I drove down to Somerset NJ on Saturday morning with my partner Julie to attend Rakkasah, a huge annual festival of middle eastern dance. They had continuous performances going on day and night, some by solo dancers and some by dance troupes. Each dance act gets 15 minutes to perform. Some of the performers were superb, and others, not so much. The performances spanned an incredibly wide spectrum of styles. Every conceivable type of middle eastern, or middle-eastern-inspired dance was represented. A few of the performances were like some kind of bizarre experimental-theater/performance-art kind of thing, with obscure symbolism that was totally lost on me and which had only a tenuous connection to middle eastern dance. But then there was quite a lot of excellent dance there, so that the acts that were not so excellent were quickly forgotten. The musical accompaniment (most of which was recorded music, but a few of the dance acts danced to music provided by the bands) was also extremely diverse. Most of the recorded music was, as you would expect, middle-eastern dance music, but there were also some dancers who danced to a 16th-century English folk tune, an excerpt from Stravinsky’s “Firebird,” heavy-metal rock music, the national anthem, Brazilian samba music, “Love Shack” by the B-52’s, and an operatic aria. Clearly, anything goes.
We ran into our friends Erik and Erika from Ithaca there. And I was especially surprised to see my old ney teacher Nikolai hanging around there. He was there visiting from NYC with his wife Nahara who was in a dance performance.
There was some outstanding music by some very interesting bands: Djinn, Pangia, and Effendi. Julie and I have been fans of Djinn for a long time so it was great to see them again. I had not heard of Effendi before but they were great, and they have an excellent qanun player (more bands should include a qanun player!). But the really big musical attraction was Zikrayat, who I had never heard play before. They play Arabic music in the traditional style with traditional instruments. What a great experience to hear a band like this in this era of widespread pop-electronic gimmickry! Zikrayat has no synthesizers, no gimmicks, no pop, just solid and authentic musicianship. And, especially interesting to me since I am rather fanatical about the ney, they have an outstanding ney player named Bridget Robbins. I was mesmerized by her playing.
setting up for After party
Late Saturday night after all the performances were over, there was the After party, a Rakkasah tradition, where everybody is invited to dance and play music. A huge crowd assembled in the hotel ballroom and a pickup band of sorts formed, with a large cadre of percussionists, a qanun, cumbus, clarinet and who knows what else. I brought my riq and played it along with the rest of the folks while a crowd of people danced to the music. Finally around 1:30 or so both Julie and I suddenly ran out of energy and gave up on the party and went to sleep.
The After party
The next morning I went to a workshop on playing drum solos for dancers, taught by Carmine Guida (of Djinn and several other bands) and a dancer named Blanca. This turned out to be an excellent workshop, very interesting and informative and also a lot of fun. Then Julie and I saw a lot more dance and music performances, including a very nice performance by June Seaney’s troupe from Ithaca. Actually June has two troupes, Chandani and Ishtar’s Daughters, although I have trouble figuring out which dancer is in which troupe, so I tend to see them both as one big combined dance troupe.
June Seaney (3rd from left) and her dancers
We left in the afternoon and had a long drive back up to Ithaca and got home rather late. I still haven’t caught up on my sleep yet…..
