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Like Korean music? Korean traditional folk-pop group Ak Dan Gwang Chil (ADG7) will make their UAE debut in Abu Dhabi this weekend. The band will perform at the NYU Arts Center in Abu Dhabi on Saturday, February 4th. The award-winning team will be in the UAE for the seventh annual Barzakh Festival.
The band ADG7 is made up of powerful folk singers and traditional musicians. They are famous for performing folk songs (traditional folk songs) of the Hwanghae-do region, one of the Eight Provinces of Joseon in the Joseon era. The area is now North Korea’s western province. The show is organized with the support of the Korean Cultural Center in the UAE.
Along with the Korean band, three other globally renowned bands will join the two-night event at East Plaza on February 3rd and 4th at 7.30pm.
The first day of the festival, Friday 3rd February, will feature Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CGS) from Italy and Lemma from Algeria.
Now led by his award-winning multi-instrumentalist son Mauro Durante, CGS was founded in Puglia in 1975 by author Rina Durante as the The first and most important group to produce popular Salentinian music from southern Italy. CGS update their sound with a captivating reinterpretation of tradition and modernity around the famous pizzica tarantata ritual, a popular Italian folk music that marks an ancient healing ritual against the bite of a dangerous tarantula spider.
Lemma, from the region of Saoura, a valley in southwestern Algeria, is a powerful all-female band presenting a joyous symphony of musical genres from the spiritual to the earthly. The lyrics they sing are borrowed from the mystical chants and supplications of the Hadra Council, as well as passages from some well-known malhûn poetic texts. Their percussion comes from hidûss and hadra, as much rhythm as darbouka or bendir drums. Their rhythms are rich in a variety of genres, drawing on arûbi (a freely repeating rhythm) and haddâwî (the rhythm of the wandering mystics of the Sidi Haddi brotherhood in Morocco) as well as other rhythms and melodies from across the Maghreb.
The next day, Saturday 4th February, Ak Dan Gwang Chil (ADG7) from South Korea and Sahra Halgan from Somaliland made their UAE debuts.
Sahra Halgan and her band push the eclectic theme further, presenting a mix of original compositions and traditional Somali songs through distorted guitars, African percussion and Halgan’s distinctive vibrato. She uses typical Somali poetry to sing about love, gratitude and rebuilding her country. Each member of the band brings their own unique background to the music; Aymeric Krol, who studied Mali percussion in Bamako, drives the band with his tambourine set; Mael Salètes’ distorted guitars and hypnotic riffs endow a solid rock backbone; keyboardist Graham Mushnik infuses the band’s sound with Golden Age psychedelic elements.
According to a press release sent to Gulf News, the annual Barzakh festival was created by the arts center as a meeting place for music streams across different cultures.
Commenting on the lineup, Arts Center Executive Artistic Director Bill Bragin said: “The Balzach Festival is one of the highlights of our annual music program and my personal favorite because it represents the internationalism and intercultural dialogue at the heart of the Arts Center. This year’s artists are charismatic performers with strong female perspectives whose music transcends borders. They have developed unique approaches to honoring their deep cultural heritage, allowing them to engage in an international dialogue with the contemporary to transcend tradition , Generation and Style.
“In keeping with our theme ‘Story’ for this season, each artist carries on and continues the legacy of their cultural heritage. By juxtaposing artists of different styles and backgrounds, we create new stories for the UAE.”
According to organizers, tickets can be booked at www.nyuad-artscenter.org.
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