Volume 24 Issue 7 - April 2019

Show is a popular Iranian four-piece band which regularly sells out
Tehran venues. The band has also composed and recorded soundtracks
for over ten major Iranian movie releases. Its unusual name in
Farsi evokes, in the words of the band, “mountainous vocals as well
as velvety textures, jazz saxophone, medieval counterpoints, rock
rhythms, [a sound which is] lush, rich and brassy like the best Balkan
bands. Dang Show could be defined as a fusion of Persian classical
and jazz.”
With an instrumentation of piano, saxophone, Persian vocals
and percussion, Dang Show’s ambitious goal is to satisfy traditional
Iranian classical music aficionados as well as those primarily interested
in pop-flavoured music. In 2018 Dang Show was awarded Best
Fusion Album for Mad O Nay in Iran. No wonder both their SWMC
shows are sold out.
Amjad Ali Khan and sons
Amjad Ali Khan – sarod master: April 13 at 8pm, The Rose in association
with SWMS present Amjad Ali Khan, with his sons Amaan
Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash at the Rose Theatre, Brampton.
The multiple award-winning veteran sarod (a.k.a. sarode) master and
composer, Amjad Ali Khan, was born into a renowned Indian classical
musical family and has toured internationally since the 1960s.
Over the course of his distinguished career he has garnered numerous
international accolades.
The sixth generation exponent of the Senia-Barash gharana (a
North Indian music lineage), Khan is at heart a classicist with a populist’s
need to “communicate with the listener who finds Indian classical
music remote,” as he once put it. You can expect khayal (the
Hindustani classical music genre)
musicianship at its finest in
his recital.
Anda Union – Mongolian fusion
revival: April 17 at 8pm, SWM and
Flato Markham Theatre explore
Northern Asian culture in their presentation
of the Mongolian fusion
group Anda Union at the Flato
Markham Theatre in Markham.
Hailing from Hohhot, the capital
of the Inner Mongolia in northern
China, the versatile nine-piece
band has deep cultural roots in
the vast grasslands where many of
their families still live. Its mission:
to rework the region’s music, filled
with ancestral stories of nomadic
customs and beliefs.
The band brings together tribal
and musical traditions from all
over Inner Mongolia playing a wide
variety of Indigenous instruments
and vocal throat singing styles.
Its 2018 set at the London UK Songlines Encounters Festival was
dubbed “a rousing masterclass in folk revivalism,” by The Guardian.
Qawwali – demystified and performed: April 18 at 8pm, SWM’s
executive director Umair Jaffar gives a free talk titled “Demystifying
Qawwali” at the SWMC. He notes that “Qawwali is the most popular
Sufi devotional music from South Asia and, in recent years, has gained
increased attention from worldwide audiences. Despite its popularity,
upbeat rhythm and emotional appeal, qawwali’s origins and lyrics are
shrouded in mystery.” Jaffar explains the genre, exploring its history,
and demystifies the hidden messages in its poetry.
April 19, the series moves to the Aga Khan Museum with “Hamza
Akram Qawwal and Brothers.” The 26-year-old singer Hamza Akram’s
music is deeply rooted in the Pakistani Sufi devotional tradition. The
group is becoming known in the subcontinent, across
Europe, Middle East and North America. Akram and his
brothers are the 26th generation of their musical lineage,
the Qawwal Bachon ka Delhi Gharana, and are dedicated
to sharing qawwali with the world. Their performance is
part of the Aga Khan Museum’s 2018/19 Performing Arts
season titled “The Other Side of Fear,” featuring artists
who seek to transcend fear through music, dance and
spoken word.
Anoushka Shankar – continuing a legacy of transcultural
collaborations: The Asian Music Series continues
well into May, but the last concert we will look at in this
column takes place early that month. May 2, the Royal
Conservatory of Music and SWM co-host sitar virtuosa and
composer Anoushka Shankar and party on the Koerner
Hall stage. Being groomed by her illustrious father from
an early age, she has developed into one of South Asia’s
most celebrated instrumentalists. In March 2019, Shankar
released her latest Deutsche Grammophone album, Reflections, a
retrospective of her career so far, focusing on musical collabs.
I last saw her live at Koerner Hall almost ten years ago with her
father Ravi, who was a still musically vibrant 89 at the time. She has,
since his death in 2012, taken his musical legacy into several new
territories, crossing classical and vernacular, South Asian and Euro-
American. Audiences at her concert can expect more transcultural
musical dialogues while she demonstrates the versatility of her sitar
across musical genres.
Andrew Timar is a Toronto musician and music writer.
He can be contacted at worldmusic@thewholenote.com.
Anda Union
38 | April 2019 thewholenote.com