Great Friday: Part 2
Bodur Plays it By Ear at Cinema City This was a show with a strong basis, neatly executed: a concept album, with accompanying arthouse film, sync'd with the singer and her band playing in the near dark, to a very comfortably seated audience, in Norwich's classiest fleapit. The musical heart of the show uses music known as Maqam. This is an Arabic music form that gives a structure of scales for building a melody, within which each musician is free to improvise. It is how melody developed in Mesopotamia and Persia, absorbing influences from indigenous Arabic practise, Ancient Greece and Byzantium. It is the music of Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey and throughout Central Asia. There has been the usual ooohing and aaarghing about a young musician bringing new music into the ageing Hipster world of North London, but maqam is older in origin than London itself and is why, when we travel eastward musically, we hear marked differences to western European originated melodies, which evolved ...
