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What’s In A Voice

Hamed Nikpay at a Tangents party, 2006

I grew up listening to European operas, oratorios and lieder.  The classical way of singing, while glorious, eventually lost its attraction on me.  I remember attending a spiritual “workshop” in college.  The man closed his eyes and hummed a few notes.  There was no discernible technique nor did the voice project.  He said, “This is spiritual.  It comes from the depth of suffering.”  And I knew it was the rawness of the human voice that had moved me.

In our house, we receive two to five music CDs a day.  Dore cannot audition them fast enough and many sit in boxes and eventually are forgotten.  He has his favorites and I have mine.  We don’t always agree, and Dore has a much wider taste in music than I do.  But we can always agree on the very best, when the soul comes through the voice and moves us.

Our favorites:  The Senegalese singer and guitarist Baba Maal,  the American born Mexican-Lebanese-Jewish singer Lhasa de Sela, (now deceased), Ravid Kahalani of Yemen Blues and the Iranian singer Hamad Nikpay.

We live in a treasure trove, surrounded by yet to be discovered jewels.  It is the luck of the draw when Dore picks out a CD to listen to.  But that voice, that voice that possesses the power, that calls to us, remains rare.

Photo by Raymond Van Tassel

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Music Orgy

Dore Stein of Tangents Radio

I enjoy having the house by myself on Saturday nights while Dore does his show, Tangents, at the radio station.  I hardly listen to his show.  After a long day of teaching I find his selection usually too energetic.  All I want is quiet.

We receive three to five CDs in the mail every day.  When Dore auditions he puts the music on loud.  The sound fills the kitchen and the living room.  Escape is difficult, even when I keep my door closed, the pulse of drums and bass seep through.

Sometimes though, his music connected with me on a gut level and would change my state of being.   One day I walked into the house to the music of cello and piano.  The two instruments were in a most intense dialogue, drawing from each other’s breath, entwining, bemoaning, separating, coming back together, making love, urging the listener, stirring up an emotion that needed immediate fulfillment.  I joined the orgy.  Pen to paper, poetry flowed out like a third stream.

Photo credit:  Raymond Van Tassel

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