When the Soul Is Settled: Music of Iraq
A musician of startling feeling and technique, Iraq-born Rahim Alhaj began playing music professionally at only 14 years of age. His chosen tool is the oud, a stringed, pear-shaped instrument sometimes known as the Arabic lute. Alhaj trained at a national conservatory and even studied under Munir Bashir, whom many consider to be the greatest oud player who ever lived. But the political strife in his homeland, and his own activism against Saddam Hussein’s regime, led Alhaj to flee Iraq first for Jordan and Syria, and finally to the United States. An exile and a courageous political dissident, his music now speaks from a deep and wounded experience. In his hands, the oud wields a supple, melodic, and emotional power. There remains a blunt coarseness in its plucked strings, yet Alhaj has this simple, age-old instrument dance and spin with the agility of an acrobat.
When the Soul Is Settled: Music of Iraq, Alhaj’s first release for the iconic American label Smithsonian Folkways, embraces the traditional maqam form of Arabic music, which, not unlike the Indian raga or even the American jazz standard, outlines a prescribed set of pitches and rules of variation and allows the musician to extrapolate and improvise widely. Alhaj proves himself a master of the form, and the tracks on the disc build and expand with energy and imagination. “Taqsim Maqam Ajam” opens the album with quick, climbing melodies that arrive in start-and-stop bursts, like evocative flashes that together give a picture of the whole. When percussionist Souhail Kaspar joins him partway through the track, the soft, hand-beat drums give the piece a gentle rhythmic groove.
“Taqsim Maqam Kurd” works its way through a thin lonesome line, evoking a sense of sadness and travel. Slowly, Alhaj builds the speed of the melody until he is spanning the neck of his oud in chiming, fluid runs. When Kaspar joins him again, the maqam takes on a lightly driving charge, over which Alhaj’s fretwork proves impossibly dexterous, lifting and dropping in crisp phrases. “Taqsim Maqam Bayat-Hussaini” begins in a lower register and traces a buzzing, wavering melody, but Alhaj quickly attains a captivating speed and inspirational momentum. The ease and depth of his performances on When the Soul Is Settled places him among the premier instrumentalists of his time, a master musician who tells a story of escape, exile, and rebirth.