Zar Music

I saw a great live show the other night. It was traditional Egyptian music known as Zar music. It was in a place called Makan (place), one of those cool venues with excellent acoustics. Upstairs loft looking down over the stage, and pillows wrapped around the stage for sitting, then stools, then chairs and tables. The music was pre-Islamic trance music that was used in healing rituals of drumming and dancing, that some sheikhs have condemned as decidedly un-Islamic, but that any type of music (especially this) is distracting from God couldn't be further from the truth. Some of the songs would start slowly with just female singing, or accompanied by a flute, and build up into the most ridiculous poly-rhythms getting faster and faster. The band we saw was one of the few groups continuing the musical tradition of Zar, as in all of Egypt there are only around 25 people who continue to practice this knowledge and tradition.