Nile Project

The Nile Project: ASWAN: 18 musicians from countries around the Nile met and jammed for 10 days to produce a live concert recording where African music meets the Middle East; full of texture, musical conversations, and beautifully recorded; FCC clean; favorite tracks * 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 13


1-Shagwab (4:47) slow, meditative, male voice with Sudanese lyre and strings; lots of vibrato, tremulo
2-* Salaam Nubia (4:26) Sudanese, starts slow, picks up speed, female voice; interesting percussion; unison singing; lots of variety on this track
3-Ami Ya Gamal (2:35) fairly standard Egyptian Arabic male call and response from female singers; fast tempo
4-Tezeta *(4:52) Ethiopian starts with really nice taqseem (improvised sax solo). Segues to vocal, polyrhythmic
5-Zegiewh *(3:58) More Ethiopian, starts with taqseem, English lyrics, vocal echoes of Grace Slick, segues to slow instrumental plus Amharic (?), waltz rhythm, weird and interesting!
6-Omha (4:13), village-sounding less sophisticated music from the Sudan, vocal repetitive, mid-tempo
7-Aysh *(8:23), meditative, beautiful, long instrumental from Egypt, gradually picking up speed; spectacular tremulo and texture variety
8-Neel (7:10) ; Egyptian and Nubian, classical sounding vocals. Unison singing sounds a little flat to my western ear (or maybe it's just quartertones); mid-tempo
9-*St. Yared of Axvan –Ethiopian (5:51); wonderful sax taqseem, instrumental above polyrhythmic percussion and bass
10-Kullina Wahed (3:53) –South Sudan nice belly dance type rhythm; good percussion call and response between female soloist and chorus
11-Sematimba ne kikwabanga (8:16) –From Uganda; African beat, singing, polyrhythmic, jazz-y,dense, long, with percussion solos,
12-Taksim Oud (1:59) –beautiful, accomplished oud solo
13 – Ya Genouby* (7:00) Egyptian female vocalist with unison accompaniment, rich instrumental texture, layered vocals, nice horn interlude w/oud doing bass; lots of texture and improv
14 – Sekota (3:37) – Ethiopian heavy drumming with male vocals. A little chaotic
15 – Guyala (2:54) – Ethiopian, but everyone jumps in