Lubana Al Quntar & Oyoun Ensemble
Arabic Music Days
Musical Performance Ensemble & Orchestra / Arab and Persian Music 0The origins of the Arabic takht reach back all the way to the 8th century. Originally designating the wooden platform that used to serve as the stage for the musicians, the term has come to refer to the classical ensemble of Arabic music—consisting of singer, oud, flute, qanun, and various percussion instruments—that has been adopted and developed over the centuries in multiple musical traditions across the Middle East and Northern Africa. This combination of musicians, which has inspired creative exchange to this day, is at the center of the 2022–23 season’s Arabic Music Days curated by Naseer Shamma. In four concerts, artists from Syria, Lebanon, and Morocco present traditional and contemporary takes on the concept of the takht.
Syrian singer Lubana Al Quntar opens the festival together with the Oyoun Ensemble, performing classic songs by the legendary vocal artist Asmahan from the early 20th century.
Lubana Al Quntar Vocals
Saeid Kamal Violin
Hany Elbadry Ney
Saber Abdelsattar Canun
Mahmoud Bedir Violoncello
Salah Ragab Double bass
Hany Bedeir Percussions
Angela Boutros Piano
Photo credit: Peter Adamik
Medhat Assim (1909–1989)
Ya Habiby Ta’al (Text: Ahmad Jalal)
Come, My Darling
Come back, darling, save me, and see what happened after you left:
My passion keeps me up at night, and confides in your vision.
Who can reach your shadow now, while I’m muffling my love,
and my love is killing me?
And I don’t have a father, a mother, or an uncle, to complain to
them about this burning love?
My soul, my heart, my body, my mind, and my beauty are
in your hands,
I’m at a loss as to what to do about your coquetry
and your rebuttals.
Why should I hide my love when my love is killing me?
I’ll complain, cry, and talk: maybe then, darling, your heart will
soften.
I send you begging letters and responses.
I’ve been silent, patient, and content since the beginning
While I’m muffling my love, and my love is killing me.
I would give my life, my soul, my family, and my money for you:
But you don’t even ask after me.
My soul, my heart, my body, my mind, and my beauty are
in your hands,
I’m at a loss as to what to do about your coquetry
and your rebuttals.
Why should I hide my love when my love is killing me?
I’ll complain, cry, and talk: maybe then, my darling, your heart
will soften.
Farid al-Atrash
Ahwa (Mamoun Al-Shanawy)
Oh Yeah, I Am in Love
I love, love, love, it’s me, it’s me in love,
And if anyone tells me that I love
I will pour him coffee with my own hands:
Me, me, me, in love.
I love the moon, whose light gets me drunk, and with which
I spent this full night,
Which leaves my heart ecstatic and makes the world whispering
and intimate.
If anyone tells me that I love
I will pour him coffee with my own hands:
Me, me, me, in love.
If you’d only drink coffee poured from my hands
when you stayed up all night
You’d be comforted, and the world would become more beautiful.
If anyone tells me that I love
I will pour him coffee with my own hands:
Me, me, me, in love.
Throw out your worries from your soul.
What do you get from them but cried-out eyes?
And what worth are they to the world? And where do
complaints get us?
If anyone tells me that I love
I will pour him coffee with my own hands:
Me, me, me, in love.
Mohamed Al Qasabji (1892–1966)
Emta Hata’araf (Mamoun Al-Shanawy)
When Will You Realize?
When will you realize that I love you?
When will you realize? When—When—When?
When will you realize?
I confide in a phantom of you and have a craving to see you
Although you never showed pity or felt for me—
And for how long do you mean to befuddle my mind and swell
my sorrow?
You, whose love has become my imagination, and who
has entered my soul and blood,
When will you realize—when—that I love you? When? Because
I went on concealing this love for you, this love in my heart,
my love.
I kept on concealing it,
And soothing and consoling it, even though it’s burning
And I never told you about the state I was in, or revealed
my love to you,
Scared that your heart is indeed not empty, and could torture mine:
You, whose love has become my imagination, and who
has entered my soul and blood,
When will you realize—when—that I love you? When?
You: allow me to love you and wish that I’m near you.
Make me happy one day, when I finally meet you, and show
me mercy by consenting,
And you get to taste the love I spelled out
To you, through my eyes:
Scared that your heart is indeed not empty, and could torture mine:
You, whose love has become my imagination, and who
has entered my soul and blood,
When will you realize—when—that I love you? When?
Mohamed Al Qasabji
Faraq ma Bainana Leh al-Zaman (Ali Shukri)
Why Did Time Crack between Us?
Why did time crack between us? After you, life is degrading.
Your love has injured my heart, and yet it screams after you.
Come and look for yourself, soulmate, life after you is degrading.
I suffer because my heart has been humiliated, and the grief of
what my eyes see leaves me sleepless.
When will the enchantment of intimacy return? Life after you
is degrading.
However bitter you might be toward me, I would see—so I said—
to remain in your favor!
And witness my bliss when you are lenient: life after you
is degrading.
I wish for your pity, and for your return, you apple of my eye,
So I can rejoice in your nearness, and leave the pain behind:
life after you is degrading.
Farid al-Atrash (1910–1974)
Layaly al-uns fi Vienna (Ahmad Ramy)
Jolly Viennese Nights
Jolly Viennese nights imbibe breezes from higher worlds:
Airs that are heard by the bird that burst into tears—and sang,
Between glasses chink-chinking and waltzes reeling,
“Here is the slender figure swaying with the tree’s branches”:
Your soul is ecstatic but your eye won’t allow your heart to repose.
Here are my two sweethearts, one on each side, what more could
I hope for this side of heaven!
Adore Vienna in your youth, for Vienna is a pleasure-garden
sculpted in heaven:
Airs that are heard by the bird that burst into tears—and sang.
Spend a single hour here and forget the world entirely,
But what will this ecstasy leave you if joy’s shadow has gone?
A vision sticking with the illusory pack, and a phantom moving
together with dreams:
Why tolerate days passing without a scent of joy?
This is the jolly Viennese night, which imbibes breezes
from higher worlds:
Airs that are heard by the bird that burst into tears—and sang.
Be glad. Be bewitched. Brief your heart to swim and fly,
To discover a companion for itself
So you can wallow in that companion’s nearness and feast
on their love
And riot in youth’s heart with them.
For this is Vienna, a pleasure-garden sculpted in heaven.
May your nights always be jolly, Vienna,
Cried the bird and sang airs through the tears of its tune.
Farid al-Atrash
Ya Bada al-Ward (Helmy Al-Hakeem)
The Wonder of the Rose
The wonder of the rose, the beauty of the rose:
Its magic invited comparisons to the cheek—
The rose, the rose of its beauty.
The red draws its wonder from passion and ardent love:
have mercy upon us!
While yellow’s scent entwines jealousy and injury—
Mercy!
And white’s scent combines abstinence and love.
Pick up on that, you who want to be virtuous,
You messengers of lovers and companions of pining—
The rose, the beauty of the rose.
Water your rose, gardener:
And watch out—its thorns can prick—and guard it at night.
Be graceful and cuddle your love, you the enamored—
Far better than letting desire wound you.
Sing lullabies to your love, and kiss her hand, lover,
And a bunch of roses will refresh you.
You messengers of lovers and companions of pining—
The rose, the beauty of the rose.
Farid al-Atrash
Nawait Adaary Alaamy (Yousef Badrous)
I Will Clothe My Hurt in a Shroud
I will clothe my hurt in a shroud, hide my tears and screams,
And speak my blues and love to myself, and to my darling’s
apparition
Because what’s the point of weeping and letting people see
me suffering?
The tears that I had seen as medicine have merely multiplied
my wounds,
And why should I cry and groan, while the one I love goes
around happy?
And when he is far from my eyes, it suffices that I keep
my promises to him:
I’m glad out of duty, proffer my love as sacrifice, and keep
his memory to comfort me—
I pray from my heart’s depths that he and I are granted
more felicity.
I talk with his shade in the night’s cool breeze,
I see his beauty in the full moon’s beauty, and that
the universe is beautiful.
And I sing to the birds of the tunes of my love, and bare my soul
to the flowers—
And deceive others about my agony—and instead display rapture.
Farid al-Atrash
Yally Hawaak Shaghil Baly (Ahmad Ramy)
You, Whose Love Preoccupies My Mind
You, whose love preoccupies my mind,
This passion came with huge suffering attached.
I gave up things for you, precious,
And I couldn’t enjoy a single day apart from you.
With my heart and yours harmonious,
Mine is faithful to our love;
People gossiping made us break up
And deprived me of my wish
For you, whom I miss and who is lost to me
I’m reconciled to your distance
For time has hemmed in my fancies
And has deprived me of my saying: I wish
For you, whose love preoccupies my mind.
Mohamed Al Qasabji
Ana Ally Estahil (Yousef Badrous)
I Deserve It
I deserve everything—
I sold the precious off cheap without considering its value.
I wish I hadn’t snubbed him or offended him,
Now it’s me left in the pit of regret
While satisfaction thrives in malicious hearts.
I deserve everything—
I sold the precious off cheap without considering its value.
I caused him pain although my heart loved him,
And after our hearts were inclined to each other
And after my soul enjoyed his nearness
I caused him pain, and he abandoned me—
The last thing I expected.
I deserve everything—
I sold the precious off cheap without considering its value.
Innocent people have been harmed, and it’s my fault,
So drink up, my heart, the anxiety and sorrow.
God, give me strength, because these worries linger
And get me to furnish my suffering by thoughts of him:
I cry for him, and am full of self-pity.
I deserve everything—
I sold the precious off cheap without considering its value.
Farid al-Atrash
Raja’atilak ya Habiby (Yousef Badrous)
My Loved One, I Came Back
My loved one, I came back
After the parting, after the anguish,
As if it were destined that we would meet
After long absence.
How I remembered you, who occupied my mind
When we parted: I lived sleepless nights.
Every day my longing for you increased
And not a day passed without me asking after you.
My heart was ill with no lover in sight
Because nothing could gladden it apart from seeing you.
I was afraid you’d forgotten me
But I discovered you still love me.
I bring back to you my tender heart
To take care of you and delight in your attention,
To forget sorrow with you
And to attain your heart’s affection
And to sing my love to you and to find you with me
Listening to me wishing that the past will return.
Mohamed Al Qasabji
Ya Tayour (Yousef Badrous)
Birds
Birds, sing my love, and be crooners for my passion and hopes,
Which accompany me and witness what’s happening to me:
He smiles in the face of my complaint and makes me even fonder
of him.
Birds, talk to him about my sleeplessness and tears—
The fowl had now sung the sweetest ballads from the treetops,
And the branches had swung from the melodies’ bliss, and the heart
had become infatuated,
When the cool wind blew, carrying the exquisite voice,
And the flowers gave out the smell of hopes, and the streams
echoed the fowls’ songs,
And the air became full of tenderness that highlighted my desire
and my shame.
I want him to be sympathetic, affectionate, tender.
He’s happy in his good looks and his youth, and carefree.
If he were in love, and had my luck of having to stay up late,
He would scream out in his torment, and wail along with
the curlew.
As an encore, the first song Ya Habiby Ta'al was performed again.
Translated from the Arabic by Henry Holland and Hazem Shekho
During intermission poet Basim Alansar performed two of his poems. Watch a full poetry reading with him.
Old Age
In the year my country was stained with blood,
I hid my picture in my childhood’s underworld,
Then fled to the new world from the window of superstitions.
Carrying thousands of tons of black flags, I fled.
On arriving, I hid the banners
Inside a despondent woman’s hair
While she hid her years in my body.
I made my heart a country for the exiled,
And I made discovery my magical spectacles.
I filled my sight with sand, in which I could carve my etching
When exile made me feel futile inside.
Europe planted me in the garden of the mind,
While existence planted a flower in my head, whose scent
I dream of.
I am cursed.
I buried the legend in the head of exile
When it put a mine in my mouth.
I covered its head with wars
When exile peacefully ripped my soul apart,
I wounded it with my magical trips
When it wounded me with a yearning for my picture.
And to be present, I disappeared.
And to be immortal, I made inquiry my everlasting coat.
And after thinking that the country was no longer stained
with blood,
I returned
And rushed toward my house
Searching for my picture.
And when I saw the picture,
My heart dropped down the well,
Because my face looked
Afflicted with age.
Panorama of Surprise
The boys spy on the widows
Through daytime peepholes,
And men lick the palms of fortune-telling women.
Aha!
The soldiers eat their guns,
And the peddlers hang stars
Above their vehicles.
Aha!
The silver woman enters the mirror,
And packs the clouds into suitcases.
Aha!
The devil creates butterflies out of soil
And the serpent coils around the tower
Choking the child in its mouth.
Aha!
I watch the war playing around our houses,
And perceive in it the warriors’ entity and the idea’s blood.
Aha!
I see eternity with the visionary
Through the old tavern’s window.
Aha!
My mother buys several years from the back-alley bakery,
And my siblings embalm their souls with the idea of identity.
Aha!
My father beheads war with a knife,
Before heading toward death himself, unwillingly.
Aha!
I see five flowers on the pavement,
And next to them a bloodstained dagger.
Aha!
I see a child singing a sad song
While exiting a graveyard.
Aha!
After he’s finished singing
The child passes out of my sight—suddenly.
Aha!
Translated from the Arabic by Henry Holland and Hazem Shekho
Arabic Music Days
Music, Visual Arts, Poetry and Film