The 'adhan project

[أبو علاء]

A couple of years ago, I received one of those letters one would like to show as a model for serious membership application but you just thinks it's too nice to be true or, in other words, would you have set the standard high, this forum's membership wouldn't have counted more than one person and a half instead of 156 because I receive this kind of letters once every second year. Let me first reproduce the text here before I come to the point:

Dear Board of Zamanalwasl:

I have become acquainted with your forum, through a dear friend, my dear fellow AmbroseBierce, who spoke me abouth this community yesterday. My Name is Daniel Regalado González, and I live in Madrid, Spain, although I was born 43 years ago, in january 11th, 1968, in Huelva (al-Andalus, Spain). I am a magazine journalist, editorial coordinator and also an orthographic editor, though my major (UAM) was in Biology Sciences. My true e-mail address is this one, (...), and I would like to use the nick "deodac" if I'm granted registration at your forum. I am genuinely interested in the classical arab and oriental music. My interest these latest months have laid in the call to prayer (al-adaan) as it is sung or sound recorded all over the Umma. I have an ongoing project on that, and would also like to know if I could find any other fellow member who might be also. As a member of a forum in Spain with international membership which covers mainly Early, Medieval and Renaissance musics, Sonus Antigua, I have become in contact with this repertoire and some of their modern and classic performers, and I find these musics some of the best played live and studio recorded nowadays, but would like to have the chance also to hear more old recorded material, being the iranian melodies the most appealing to me up until today. I think I might have few materials myself to share, and would like to if the occasion arises and after reviewing the forum slowly. Looking forward to your comments,
I would humbly like to ask to be a participant of the forum.
Thank you for your kind and attention.
Daniel Regalado.

The highlights are of my own and that's precisely the reason for which I have exhumed this letter to post it here almost three years after receiving it. In fact, Deodac (Daniel) has just written to me again to advise of the completion of the project in question and I have to say, both the amount of work done and the achieved result are quite impressive. Obviously, as I immediately indicated to him when I answered this letter as well as in course of our further exchanges, the project was conceived in such a way that its object fell outside the scope of this forum and to be honest, contrarily to what his generous acknowledgement note says, I have done little more than nothing to help in this tremendous undertaking. However, I find it my duty to mention the accomplished project and refer whoever is interested to it, not only as a matter of courtesy, but at least for two other reasons: first, regardless of the anthropological thrust of this work, the 'adhan as one of the genres of religious chant is definitely relevant to this forum interests with regard to its melodic content and the vocal techniques used therein and, second, this is, again, an excellent illustration of what could and should be done in our field of interest as well as in any other human field of interest when an adequate amount of seriousness, goodwill, dedication and knowledge is there. Unfortunately, our deficit is huge in all those regards...

Details for +1.5K Al-Adhan - THE CALL TO PRAYER PROJECT: Da Biggest Inte

Created by deodac 2 days ago Music : Classical : Other quality A Muezzin calling from the top of a Minaret The Faithful to Prayer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904) THE CALL TO PRAYER PROJECT A Tribute to the Umma of muslims. Original Idea & edition, deodac The adhan or azan Transliteration adan, azaan, adhaan, azan, athan, athaan, adhane, ezan (turkish), and many more. Translation: call to prayer, appel à la prière The Muslim Call to Prayer by the Muezzin from the minaret of the Mosque to the Faithful. A journey from the origins of the practice of so-called East, to al-Andalus, beyond time and space, and in different sorts of sound environments and recording conditions. This Project features a selection of slightly over 1.500 tracks the many forms of the Muslim Call to Prayer gathered along 20 months of work from all the corners of our loving Internets. The words are always the same but on each track the melody follows one of the many musical scales (maqam) and reflects the emotional expression of the chanter, the Muezzin. The sunni adhan The shi'a adhan The Adhan, the public call to ritual prayer or salât, is, as the very prayer, a rite, that is, an operational requirement of non-human origin, inspired by God. According to tradition, two of the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad dreamed at the same time the Adhan formula, and the way it had to be carried out, being Bilal, a former black freed slave, the Companion chosen by the Messenger from Heaven to first undertake the new role of announcer of the time for prayer. Says Rumi in his Mathnawi (Book I, Poem 1985): "The Spirit is perfection and his call is perfection. The Chosen One (Muhammad) used to say: "Comfort us, Bilal! Oh Bilal, raise your melodious voice from that breath that I breathed into your heart, from that breath by which Adam was dumbfounded and the minds of the inhabitants of Heaven were reduced to nothing!". Throughout the Islamic world, the stylistic variety in the adhan depends on the "spirit" of the law school at each site. In Morocco and Algeria, for example, is usually done in a sober, almost monotonous way, according to the temperament of the malikî school, which forms the majority in those countries. In the Middle East, where there are other schools, such as Hanafi, the prevailing, more "flowery" styles are used, and brilliant, musically speaking. Traditionally, the muezzin, which should not collect any salary for performing his function, when calling the faithful, shall be in a state of ritual purity, standing in the direction of Mecca, and shall make the call with his hands on the ears, turning from right to left. But in any case, the only prerequisite is the proper articulation of the phrases that make up the so-called ritual, perfectly understandable to all the Faithful who might listen. ABOUT THIS TORRENT There are +1500 tracks, overall, in all possible Mp3 bitrates. Bear in mind that an extremely low bitrate, could in fact hide a extremely beautiful adhan as well, and / or be from the most prestigious classical arabic music forum there is in the Web, which boast a medium sized collection of some old and rare recordings and has i this project a folder of its own. The MAIN folders are: CVs Contains all covers available, some hundreds, in thumb size 200x200, though some of the tracks contain artwork of higher quality, as metadata. As a rule, you should always check the internal comments of every track, as many have been heavily edited. And to do so, because this torrent was created with iTunes, and only after completion extracted from it to arrange it for uploading in the bittorrent protocol, this torrent is also best viewed from / with that Apple application, regardless of your personal tastes, IMHO. MMc Madrid's M-30 Central Mosque Muezzin, Imam Hussam Khoja's Private Adhan Collection (159 tracks): Personal Communication. CAs are whole, full cassette releases devoted to the subject of this project, the Call to Prayer. CDs, likewise, are CDs entirely dealing with the Call. Whereas WBs are forms of the call, principally pure, without any musical arrangement, downloaded directly from the Web, from multiple sources, blogs, forums, trackers, usenet, The Internet Archive, Ed2k Net, etc, etc whose source's names are clearly identified to each by a subfolder of their own. I'd say The Call To Prayer as a pure monodic chant, without music, constitutes around 80% of the total tracks presented here to you. I have also chosen this time to lessen a bit the doubtless musical homogeneity of this project, by also stocking and arranging that 20% of tracks remaining, a wide variety of more or less related pieces. Those tracks are stored in the folder CDp (CD Picks) although quite a few of them could be considered pure forms of the chant as well, as they are included here ONLY because their source are CDs that are not in their entirety devoted to this Project's subject. They have been extracted from a full release that, commonly, may not even deal with an islamic repertory. In this order, we could find in this folder many curiosities, in all sorts of musical genres, from folk and jazz, to trance and electronic, from classical and opera, to hip hop and new age, from ambient and experimental music, to flamenco, early musics, or pop-rock. There is even a a folder here, that contains only a handful of tracks which sort of represent people unlike this torrent lover's, individuals who have tried to use the adhan to communicate their hate in an spurious, useless way, if we regard the tradition we are dealing here, its beauty, and the 1700 million people that just think otherwise. I though it was wise to include them as well so we may be aware of the fact, musically speaking. LASTLY there is a BONUS FOLDER, BOs, which contains some agreeable full releases that I have found over the months while scouting for this project, and that don't quite disrespect this torrent's music. Again, to ease and compete a bit the extremely numerous adhans we have now together. You'll be surprised to find here a folder that contains the songs, or chants, of the humpback whale. They are here, because, as the adhan, I consider them to be one of the few really exquisite forms of simple communication among the species that populate the earth, and, in their infinite resounding below the oceans, as the adhan has been on the surface for well over a millennia, they communicate a mistery and an enigmatic beauty that is deeper than our knowledge, present, and even the far future's. CONTRIBUTORS: NOSTALGICA, my pardner here, @ DEMONOID FILM DIRECTOR, ANNA KIPERVASER Her new filming project Voices & Faces of the Adhan is presently filming at Cairo after some years on the preparations. I have included a PDFs folder t include it, besides the Adhan partiture, though ALL the adhans available NOW from this filming project, have their own subfolder Cambridge World Oral Literature Project, under CDpicks, a page where they were initially deployed as a sample. IMAM HUSSAM KHOJA, Madrid's Resident Muezzin in its Principal Mosque. Thank you for your wisdom and willingness. I feel obliged, and will return the favour. ABU, A dedicated administrator of the best classical arabic forum, ZAMANALWASL of which I had the tremendous honour of being a member for a while. Thank you Abu. 3O6YX His is a rare palestinian full Adhan Cassete release bought in an open market at Gaza in 2006. The hardest piece to input in this project, by Far LoL ABDEL, administrator of the amazing Forum THE SILENCE HAS A VOICE And ALL my friends at my Early Music Forum. AND lastly, a dedicated sharer and music lover: AMBROSEBIERCE and his world wild bunch, because they ALL expressed their sincere interest and thus helped me to go on. The Muezzin (1866); oil on canvas (64.5 x 81 cm), by Jean-Léon Gérôme; Francis T.B. Martin collection (Omaha, Nebraska, United States) RELEASES PRESENT IN THE TORRENT FULL CASSETTES [ FULL CDs CD PICKS Adhan Haters Ambient [ [ Classical & Opera Devotional Drones Drum 'n bass Early Music [ [ Electronic Ethnic [ Experimental Field Recordings [ Flamenco [ Folk [ Hip Hop Instrumental Jazz [ New Age [ Pop Rai & Reggae [ Rock Songwriters [ Soundtracks Techno Traditional Songs Trance [ World Music BONUS RELEASES Call to Prayer, Cairo (ca. 1870), by Jean-Léon Gérôme; oil on canvas.`

Link:

http://www.demonoid.ph/files/details/3008054/

[Hattouma]

Impressive !