Pioneering cello player, composer, singer and educator, Mike Block premiered his latest single “Ifrah Web-Tisem” yesterday via WNYC’s New Sounds, prior to its release today on all digital streaming platforms. The track, part of Block’s upcoming world music album, Guzo, set for an August 21 release on Bright Shiny Things, features Omani musician Amal Waqar on oud and vocals.
Discussing the track, Block stated, “I met Amal when she was a participant in Silkroad’s Global Musician Workshop, which I direct. I was so excited to collaborate with a Khaliji musician for the first time. Until I met Amal, my experience with Arabic music traditions was limited to the Levantine traditions, near the Mediterranean Sea. I was immediately drawn to the raw rhythmic energy of Khaliji music, which comes from further South in the Gulf countries. Amal helped guide my listening and gave me some lessons on what made Khaliji music special, in order to inform my composing of this melody. The A-section is in Bayati, a common Khaliji microtonal scale with a half-flat in the 2nd scale degree, but I took the liberty to modulate the root in the B section (while still technically maintaining the original scale for the melody), to push it in to a more western “Major” feel. It would be traditional for the instrumental melody to also be a vocal melody, so Amal created lyrics that were repetitive enough that I could learn to sing them in Arabic, a language I do not speak…
“Yo dan illi dana” (There’s no direct translation for this, but dan and dana are common phrases used in Omani music, and essentially mean “You go!”, in a supportive, friendly manner.)
“Ifrah web-tisam ma I ya zeyna” (Rejoice and smile with me, oh beautiful one.)
Amal’s role of playing oud in unison with the vocal melody is pretty typical of Khaliji music, as was Tareq Rantisii’s multi-layered percussive texture that includes clapping. The arrangement’s inclusion of improvised solos, chord changes, and vocal harmonies were all ways I broke from the Khaliji tradition in order to feel a bit more at home in the performance. The Turkish violinist Ceren Turkmenoglu’s improvised solo drew on her native Makam system of improvisation. In the end, our goal was to compose a song that felt like a quirky, long-lost traditional song from the Gulf region, but then arrange it with a contemporary sensibility that honored the multitude of influences of all the musicians involved, creating something that felt personal to us in that moment.”
A GRAMMY Award winner with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble, Block studied and trained in the classical world at The Juilliard School and Cleveland Institute of Music, but his curiosity and imagination as a musician knows no bounds or borders. On Guzo, Block taps into fellow members of Silk Road Ensemble, participants in Silkroad’s Global Musician Workshop, of which Block is both a Founder and Director, and musicians Block has met along his travels throughout the world.
Guzo means “journey” in the Amharic language. The record features eight original compositions, each inspired by a different culture and style of music: Malian, Levantine Arabic, Indian, Nigerian, Persian, Gulf Arabic (Khaliji), Ethiopian, and Chinese. Inspired by the idea that different parts of our personality manifest when interacting with different types of people (i.e. you act differently around your boss than with your friends), or when you are in different environments (you act differently at home than at church), Block, “wanted to see what kind of composer I might become within different musical environments and languages.”
Each composition was recorded collaboratively with musicians native to each style, “many of whom are close friends that I could trust with my vulnerability as I invited them into my compositional and arranging process,” Block states. “My goal was for the musicians featured on each piece to feel they could play naturally in their native language, while finding how my own personal voice translated to that language.” The journey that resulted for Mike, is both personal and social, internal and external, psychological and geographic.
Yo-Yo Ma has hailed Block, as the “ideal musician of the 21st-Century.” The New York Times praised Block for his “vital rich-hued solo playing.” Mike has also collaborated in performance and recordings with Stevie Wonder, Bon Iver, St. Vincent, The National, Will.i.am, The New York Philharmonic, Bobby McFerrin, Allison Krauss, Mark O’Connor, Edgar Meyer, Mike Marshall, Julian Lage, Rhiannon Giddens, Sierra Hull, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, Natalia McMaster, Bruce Molsky, Darol Anger, Zakir Hussain, and Rachel Pine, amongst others.
