Holiday Decorations in Jerusalem

 

Back in December, as soon as I saw the new holiday decorations put up by the municipality, I had no doubt the three components represented three religions, the same three recognized as being such by the state of Israel: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  The dreidels are an obvious reference to Hanukah, the holiday where they are often in use. Oddly enough, the other representations are more hidden and abstract. The most colorful of the three, which could be a painted snowflake, I believe to be a Christmas tree ornament. Please correct me if I’m wrong. The third one, least obviously, has to be Islam. In other examples the point could have been made more clearly, but this represents the geometrical and symmetrical abstractions of Islamic non-representational art.

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when the committee was deliberating all of this. What amazing discussions must have taken place! How did they reach their agreements? Who were the more accommodating voices? Who the resistant and inflexible ones? What compromises were made?

Is it possible Jerusalem may be moving into the direction of Haifa where the entire Abrahamic community comes out to celebrate a single holiday festival, as you can see in this photo borrowed from the YouTube channel Relaxing Walker (relaxing.walker)?

They call it “The Holiday of Holidays.” Seeing the three religions shining so brightly together, is such a marvelous thing. Still, it may not be so obvious to followers of other faiths how the lamp is a beautiful symbol for Muslims. They may be unfamiliar with the Light Sura of the Koran, with its Light Verse, so richly celebrated and elaborated by the Sufis:

The lamp is within glass, the glass as if it were a pearl-white star, 

Lit from the oil of a blessed olive tree, 

Neither of the east nor of the west, 

Whose oil would almost glow even if untouched by fire.

I’m convinced this light if it could only be found by more of us would show the right way to communal understanding and coexistence. Because know it or not we’re already entirely interconnected.

§   §   §

PS: Oh, and there is a fully trained and authentic Santa Claus who keeps a house right here in Jerusalem/al-Quds. That the gift giver is with us is surely worth knowing.

Meanwhile, from inside New Gate:

Crusader Altar

 

Crusader Altar. Taken on Dec. 28, 2021 (click to enlarge)

During the holiday season last year we had the chance to go on a very professional archaeological tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was intended for licensed tour guides, but they let us in anyway. We learned a number of things we hadn’t even imagined were knowable, so many I can’t even try to mention more than a few. This isn’t so surprising if you stop to think just how much there is to know about a place like this one, continually steeping in history for over two thousand years. It’s true, there is no way anybody can ever know enough about it. Our guide/lecturer was a giant in the field of art history, a teacher at the Hebrew University, Anastasia Keshman. I’d recommend her for any kind of tour if you can succeed in signing up for one.*

(*Please don't imagine I get any benefit out of mentioning her name. I don't do anything like that, ever.)

At the time I took the picture you see above we were told that it hadn't even been published yet. But by now several news agencies have in fact published pictures of it (you can see some in the links below).

What it is is this: the front face of the altar that was made in Crusader times, and very likely still in use until the famous fire of 1808 damaged it. Then it was slid back into a corner only to be brought out again during the major renovation project of recent years. Their reports will contain a lot of interesting new findings, no doubt. The last I was there the archaeologists were busy with their high tech machinery, as they are even now according to my latest information (the project will continue through 2023).

After the fire of 1808, the Greeks received sole authorization to oversee the renovation. It is to a time soon after that the walls around the Catholicon probably date. Before then there were pillars, of course, but no walls to obstruct the view. A pilgrim visiting the central area where the altar once stood might have stood on the very  spot where the omphalos (the Greek for ‘navel’), the “center of the world,” is still pointed out to pilgrims (this omphalos is mentioned in very early pilgrim accounts). 

Photo by Sergey Serous, CC BY 3.0

From that vantage point pilgrims could have turned themselves around in a complete circle and seen all the significant holy sites to be found there, with the one exception of the place of the finding (“Inventio”) of the cross by Empress Helena that is anyway on a much lower level. In direct line of sight, turning toward the right, were Calvary, the Anointment Stone, the Sepulchre, the Flagellation Pillar, the Prison, and finally the doorway leading to stairways down to the place of the Inventio. Oh, and in earlier centuries, before the fire, you could have also seen the tombs of the Crusader kings there at the foot of Calvary. Hardly any trace of them can be seen in the church today. It’s as if they were never there.

The side of the stone slab with the spiral designs remained for centuries hidden away, while its uncarved backside got covered with graffiti, mostly about who is in love with whom, or So-and-so was here.

At this very moment there is an Italian project to repair and restore the pavement in the entire church complex. This also includes archaeological examination of the layers beneath the stones. You can read about that here:

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/jerusalem/restoring_the_holy_sepulchre/

PS (Oct. 31, 2022)

As I said, when we went on our tour the altar stone hadn’t been published about yet, but by now you can find several news stories. Here are a few of them if you would like to find out more:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/researchers-rediscover-original-medieval-altar-of-church-of-the-holy-sepulchre/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/crusader-era-high-altar-resurfaces-jerusalems-holy-sepulcher-180968192/

It’s possible to find other examples of altars with front-facing stone slabs that display spiral motifs. There’s one on the island of Malta at the Tarxien Temples, said to date to 3150 BC, so hardly likely as a direct inspiration to the Crusaders. I’m wondering how much the Crusaders made use of Malta. This page may have some answers. But were the spiral motifs visible to them or under the ground?

Look here for a photo.

It seems the ancient Maltese island people had a liking for spirals, and used them in other places, not just on altars. Look at this photo for example.

PSS (December 19, 2022)

I suppose it is too far-fetched to think that Crusaders would have caught a glance of spirals in ancient ruins in Malta before copying them in Jerusalem.  I’ve just watched a video about the English coronation throne and the Stone of Scone.  I was surprised to see part of it is about the floor in Westminster Abbey where the coronation throne of the English Monarchy was located. It has some very similar aspects. The central inset onyx stone is supposed to represent the earth, with the heavenly bodies arrayed around it. Jungians are bound to see in it a kind of mandala, but I’m not so fast to fix on that idea. Not every circular design can be called by that name.

Although more elaborate, obviously, it has a sufficiently similar layout (one being within a rectangle, the other within a square) with its array of four smaller circular elements that spin off from the central circle in the same spiraling manner. I hope you can see for yourself.  And the two mosaics may not be divided by too many years, since the Westminster floor is said to be original to the reign of King Edward I (i.e. 1272-1307). Edward joined the Ninth Crusade, departed for Jerusalem in 1270 and was coronated upon his return to England.

The central design of the floor area called the Sacrarium,
directly in front of the main altar in Westminster Abbey

An article by Steinmeyer lets it drop that the Crusader altar is in “cosmatesque” style. That means it was made in the style of an Italian workshop belonging to the Cosmati family. The Cosmatis were in fact the very ones who made the mosaic work in the Sacrarium of Westminster Abbey, not just the pavement, but the area of the wall where the altar is.* So we come full circle even as the argument tightens.

(*Another mind-blowing example of a Cosmati floor may be seen in the Vatican, just look here. Yet another, even closer to the Jerusalem altar stone can be seen at the Santa Maria Maggiore basilica in Rome. For a more general discussion of the Cosmati or Cosmatesque style, look at this Wikiwand.)

The video I’ll link to in a moment was evidently purposefully posted as a run-up to the coronation of King Charles due to happen on May 6, 2023. The story of the Stone of Scone is fascinating in itself, so whether you are convinced by my visual argument or not, it’s worthwhile to see.  Just go here: “St Edward's Chair - A History of the Medieval Coronation Chair and the Stone of Scone.”

• The Coronation Chair and the Stone of Scone is also the name of a book. I'll have to look that one up when I get a chance.

Articles to read:

S. Rees Jones, “The Coronation Chair,” Studies in Conservation, vol. 1, no. 3 (April 1954), pp. 103-114.  The chair was ordered to be made in 1299.  This article is based on restorations done in the crypt prior to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. These restorations afforded an opportunity to do microscopic and x-ray analysis of the paint and other coverings applied over the centuries.

Jasmine Liu, “Ancient Altar of Holy Sepulchre Church Found, Graffitied Over for Years,” posted on April 21, 2022, at Hyperallergic website. Look here.

Nathan Steinmeyer, “The Ancient Altar from Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre: Excavations Uncover Church’s Original Medieval Altar,” posted by Bible History Daily on April 22, 2022, with link to a video featuring Amit Re'em, only 2 minutes and worth seeing.

“The ancient altar was designed in the “cosmatesque” style, which reflects a combination of classical, Byzantine, and early Islamic traditions. Although the slab has suffered greatly over the years, it originally featured finely worked and colorful marble tiles with detailed engravings. “You cannot see it now, but originally it was inlaid with pieces of precious marble, pieces of glass, pieces of small, finely made marble,” said Amit Re’em, Jerusalem regional archaeologist for the Israel Antiquities Authority, in an interview with Reuters. “It was shining, and this was a really amazing artifact.” Similar decorated altars have been found in churches in Rome, dating to the 12th and 13th centuries.”

• And, I might add, inside a celebrated church in London, covering the very area where the investiture of English royalty takes place.

§ § §

Without any more than a dozen readers to call my own, I sometimes feel like I’m talking to myself here, but there may be no more reliable and constant entertainment than your own internal conversation. That goes especially when you are trying to figure things out for yourself, don’t you agree? Tour guides always tell people the small crosses carved into the stone walls along the stairway that goes down to the place of the finding (inventio) of the Cross were carved by European Crusaders. There are a couple of undeniable European pieces of graffiti, true enough, but very recent in-depth studies suggest that the multitudes of small crosses were carved there on behalf of Armenian pilgrims some centuries later. There is in fact hardly anything in terms of symbolic or artistic remains from the Crusader Era still visible in the church today. There is that one mosaic in Calvary, another mosaic I may blog about some other time.

Look closely at that floor!

Postscript (May 4, 2022): In the run-up to the coronation ceremony coming up in two days, Westminster Abbey has been posting some videos of its own, including one about its now even more famous Cosmati Pavement, laid down in the year 1268 CE. It was made of 93,000 mostly stone elements both English and Italian, by workmen from both London and Rome. It underwent conservation over a decade ago, and it is still a functioning floor. That means people still walk on it!

When I put up this blog last October, I had no idea that a coronation would be done on this pavement so soon. In any case, my interest was driven by the Jerusalem stone I saw back in 2021, not by anything else. Well, except a general interest in early floors like the one in the Hagia Sophia or Aya Sofia.

A question for myself: What about the mosaic floor that exists today in the Catholicon, the main Greek cathedral, of the Holy Sepulchre. After all, some at least of its elements resemble the Cosmati style, don’t they? So far I haven’t seen any statement about how old this pavement is, but it could go back to late Crusader period, why not? I just haven’t heard one way or the other.

•

Fabio Barry, "Walking on Water: Cosmic Floors in Antiquity and the Middle Ages." The Art Bulletin, vol. 89, no. 4 (2007), pp. 627-56.

A Monster in the Sink

The sink in question

I have to tell you, there are certain things they don't tell you when you move to a new city, including one like Jerusalem that is often thought problematic for a variety of other reasons, and that is: What kind of creature can you expect to spot in your kitchen while you fix your breakfast?

That's what happened today when my dearest friend Y came rushing toward me in a high-pitched voice about the monster in the sink. It was quite a fright, and it isn’t even Halloween yet. We had no idea what we were dealing with, even after I saw it lurking there in the far left-hand corner of the sink peeking out from behind a stack of cereal bowls. It was about four inches in length with lots of legs, and those legs had hair.  So I roughly deduced that what we had on our hands was some kind of tarantula.

Naturally it occurred to me that tarantulas could be dangerous, that their bites might possibly kill you, but I went ahead to find a plastic container so I could trap it. I removed one item from the sink, carefully, without scaring it, thinking it might get in the way of my next maneuver. Then I tipped over a bowl of water that was already sitting there, thinking the water would temporarily bog it down just long enough I could trap it under the plastic takeaway food container, the kind with a tightly fitting flat snap-on top.

With the giant arachnid enclosed within the walls of the upside-down container, I put a heavy bowl on top so it couldn't possibly lift it up to escape. Then I waited several minutes, thinking it would slow down enough, perhaps tire itself out trying to escape, so I could more easily slide the flat lid underneath, seal it up, and take the whole kit and kaboodle outside.

I do believe creatures like this have an important place in nature. You could even argue that they have an important place in the home, since they keep populations of insects in check. Be that as it may... if this monster weren't caught and removed it would have meant always wondering where she might be lurking, or when she might pop up all of a sudden to give us another fright!

While she was inside the container I had a chance to do what I believe everyone would do today under such circumstances. I went to the Schmoogle box and searched for “Middle Eastern tarantula.” Sure enough what popped up on my screen was exactly the type I had caught. It was a "black hairy." The exact same guy you can see here in this Wiki site.

Or if you are brave enough look at this slightly bigger-than-life photo:

Photo by Dror Feitelson, Pikiwiki

Now if you feel inclined go read about it some more in the Wikipedia entry under its Latin name Chaetopelma olivaceum.*

To make it short, this particular variety of tarantula commonly inhabits homes in our part of the world, it is quite fast — this I learned when I let it go in the valley — and its bite, when and if it does bite, stings like a bee, but is not likely to have any remarkable result. They aren't very serious about web building, preferring to trap and attack their prey in a more direct way.

I suppose the next time I see one I'll be better prepared to face the situation. Maybe even a little less intimidated.

Home safety tip: Keep used staples out of the carpet

 (*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaetopelma_olivaceum)

§  §  §

Diana Barshaw, “The Spider and the Wasp,” Jerusalem Post Magazine,  September 3, 2009.

§   §   §

Back in 1996, I was traveling through Kinnaur Valley in northern India when the whole busload of men spent the night in sleeping bags on the floor in a huge open room. I scarcely slept all night for the orchestra of snores that surrounded me. In the morning my hand was hurting, and I noticed the two marks side-by-side that indicates a spider bite. During the following days on the road the back of my hand puffed up quite a bit. I can't recall any other case of spider bite in my whole life.

Be well and stay safe!

Jackal in the Botanical Garden

This blog is for dad on Father’s Day with a lot of love and appreciation,
& hope you got the cheese.

Mid-June in Jerusalem’s Botanical Garden is wonderful, but I say that mainly because of its huge pond full of lotuses and waterlilies. In the rest of the garden there are not as many flowers blooming as there had been in May. The hollyhocks are nice, and you can see some amazing huge magnolia blossoms:

It was late, drawing close to closing time, so we were winding our way down the hill toward the entrance, walking slowly, taking the narrowest of trails, when we reached a 3-way junction and started to turn down a stone paved path when we caught sight of it just a few meters away. It caught sight of us at the same time and let out a frightening low growl. My digital camera was turned on and in hand, so I had just enough time to snap one photo before it vanished:

Double click on the photo and it ought to enlarge

My first idea was that it was a fox, but over the next days, looking over the photo, I became convinced our friend Masha was right, and it must be a jackal, even a golden jackal, the type most common in these parts. I found some photos on the internet to compare, including this sample of a smiling golden jackal:

As I said, the jackal did let out a threatening growl, but it also had its tail between its legs.  It absolutely did not express any friendly attitude, just the opposite. It was shocked by our sudden appearance. As far as we could tell it was not part of a pack, as jackals prefer to be, it looked somewhat weak and hungry. Jackals usually feed at dawn and dusk, I understand.

Its fear could have turned to aggression, but he wasn't cornered, and we didn't try to get any closer.

They say canids won’t attack anything bigger than themselves unless they are running with their pack. But exceptions take place when they feel cornered or have pups to protect.

A few years ago, I looked into dholes (Asian wild dogs) a bit because of somebody’s idea they are a kind of cat... I found the very idea that a dog could be considered a cat strange, it made me wonder. But... dholes are catlike in some ways... 

Foxes have cat eyes with the vertical slit-shaped pupils. I had thought that jackal was a fox at first. But at second look, those are not cat eyes, so not a fox.

As wild dogs go, Jackals are so much less frightening than hyenas. I remember how packs of hyenas used to whip through the tall grass in Lumbini at sunset, not far from the library where we stayed, making a frightful racket. But in my mind hyenas might better belong in the family of bears. Well, there are ways of making categories, and human minds are always working on that. If fruits grow only on trees, doesn’t that make bananas berries? Are blackberries not berries?

There have been some news stories in the local papers in the last decade about how golden jackals have been gradually moving into western Jerusalem, in part attracted by the food kind people leave out for the street cats. I don’t feel like blaming anyone. Fault finding is another human tendency that so often gets us all worked up. On a day like today I’d rather contemplate the over-done beauty of the lotus pond.

Wow!  See that?

Read more

“Nine People Treated in Hospital for Jackal Bites,” Jerusalem Post (Feb. 3, 2021).

Sue Surkes, “Snacks for Stray Cats May be Feeding a Rash of Jackal Attacks,” Times of Israel (Feb. 8, 2021).

The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) put in their online newsletter a brief story “Jackals in Jerusalem” (Nov. 13, 2013).

Moshe Gilad and Ofer Vaknin, “With Israelis in Coronavirus Isolation, Jackals Are Taking Over Tel Aviv’s Main Park,” Haaretz (April 8, 2020). Great photos give the impression of handsome and noble creatures with families of their own. Perhaps the stories about them occasionally attacking humans have been overblown. After all, even domesticated dogs have been known to attack humans sometimes, right? Relationships come with a certain level of risk, even among us humans. Excuse me my anthropomorphizing, we all commit pathetic fallacies every now and then.

Cats of Jerusalem

 

Jerusalem cats are not for the most part kept in private, they are community pets, shared by whole neighborhoods. There are people who feed them leaving food for them all over the place, and then there are people who are strongly against feeding them. It’s a similar case in Istanbul, except there there seems to be a consensus that cats are to be loved (unless, of course, they are caught stealing). But comparison may not be entirely fair, since Istanbul is next to the water, with many fish restaurants, and as we know There is no sea in Jerusalem.*

(*It sounds better in Hebrew, Ain yam b'Yerushalayim.)

The term feral cats has a frightful ring, but not all the outdoor cats are all that wild, and many will, if approached with good intentions (yes, they can read you!), purr as you stroke their fur. This has beneficial results for both humans and felines for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. They will, if drawn by a tempting aroma, jump into trash containers, and I suppose this is one reason some people treat them with such disdain. 

Once I was walking near Nahalat Shiv’a neighborhood and noticed a stencil graffiti on an otherwise bare cement wall. I found it amusing. It said “Feed the Cats!” I mean, in other places and other times one might miss the fact that here in Jerusalem this is a bold expression of anti-speciesist politics more-or-less on the level of “Meat is Murder!”

I think of an incident last year. In the heat of argument, one Knesset legislator called another one a “cat feeder,” a term with a sharply contemptuous sting it wouldn’t have in the U.S.

Cats and other living beings on the planet are not here just for our amusement, they’re serious business, worthy of our thoughtful consideration and care, and for a lot of varied reasons, not just because they’re so cute and pet-able. They are sentient and for sure emotional beings who sometimes unnecessarily suffer as we all do.

§   §   §

Wanna read about ’em, or maybe see some more photos or even videos?

Livia Gershon, “How Street Dogs Spend their Days,” at JSTOR Daily (June 7, 2022). I wish someone would do a similar study of Jerusalem street cats. I could do it myself if it weren’t for all the statistical analysis. They do seem to spend a great deal of their time stretching and yawning.

Idit Gunther, Tal Raz, Yehonatan Even Zor, Yuval Bachowski, Eyal Klement, “Feeders of Free-Roaming Cats: Personal Characteristics, Feeding Practices, and Data on Cat Health and Welfare in an Urban Setting of Israel,” Frontiers of Veterinary Science (March 7, 2016). Especially about that much-neglected group of “heavy cat feeders.” Some papers listed in its bibliography appear to be even more interesting than this one.

Itamar Katzir, “Israelis Are at War. Over Cats,” Haaretz, English edition (January 31, 2022). Unfortunately, I think this informative essay is locked behind a pay wall. Shame on them.

N., “Cats in Israel: Overview” (posted on May 25, 2012).

Basem Ra’ad, “Cats of Jerusalem,” Jerusalem Quarterly, vol. 41 (Spring 2010), pp. 73-78.  The author is a professor in Al Quds University and the University of Toronto. This essay also appears as a chapter in his book Hidden Histories.

Sara Toth Stubb, “Jerusalem’s Controversial Cats: In Israel's Divided City, a New Split Emerges over What to Do about Stray Cats,” US News & World Report (February 5, 2019).

+ + +

If you tire of reading, do a video search for “Cats of Jerusalem” and let me know which one you like the most. There are so many. One report by National Geographic is bound to show up in your results, and I have to say, it’s very professionally done.

Unluckily for us it may be impossible to view the movie Kedi online for free. But you can see a lot of teasers and trailers for it, and brief videos about Istanbul cats. See for example this TRT news story about the making of the documentary. Then search for “kedi” (or kediler in the plural) on YouTube and forget about all those things you were supposed to be doing with your life.

Spring Wildflowers in the Valley of the Cross

the small native iris

Not a poppy, they’re called kalaniyot in Hebrew.
Still, everyone confuses them so why not us?

Just to get a feel for the grounds surrounding these beautiful flowers, take some time to take a video walk through a big part of the Valley of the Cross by clicking HERE (Virtual Jerusalem web channel) and HERE (Shai the Walker). You will hear more and more about this place as time goes by, so you may as well get acquainted. No rush.

Cyclamen (rakefot) love to grow in the cracks in the rocks

 

Anglophones shouldn’t fear 

they will be made to hear 

all that much talking in Hebrew 

without translation if they go to view  

THIS splendid and very new video by Uri Jana.

The Musical Sublime of Our Time (my take)

 

Dhafer Youssef

Tell me it isn’t only me. I was just thinking what a strange new millennium it’s been so far, with so many things of great importance we used to take for granted shrinking away and under threat. The birds and the bees are two examples. Already the world’s humanly fashioned mess literally outweighs earth’s biomass.(1) Privacy, quiet, room to breathe, the sense of personal freedom and music are several more. But let’s get off this doomsday trip, shall we? 

We can turn in a different direction, take a small detour. Instead of going on to fret some more we’ll highlight what is well, high enough to highlight. In the field of music only this time. I’d like to share something about a couple of musicians that have most captured my spirit and soul during these two-plus decades, their music can bring your mind to complete focus, that then leads quickly and with evident effortlessness to elevation, to soaring above it all.

But, and this is an important but, without the least denial or dishonor to the sufferings and disappointments that give a life its depths — These are grownup tastes, I’m afraid. So send the children off to bed.

I won’t talk about my own musical past, these musicians are all young according to me. And they are not for narrow nationalists or strict traditionalists.  Not that they lack traditions. They’re filled with them.

What I think can be safely said about all these artists is that they fit more comfortably in the category of jazz than anything else, but even that can be a problem. They have all undergone rigorous training in their instruments and in music in general, including strong influences from European classical and folk music. But they also all share, in unequal measures and in parts of their repertoires, strong foundations in a Middle East that includes North Africa and al-Andalus.

I’ve sometimes encountered strong prejudices against Middle Eastern music, in North America in particular. If you live in the Mideast you don’t really need to justify anything to yourself, you just absorb the sense of it, it feels you. Still, I might put out the argument that jazz in particular, the classics of Miles Davis and David Brubeck (think “Unsquare Dance”), experimented with tempos and timbres entirely untypical of earlier Euro-American music genres. I like to point out that adventurous openness of theirs to people who believe they are into jazz even while looking down their noses at the oudh or kanum music that I have come to favor. 

There is really no such thing as “ethnic jazz,” unless you believe those arbiters of culture we hear from far too much. And there is a danger of dismissing these geniuses as a part of “world music’ — such a flat, flattening and uninspiring term — when what they are is trans-worldly music, music that extends out into the larger universe at the very least, if not some universe next door to it. No, please, not music that can be cranked out of some small box with a thin glue of ethnic authenticity stuck on. If you hear it and it moves you, just forget the rest. Turn off the noise.

The three featured instrumentalists excel in different instruments: oudh, double-bass, trumpet, piano and human voice. In the case of the voices that means lyrical voices without the lyrics. As Dhafer Youssef explained in an interview (linked below), he started performing as a musician in coffee houses while he was studying musicology in Vienna. He didn’t want lyrics, text in a language that might not be shared, to get in the way of communication. I get that.

I like to imagine what could happen if Dhafer Youssef, Renaud Garcia-Fons and Ibrahim Maalouf were forming a real trio, or a quartet with an added percussionist... I think it would work, even work wonders. I think RG-F has already played bass on a piece by DY, so there is a precedent.

Looking around to better inform this blog I learned for the first time that Renaud Garcia-Fons studied with a famous Syrian teacher named François Rabbath. I plan to look into this more. I had imagined Garcia-Fons as a lonely Spaniard in exile in Paris, I had no idea, just name-based assumptions. When I am listening to his music swirling about and then relentlessly pressing on, I think sometimes of western classical or folk music, sometimes late Ottoman, or flamenco, or even Celtic revival. One thing Garcia-Fons shares with the other two is this: They can be pure old-school jazz when they want to be, that and a lot besides.

I do have an odd personal tale to tell about Garcia-Fons. It was a few years after I first heard him when, living as I do in Jerusalem, I found out he had a webpage devoted to his music. So I went there for the very first time and quickly noticed he was giving a concert that very same night in Jerusalem. (I know, What are the chances?) I called and ordered a ticket right away, fearing it would be too late to get one. But when I got there a few hours later the hall was less than half full, so I could move up to the 4th row close to center when the show began. It was a night of duets with Garcia-Fons on his huge bass and the Turkish musician Derya Türkan playing a tiny upright fiddle that at first seemed absurdly small, but with immensely rich tones. It’s called a kemenche. Chosen for being well recorded, even if not the same concert, this video will give you a good idea how it was.*

(*In case the link goes stale, “Silk Moon” is the name of their collaborative album. It may be possible to hear the entire album with an internet connection, just search for it.)

Renaud Garcia-Fons

Entremundo. I think it’s the best of his best, but I do love
some of the more recent collaborations, also.

Ibrahim Maalouf

Remember the Bataclan
performance with Sting in 2016?
You must!

I think real live adherents of traditions, and even people who just like to think they are, will find music to appreciate here. After all, if we think about it traditions are not passed on to us as part of an effort to pull us down with their drag and make everything ho-hum and predictable. Not really. Fresh creations have been cropping up all along since time began. And these artists do often dare to rise above the solemnified stability of past categories into new and engaging aesthetic forms that don’t require a label. They don’t even ask for one. And they are skilled enough at their craft to innovate on the fly in ways that hardly ever let us down. 

Do a Youtube search for his concerts,
his “music videos” I don’t care for.

(1) Stephanie Pappas, “Human-Made Stuff Now Outweighs All Life on Earth,” Scientific American (Dec. 2020).

PS: I was told that, given my taste in these three particular musicians I might like Tigran Hamasyan. I’ll get back with you on that.

Web resources

TRT made an interview with Dhafer Youssef that I recommend. Just that they shouldn’t have ended on that note of complacency.

https://www.songlines.co.uk/features/a-beginner-s-guide/renaud-garcia-fons-a-beginner-s-guide

Renaud Garcia-Fons Official Youtube Channel, where you can hear a lot of high-quality recordings.

And there’s a whole lot more if you surf for it.

A disclaimer: Written with not the least bit of financial incentive or commercial motive. My intention is that, even when there are music and book recommendations there ought to be a way for you to enjoy them without payment... A visit to your local library might be a very good way to do it... I won’t ever display or embed links devoted to taking your money, definitely not. That’s what I intend when I say (see the sidebar) this is a non-commercial blog.