd al-Hayy is no exception to the rule : just listen to his slurring deeena of 3andena in the dulab el-3awazel. Strange sikah insistence at the beginning. On the second side, the wonderful short 3anki at 3’55, completely disruptive as Abu Ala’ would say, almost dissective, again at 4’52, dha / dha t-tarki... Nice shuri color at 5’00. disruptive fa-hal / hakimun fil-hubb.
Do not miss at 5’47 the funny Ya Sharikeh, in Bani Suwayf accent : Hilmi is actually insulting the Gramophone Company for not paying him enough !
?
Gramophone 14-12605/06, matrix nb 1377/1378y (recorded by A. Clarke in May-June 1910, Cairo)
عبد الحي حلمي
قصيدة ألا في سبيل الله
شعر ابن أبي عيينة