Karim Nagy's Maqam for Dancer's Workshop
1 rating since posting on Tuesday, September 23, 2008|
(submitted by
Asyia
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Overall Rating based on 1 rating |
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Review of Karim Nagy’s Maqam for Dancers Maqam are the Arabic scales for music. Western music has 11 notes (?), from which, you choose 8 to create your scale for your song. Arabic music has ½ flats, thus, they have 22 notes to choose from. The difference in which scale is used can change the connotation of the song. To demonstrate this, Karim sang ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’ normal (C) and then again, in a different scale. When he used a different scale, it sounded like the lamb had either just died or is being sent to a slaughter house! Similarly, even with the same words and similar musical instrumentation, the feeling of a song can change completely when instruments or vocals change. He highlighted some different musical instruments and played music to point out what song which instrument made, taught us how to shout and cheer to encourage the performer and a popular structure for Mid-Eastern Music. After a quick singing lesson to get us a little more in touch with our ½ flat notes, Karim had us dance to the 4th part of Alf Leyla Wa Leyla. This is a very famous song, although American’s tend to only use the instrumental introduction to the song and edit it before any of the lyrics start. The song is traditionally between 25-40 minutes long. The song is about a couple that is spending 1001 nights together in the course of one evening. Their love is all consuming and when they are together on this night, it is an eternity of happiness. In the 4th act of the song, the woman wonders if this is not the door to happiness, but instead, a decent into hell. Being completely disconnected from the outside world is not necessarily a good thing. The scale of the song changes and even though the lyrics are a repeat of an earlier measure, the sad tone put into it expresses sadness & worry. We listened to it a couple times then he had us dance to it! Dance happy Dance happy Dance happy ….. Karim interrupts us… the transition had already taken place. I don’t think anyone in the room caught it. I certainly didn’t. Again, but with him counting down to the transition. We did this a few times so everyone could learn to hear the change. Finally, he had us dance sad to the happy part of the song and dance happy to the sad part of the song. This truly showed how much we had learned. I could hardly even force myself to follow the instructions. It was then that I understood how unappreciative of the music we are sometimes when we are dancing and why this class is probably the most important dance/music class I have taken. And he’s hilarious! - Asyia , posted 09/23/08 |
Karim Nagy's Maqam for Dancer's Workshop was recommended for:
- Tribe: Belly Dance Instructors
- Tribe: Triangle Musicians & Belly Dancers
- Tribe: SCA Middle Eastern Dance
- Tribe: Raleigh at Play
