Call of the Mountain

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Israel’s Festival – Yesterday in Israel’s Festival
Yossi Charsunsky
Ma'ariv

CALL OF THE MOUNTAIN
Rare Musical Happening
Eyal Sela and Darma Ensemble, Jerusalem Theatre

If the musical gender denominated “World Music” has a definition, probably Eyal Sela is one of its drafters. In order to have a definition, there is no need of words, a pair of ears is sufficient. I sat in the Henry Crown Hall in Jerusalem Theatre and listened to the ethnic essence of East submitted by a show that tailors the main influences that compose Eyal Sela’s world.
On stage gathered eight musicians in a beautiful variety of wind, string and percussion instruments. Sela himself plays, among others, the Turkish clarinet, Indian bamboo flute (bansuri), Turkish nay, Irish flutes and zorna; also excelled Marc Elyahu, the saz and kamanche (one of the violin’s ancestors, played vertically) player, the jumbush (plucking instrument of Turkish origin) and percussion musicians Itamar Duari, Avi Agbaba and Erez Monk.
The principle is not to play just music of different ethnic cultures -from Turkey to India, from Soufi music to Klyzemer music- but to achieve the completeness by unifying the musical contrasts
Sela and Ensemble Darma try to reconstruct a musical happening of place and time. Upon ethnic melodies executed in festivities during more than 200 years, they arrive to the Galilee and to the Miron Mountain – a melting pot that includes the Soufi music, Circassian, Jewish and Druze music.
Sela is not an anthropologist. He is first and foremost a musician that tries to recreate the world of traditional sounds, to paint them with new shades, with combinations of authentic and contemporary instruments, with deeply rooted and earthy melody, connecting acoustic and electronic music, between the ethnic and the ambient. This is not just the revival of musical cultures, is the authentic connection between scales, rhythms ands styles that makes this a beautifully rare musical event.
- Yossi Charsunsky