Flamenco meets Persian classical music
2011 | QASIDA
Rosario la Tremendita & Mohammad Motamedi
Spanish poet Federico García Lorca described the cante jondo - deep flamenco song - as a ‘rare example of primitive song whose notes contain the naked and raw emotions of the first oriental civilisations’. A test of Lorca’s words might be the Qasida project, an extraordinary musical encounter between the young Sevillian cantaora Rosario ‘La Tremendita’ and her Iranian peer Mohammad Motamedi. ‘More flamenco than La Tremendita is impossible’, the French Le Monde wrote after the release of her debut album ‘A Tiempo’. In Qasida the singer explores the roots of flamenco in the richly varied poetic songs and improvisations of Motamedi, the rising star of Persian classical music. Through delicate, moving ballads Motamedi juggles between subtle innovations and the centuries-old tradition. He is today's radiant embodiment of the renewal of Persian traditional music. Songs of Spanish folk poetry and Persian high art merge into a musical world in which the splendor of 'Al-Andalus' of old is perhaps briefly revived.
Order now! CD Qasida
On the occasion of the US Tour of Qasida, we produced a cd with the recording of the live concert during the V Flamenco Biennial at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. The CD can be ordered by by transferring 30 euro to:
NL37INGB0004289276 | BIC: INGBNL2A in the name of Stichting PerpetuumM | Amsterdam
stating 'CD’ + your address
The CD will be send upon receipt of payment by post.
A co-production of the Dutch Flamenco Biennial and Morgenland Festival Osnabrück.
More information about Rosario ‘La Tremendita’
More information about Mohammad Motamedi
Contact: Ernestina van de Noort
www.flamencobiennale.nl
info@flamencobiennale.nl
+31 6 21275088
In de media
Flamenco World Com (ES):
'What usually happens with these kinds of initiatives - which attempt, with greater or lesser luck, to demonstrate empirically that the roots of the jondo art lie in the East - is that both parts don’t know each other well enough to tackle a deep dialogue and the common lexicon is usually too limited for the conversation to flow naturally. Indeed, that resource is worked on extensively in 'Qasida', with encounters to the beat of fandangos, tientos and tangos, seguiriyas and even bulerías (seen from our flamenco perspective). But if this project goes beyond those structural contacts, it’s because of the search for a common emotional tone based on vocals. Something which is possible due to the compatibility between the two singers, comparisons aside. Rosario la Tremendita has that way of uttering flamenco cante which is sugary and lyrical, malleable and perfectionist, over-elaborate in the forms and musically intuitive. Mohammad Motamedi, coming from a much older and studied tradition, applies training and sophistication to singing, with exquisite techniques that are known to be age-old, historical. Their communion was achieved more in the first part than in the second. And it was so due to climatic, emotional, temporary reasons... or rather, timeless ones. An encounter which materialized with full-fledged intensity in the lullaby, a free space to sketch out the cantes slowly, with space and with emotion. Not in time, but timeless. Then they would coincide at given moments, through instrumental connections (percussion, guitar, kemanche, contrabass), through rhythms and, finally, according to the magic number three which joins us all, through fandangos. The ‘ayeos’ grew at the end, were superimposed, were multiplied sentimentally and, for an instant, it seemed like everything fit together... until the cantaora made the cocky flamenco move of getting up, leaving the finish halfway and, in passing, leaving her Persian colleague alone and the audience perplexed. Sharing has to be much more than singing, much more than being flamenco.'
Anda (GER)
"I am very impressed by the openness of the Dutch. I still have a fusion of Iranian music and flamenco in the ear: a bold gamble to bring different cultures together on stage to improvise.'
La Tremendita causes sensation at Bimhuis *****