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igrid and Michael went along to a L’Ham De Foc Ger- man gig, introduced themselves to Mara and Efrén, broached the idea of collaborating on a project involv- ing medieval troubadour, Sephardic and Arabic music, and hey presto the project got going almost immedi-
ately. They hooked up with Iman through Aziz, who Efrén and Mara played with already, and so Al Andaluz was born. As each musician had plenty of music at the ready, the initial repertoire was established relatively easily, meeting together in Spain and Germany, giving concerts and exchanging more songs at rehearsals in the days before and after. Popp later recalls one early session when they, “met in Seville and when the rehearsal space failed to materialise, we rehearsed outside in the backyard of Mara’s cousin’s antique shop. It was early March and we were lucky as in Seville the sun was shining already. The neighbours hung off balconies and out of windows to hear us!”
From the start, Al Andaluz found an enthusiastic public, play- ing in festivals in atmospheric places like the medieval courtyard of Mallorca’s Palma Cathedral. They met in Catalonia at the invitation of an enthusiastic supporter of L’Ham De Foc who offered his home and hospitality, cooking delicious meals for them. Later they per- formed in Andalucia’s Chiclana De La Frontera, afterwards hiring a house down the coast in Coníl, which Popp recalls as, “The best ever combination of the nice and the necessary, as we could work in the sun, then go swim and eat fish at a beach bar. Those times were relaxing as well as intense workwise and that pleasure came into the music.” For their first disc they recorded in the Dominican La Cartuja Monastery in Seville province, but the troublesome accompaniment of erratic buzzing flies eventually led them to record subsequently in Popp’s home city of Munich.
All three women find singing the old cantigas empowering. Composed in the 13th century reign of Alfonso X El Sabio, the Cantigas De Santa María are in a mix of Galician-Portuguese. As Mara says, “Through them you connect to the soul of the world, actually to the pagan world before Christianity offered the Virgin Mary, a pagan world based on rites celebrating water, the sun, the earth, elements that the Church gave names to and made into iconic symbols. They’re palpably human songs. You do not have to be religious to connect with that.”
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In contrast, the Jewish Sephardic songs can be topical, roman- tic, spiritual, entertaining, with lyrics in Hebrew and Ladino. They also have a North African sensibility, often underscored by the deep emotions evoked by the homesickness of Jews forced out of southern Spain, separated from their country. The songs use Turk- ish makam modes, or melody types, and were most usually sung by women within the confines of the home while doing household tasks; they often accompanied themselves with percussion, partic- ularly for all-women wedding parties. Mara, who mostly leads the Sephardic songs, feels they give a raw, naked pull to celebrations of the realities of everyday female life. From the pain of giving birth to joyous moments, “everything is there”.
ne of the things the three women enjoy is leading their own songs in their own distinctive style, and then supporting each other in choruses which see them swap their individual style for those of the others. “It’s as if we become all part of one voice,” says Sigrid. “We keep our own voice then share with the others which is a great sensation.” They illustrate this with the cantiga Des Oge Mais Quer’ Eu Trobar that Sigrid sings, which then shifts to Mara singing the Sephardic Yo Me Levantaría, with Iman then Sigrid joining her. For Mara, “When you sound like the other voice it feels like the physical line disappears too, it transcends the corpo- ral: it feels amazingly strong and spiritual.”
Singing cantigas and more earthy Sephardic song has been a totally new experience for Iman who is steeped in Arabic tradition. A Muslim, she offers the group the Arabic-Andalus music she grew up with, that she heard on the radio and TV and at popular and religious events in Morocco during her childhood and has been learning ever since. Used to Arabic modes which move up and down scales full of half and quarter notes, the poetic texts she sings tell of everything from love to sacred gardens. “This heritage you hear all the time in Morocco. It’s strong too in Algeria and Tunis, all the countries of the Magreb. Of course it is old but we sing it in a different way today with a different perspective. It has that immediate feeling of now for me.”
Mara and Iman share a spirited song, Hija Mía (Daughter Of Mine), a dialogue between a mother and daughter. Although they occasionally switch roles depending on the set-list, Mara loves the mother’s part, “I sing it as if Iman were my daughter and I sing it for all the children of the world as my children. That’s my own particu- lar vision: I try to live it as I am singing otherwise it has no meaning for me. I like to become the meaning if I can! Music has always been transcendent for me.”
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