Monthly Archives: May 2021

It is a given among commentators on todays local and devolved government elections that the hardships, fears and economic damage suffered under pandemic lockdown have concentrated voters minds as seldom before and that the mood of the electorate is one of hard-headed realism, focused on material recovery. The Conservatives are heavily in the lead because, having got Brexit done, Boris went on to preside over a world-leading vaccine rollout. Labour is struggling, partly because its association with the hallucinatory politics of wokeness has perpetuated the alienation of its former supporters who defected over Brexit. Bread-and-butter issues have displaced ideology.

Except in one part of the United Kingdom: in Scotland the opinion polls reveal a nation in a trance-like state, about to award a further four years of governance to the party that has presided over the extravagant decline of education, healthcare and key public services, while subjecting business and the economy to the unrelenting uncertainty of a further independence referendum, poised like a sword of Damocles over investors and entrepreneurs. The SNP is not so much a political party as a therapy group for obsessives focused, to the point of irrationality, on achieving separatism.

Monomania is not the best foundation for sound government, with schools, hospitals and businesses regarded as irritating distractions from the sole item on the SNPs real agenda. This week even the tame Scottish media were outraged when Keith Brown, the SNP deputy leader, volunteered the information that the party wanted to sort out the pandemic in order to get on with organising for IndyRef2. Yet, if polls are anywhere near accurate, around half of the Scottish electorate is in the grip of a kind of Stockholm syndrome, blindly subservient to the party that is systematically demolishing Scotlands future prospects. In any other developed nation, a governing party with the SNPs record would be facing annihilation.

The SNP manifesto displays the partys contempt for the voters intelligence: to any thinking person it is not so much a programme as a provocation. On education, it pledges that the findings of an OECD review of the schools curriculum will be taken forward. Since Nicola Sturgeon has refused to publish the review until after the election an indication of its damning contents what are voters supposed to make of that opaque commitment? What other political party in the Western world would dare to introduce into its manifesto a pledge relating to a report it has suppressed?

The fact that, under the SNP government, Scotland has tumbled down the OECDs PISA schools league tables for 79 countries, from 10th in Science to 27th and from 11th in Maths to 30th suggests why Sturgeon refuses to publish the OECD report. Scotland is now 15 places below Slovenia in Maths proficiency. What does the SNP intend to do to remedy the decline it has facilitated during its 14-year rule? Well, of course we know: the report whose findings are a state secret will be taken forward. And 1bn will be invested in closing the attainment gap between rich and poor; if the implementation of that policy conforms to previous SNP initiatives, it will presumably entail lowering the attainment of the rich to match that of the poor. Yet the fiasco that is Scottish education under the SNP receives 22 per cent more funding per person than the UK figure.

Of education, Nicola Sturgeon famously said: Judge me on this. Fortunately for her, the Scottish electorate does not appear to be in a judgemental mood. The SNP political culture is one of bribery of sections of the public on a lavish scale. Health spending will be increased by at least 20 per cent over five years, free bus travel will be extended to under-22s, school clothing grants for low income families will be increased to 150 for secondary pupils, every pupil will receive a free digital device, free school meals will be expanded (to include children of well-off parents, since the deprived are already fully covered), free early years education will be expanded to include some one and two-year-olds.

Additionally, 3,500 extra teachers and classroom assistants will be hired: we have heard it all before. Every educational target set by the SNP has been abjectly missed. The interesting thing is that this Christmas-every-day largesse will not be accompanied by any increase in income tax rates above inflation for the duration of the parliament. There is, however, a caveat in the text that it is important for any Government to have flexibility to respond to a change in circumstances; so taxes could be raised after all.

The SNP, like its voters, does not live in the real world. As Scotland emerges cautiously from lockdown to survey an economic landscape littered with businesses that will never open again, what are the preoccupations of the SNP, as revealed in its manifesto? New legislation to close loopholes in anti-fox hunting rules, while the party remains committed to a licensing regime for grouse shooting, interfering in an important rural industry.

The reality is that the SNP has made the intoxicating discovery that it can do anything it likes, including criminalising conversations in private houses, without forfeiting the support of its constituency. Vis--vis the Sturgeon regime, the typical SNP voter makes a Stepford wife look stroppy. Yet, all around, the fabric of society is becoming dilapidated, the consensual passivity of the one-party state growing ingrained, the world of fiscal and economic reality fast receding. The independence project, remotely feasible during the oil boom of the 1970s, is now wholly impossible without Scotland declining to an abysmal standard of living.

I think Nicola has coped brilliantly with the pandemic translates in real life into: I admire the way she read out the statistics of scientific advisers and the soundbites of civil servants, while receiving 9.7bn from the UK government, in the financial year 2020-21, to fund pandemic relief. Never have Barnett consequentials been of more consequence. Funding per head in Scotland is now 30 per cent higher than in England: the Scottish government has more than 1.30 to spend per person, compared with 1 per person in England. Yet the Sturgeon government has chosen to allocate some temporary Covid-19 funding to new permanent spending commitments.

In this climate, it is understandable that Scottish voters have lost sight of financial reality. In 2019-20 Scotlands budget deficit amounted to 8.6 per cent of GDP, compared to the UK figure of 2.6 per cent. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimates Scotlands implicit budget deficit for 2020-21 could be around 26-28 per cent of GDP. Scottish government borrowing is equivalent to 2,776 per person in Scotland, compared with 855 per person across the UK. The pandemic crisis makes accurate forecasting impossible; but the IFS suggests the Scottish deficit could still exceed 11 per cent of GDP in 2024-25.

But the SNP has the solution: kick away the massive financial support regularly received from the UK and strike out into the geopolitical wilderness, in the aftermath of a pandemic crisis, with a black hole of a budget deficit, massively depleted oil revenue, a dependency economy, institutions such as RBS fleeing south and years of waiting for putative EU membership on mendicant terms, including adoption of the toxic euro currency (if Spain, seriously concerned about Catalan separatism, does not veto the application).

If Scotland had been an EU member state today, it would have boasted 28 per cent of its citizens vaccinated against Covid, as in Germany, or 26 per cent, as in France, compared with the 52 per cent currently protected no thanks to the SNP, which promised to vaccinate one million by the end of January and managed only half that figure, until rescued by Westminster intervention. If Scottish nationalists admire the European Union, that is more than the populations of its member states do, following the abject failure of its response to the pandemic.

Nicola Sturgeons enthusiasm for referenda is not inexhaustible: in the event of a Yes vote she insists an independent Scotland would immediately seek EU membership without holding a referendum on the issue; Mike Russell, whose ministerial remit is the constitution, demurred at that cavalier insistence. Immediately is a misleading term: the earliest date at which Scotland could be admitted to the EU is 2031 if there is still an EU in existence by that time, when Scotland on its way in would probably be passed by other countries on their way out.

At least Brussels would settle the currency argument by imposing the euro on Scotland. It is eloquent of SNP prevarication that after a two-year debate on a separatist currency it entered the 2014 referendum without a clear policy (with George Osborne raining on its parade regarding the status of sterling post-independence) and still refuses to outline its policy today.

The whole SNP posture is an absurdity. The party excels at plucking slogans and terminology out of the air and fetishizing them, e.g. a penny for Scotland. The currently abused phrase is supermajority. Sturgeon hubristically claimed she would win a supermajority in todays election, constituting a mandate for a second independence referendum. A supermajority is a term for a parliamentary majority of two-thirds of seats, won by a single party, its significance being that most written constitutions require a two-thirds majority before amendments may be passed. An example is the Fidesz party in Hungary, which won three successive supermajorities, giving it the right to change the constitution.

The Scottish parliament has 129 seats, so to attain a supermajority at Holyrood would require a party to win a minimum of 86 seats. The opinion polls currently forecast the SNPs performance as, at best, winning 69 seats, a majority of four, or, at worst, falling short of a majority by two seats, but forming a government with the support of the Greens. So, the SNP may struggle to win a straight majority, never mind a supermajority. With her initial hopes receding, Sturgeon is now trying to distort expectations by referring to her 60-odd putative seats, plus a possible eight or nine for the Greens, as a supermajority for independence. It would be no such thing.

The polling surveys best-case scenario for the SNP of 69 seats would simply be a repeat of its score in 2011, a majority that quickly dissipated into minority government. Unless the polls are wildly inaccurate, every likely scenario is a continuation of the SNPs razor-edge alternation between a wafer-thin majority and Green-supported minority government. Yet Sturgeon is preparing to misrepresent this business-as-usual situation as transformative. Boris Johnson must laugh her out of court: the claim is absurd.

It is extravagant hypocrisy for the Greens to adopt a separatist stance. The chief feature of climate alarmist policies is their high expense, with cumulative net zero policies now routinely costed in trillions. Patrick Harvie, leader of the Green loons, is the biggest buffoon in the Scottish parliament a title not easily awarded in so competitive an environment. How does he imagine an independent Scotland, struggling to maintain a recognisable standard of living for Scots, could possibly afford to fund a fraction of the eye-wateringly costly projects that will be canvassed at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November? It is pure opportunism, sacrificing climate expenditure for possible Scottish cabinet seats.

The notion that an infinitesimal shift in the parliamentary balance of power would be revolutionary or a mandate for a further destabilising referendum less than seven years after a plebiscite that the SNP itself defined as once in a generation is ridiculous. Whatever happens at the ballot box today, the inevitable outcome appears to be continued misrule of Scotland by a party with no credibility, but limitless impudence. This election in Scotland is totally divorced from reality: the irony is that UK subvention has created a cocoon in which Brigadoon fantasies can be indulged with impunity.

Scots will, before too long, awaken from hypnosis. In the meantime, it is the responsibility of Boris Johnsons government to prevent this party of incompetent charlatans from disrupting the United Kingdom as it has divided Scotland and debauched its public life. Whatever constitutional demands Nicola Sturgeon may make, the answer is no.

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The Brigadoon fantasy election - voters in a trance set to reward SNP for wrecking Scotland - Reaction

The Master Musicians of Joujouka in their village by Maki Kita

"The Masters started playing, slowly got into their vibe and built up and up", says Frank Rynne, long-time manager and producer of The Master Musicians Of Joujouka, describing the wild energy captured on the recently released Live In Paris double album.

"They did three sets: the first was flutes and the drums; the second violin, drums and vocals; the third a full on performance of the Bou Jeloud suite. About 20 minutes into that everyone was on their feet in the hall and by the end we had about 50 to 60 people on the stage. And the only two bands who have ever done that to the Pompidou were Suicide in the late 1970s and the Masters in 2016!"

Imbued with fierce energy and transcendent beauty, the music of Joujouka a village in the foothills of the Southern Rif mountains in Morocco is unique. Largely unchanged down the centuries, the Masters use flutes, hand held drums, rhaita pipes, violins and call and response vocals in a traditional trance music that ranges from intensely loud and raucous to meditative. A Sufi sect whose music has long said to have been blessed with the ability to heal, theyve been performing in the lower Rif for centuries but came to wider countercultural consciousness after the posthumous release in 1971 of Brian Jones Presents The Pipes Of Pan At Joujouka.

Before that they were, of course, visited by many of the leading beat writers. William S Burroughs, Paul Bowles and Brion Gysin all spent time in the village while in the 1970s Timothy Leary and Ornette Coleman (who recorded the brilliant, burning Midnight Sunrise with the Masters in 1973) came through. Does it ever frustrate the Masters to be so closely associated with a relatively fleeting cultural movement, though, I wonder?

"To be honest, I get more pissed off with it as a producer/ manager than they do", laughs Rynne. "Its brought foot traffic through the village but its largely irrelevant to them day to day, except as PR. If youre interested in Burroughs, its in his work; if youre interested in Bowles, its in his work but, in a sense, its baggage. My approach my connection to the music is more akin to Irish folk music. I connect to them on that level: theres sheep, theres cattle, theres goats and theres drone music."

Rynne has a long, intricate history with the Masters. A Dubliner by birth, who has lived in Paris for many years, he initially sang in early 80s rockabilly band Those Handsome Devils and then fronted Dublin punks The Baby Snakes throughout the latter half of the decade. In 1992 he curated the Here To Go exhibition in the city, exhibiting paintings and artworks from Gysin, Burroughs and Mohammed Hamri.

The late Hamri often known as The Painter Of Morocco was one of his country's key countercultural instigators from the 1950s onwards. It was Hamri who was responsible for introducing Gysin, Burroughs and Bowles to the music of the Masters. Gysin, famously, loved their music, stating that it was the sound he wanted to hear for the rest of his life while Bowles found them too loud and intense. Ultimately Hamri helped spread their sound far beyond Joujouka village.

Born in 1932, he was raised in Ksar el Kbir (the nearest town to Joujouka) while his uncle Sherkin Attar was one of the bandleaders of the time. Alongside Gysin, Hamri ran the infamous 1001 Nights restaurant in Tangier which quickly became an epicentre for the country's beat scene, hosting readings and performances from local and international artists alike. Hamri and Gysin employed the Masters as house band at the 1001 Nights while, in later life, Hamri built a house in Joujouka village and in 1975 published a book Tales Of Joujouka a collection of ancient folklore connected to the Masters.

Adamant that any exhibition featuring himself and Gysin must also rightly include the Masters, Hamri put Rynne in touch with them in 1992, and they came over to Dublin to perform. It was a successful exhibition, but was not without its share of strife for Rynne. The infamous, much discussed, split made itself felt as soon as Rynne made the booking. In brief: there are two bands of Joujouka musicians The Master Musicians of Joujouka, who are all based in the village and The Master Musicians of Jajouka featuring Bachir Attar, who was based in New York. Details are hazy but the split dates back to the mid 1970s when a group of Joujouka musicians voted to replace Bachirs father, Hadj Abdeselam El Attar, with Mallim Fudal as band leader. Attar held the opinion that this was illegitimate, claiming that leadership was a hereditary position something disputed by the wider Joujouka lineage. There were also various disputes regarding royalties from the Masters' mid 1970s recordings.

Panoramic shot of Joujouka by Herman Vanaershot

Asked about the issue of the split today, the usually animated Rynne sounds weary, recalling his fax machine "going crazy" after making the booking in 1992 with various "accusations about the musicians I was working with; and about Hamri". However, the experience galvanised him as a historian and keeping in touch regularly with Hamri by phone he eventually travelled to Joujouka in 1994 and lived in the village for a few months.

"Because Id never seen such a shit storm I needed to go and find out what was going on. In a weird way the only reason Im still working with them today is because of that shit storm. At the end of the day, its simple: youve got musicians and they fall out [laughs]. I traced it back to about 1974 when there was an album called The Primal Energy That Is The Music And Ritual Of Jajouka, Morocco, produced by a guy called Joel Rubiner. Hamri was involved in it and it caused a big argument in the village. Hamri went to California, came back and this guy Hadj was deselected as leader. Eventually, one Joujouka ended up in New York with a record deal and claimed his thing. Hes a musician! Can anyone deny him the right to do what he does? No! Can he deny the right of what the musicians in the village do? No! Music is a subjective thing; music is music. You listen with your ears if you like the sound of something buy it."

Staying for nine weeks, Rynne got to know the Masters in the village well and, on the trip, recorded the Joujouka Black Eyes LP released by Sub Rosa in 1995. One of the rawest and most intimate of the many Joujouka recordings, Joujouka Black Eyes was something of a baptism by fire for Rynne as a producer, who sat amongst the Masters for days as they were playing, a simple mic positioned in the middle, everything going straight to tape.

"If I could go back to that record I wouldnt have produced such a potpourri", he tells me. "Black Eyes was taken from around 40 hours of recordings. After four weeks my money ran out. Coming from a punk background Ive always had a feeling for the anarchic approach and Joujouka Black Eyes is a record Im proud of, but when I listen to it now I do think that maybe I shouldnt have edited it so much and maybe I should have let the pieces grow for another 15 minutes each. The first side is flute and drums the more spiritual Joujouka zone. When they play this music for hours its transcendental; trance inducing. When I first went to Joujouka, Hamri would always lie down on his little bed and smoke a pipe of kif and theyd play this stuff which just sends you into another zone. Thats a really elemental thing with Joujouka the flute music."

Rynne continued to travel back and forth to Joujouka through the 90s, solidifying links with the Masters, recording and, eventually, arranging international bookings as manager. He was even welcomed into the fraternal guild of the Masters by Hamri, who has kept a log book of individual members for many decades, a symbolic honour unheard of for somebody outside the village.

Master Musicians Of Joujouka by Herman Vanaerschot

In centuries past the Masters operated rather like a feudal musicians guild whereby, as Rynne describes it, "a rhaita player was worth X, a drummer was worth Y and a trainee was worth Z". Money was divided based on expertise and the musicians' place in society. When Hamri was working with the Masters in the 1950s he created something more akin to a folkloric association that had around 70 members.

"I was inducted into that membership in 1994", Rynne recalls. "I was number 63. Even now in the village, sometimes musicians I havent seen for years will come up to play and show me their card and Ill take out my card. It perhaps doesnt have the same resonance today as it once did, but there is fraternity, for sure; all the older Masters who played with Brian Jones and played on those albums in the 1970s, they were all members of that fraternal guild. I dont think it gives me any rights though Ive no sheep in the village! Ive worked with these musicians for 29 years. We know each others families. They know my kid, Ive known their kids since they were born but it isnt Masonic; were not climbing up ladders or anything. Its about affirmation."

From a production standpoint, Joujouka Black Eyes was an in situ field recording assembled from numerous loose jams and sessions held over a period of weeks. By way of comparison, Live In Paris is a very different proposition, and much tighter focussed.

Recorded in 2016 at the Pompidou Centre, Live In Paris captures all facets of the Joujouka sound across a double LP. The first focusses on flutes and drums and, in particular, the beautiful mountain violin of Ahmad Talha, who plays his instrument upright, haunting melodies snaking up and over the mix. Most striking of all, however, is the Bou Jeloud suite on the second record. The sound of the Masters at their loudest, weightiest and most ferociously untethered, Bou Jeloud is the wildest music in the Masters repertoire.

Generally performed at the annual Bou Jeloud festivities in the village, the ritual dates back to the sixteenth century when Bou Jeloud (a half man/half goat Pan like figure) was said to have appeared to a local shepherd near a cave outside the village to bestow fertility and harvest bounty on the village. The occasion is marked each year in June with extended night long dancing and feasting while a chosen villager sewn into bloody, freshly slaughtered goat skins and wearing a huge mask dresses up as Bou Jeloud and frolics, dances and thrashes assembled dancers with olive branches in front of vast bonfires.

The Live In Paris recording is a particularly visceral rendering of the suite indeed, the first time its been captured in its entirety. Was it challenging performing this specific music outside of the village, I wonder? Did the vibe transfer?

"Bou Jeloud is a transferable ceremony", explains Rynne. "This means as long as you have Bou Jeloud and the music, it can transfer. Even in their own region, if people want the Masters to come to another village and do Bou Jeloud theyll do it, and that goes back centuries. Even in Joujouka there is no specific site where Bou Jeloud will be performed. Ive seen it performed in different parts of the village over the years and in various different ways. Ive been working with the Masters for over 30 years and in that time Ive seen Bou Jeloud performed long and short. Ive seen it last for two hours and Ive seen it last for nine hours."

Capturing the shrieking drone of the lead rhaita pipes and balancing that with the frenetic handheld drums (the drummers form a circle for Bou Jeloud) is no mean feat, however.

Over decades of producing the Masters, Rynne quickly understood that balance was the key to everything. Too much rhaita, or too much focus on the drums, and the power of the music is dampened beyond repair. He enthusiastically describes the scope for structured improvisation, and communication, as essential in the way that the music works.

In essence, the Masters are led by two people: the lead rhaita player and the lead drummer. "And they signal each other", explains Rynne. "And theyre like a machine. If youve been listening to Joujouka for years you get to know those signals. For example, if the lead drummer does three beats doof doof doof that means that theyre moving to the next section. Or if the lead rhaita does a pigeon call that means that theyre flipping it back round again. Also, they can feel where the audience are at in terms of exhaustion."

While a certain amount of looseness and improvisation is intrinsic to the vibe, the structure of the Masters is generally staid. On the rhaita, a bank of musicians play drone and melody. Rynne describes this as "the rhythm guitar, essentially". Then you have a couple of lead pipers transcending the melody. The vibe for Bou Jeloud on the night in Paris was "right up there with the many times Ive witnessed it", he explains.

Frank Rynne, Terry Riley and Ahmed Attar in Tokyo 2017 courtesy of Frank Rynne

As the band got ready to perform the suite, they stood up and formed the customary circle with the drummers. Rynne recalled hearing the "snort" of the dancer and got ready with a boom mic over the musicians and audience. "There was no point in close mic-ing the rhaitas. Its one of the very hardest things to record, Bou Jeloud with rhaita. Over the years Ive tried to do it with different methods, but I gave up in the village because very rarely do you have the balance. But I think we did it the best that its been done so far."

Predicated on ceaseless, ever building motion, the drone of the pipes build to fever pitch while the drums pound away in circular motion; the wild grunts and snorts of Bou Jeloud are captured, as are the frequent whoops of the crowd. Live In Paris also captures the last recorded performance by the late Master Abdselam Boukhzar, who sadly died in 2019. Ultimately, though, this is the first time that the weight not to mention the searing, face-melting volume of the Masters has been captured, as Rynne concludes: "What was always missing on Joujouka records was the bottom end. At the top end you have the solos in the flute and rhaita and they are the keys to the music. So on the first two sides we were able to sort that out, saying, 'Thats the solo, that needs to be high and loud, but on the Bou Jeloud side it was all about EQ-ing so that we could sit it all in the perfect place, as youd hear it if you were watching in the village. And thats what we did, as close as you can do with this type of music, because when you stand in front of the Masters they self-mix in terms of where they place themselves in front or behind the drummers... but just try and record that [laughs]. We did several days of mastering, not so much changing anything but identifying the relevant frequencies to the engineers, the pivotal moments and thats why Bou Jeloud sounds fucking amazing. It's as loud as a death metal band. Its been 14 years since Ive done a record and I think on this I did what I set out to achieve which was to bring the power of the music out. Inshallah, its done."

Live In Paris is out now on Unlistenable

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Features | A Quietus Interview | The Weight Of The Ritual: Frank Rynne On The Master Musicians Of Joujouka - The Quietus

Issued on: 11/05/2021 - 11:24

Damascus (AFP)

Three-year-old Anas al-Kharrat gracefully raises one hand to the sky as his long white robe twirls around his tiny spinning body.

His dancing skills run in the family -- his dervish dancer father Muayad is whirling next to him, in front of a spellbound audience.

"Anas learnt to whirl before he learnt to talk," his father said, speaking inside a Damascus restaurant. "He is the youngest dervish dancer in Syria".

Whirling -- a sort of moving meditation through which Sufis seek to commune with the divine -- sees performers twirl to the hypnotic rhythm of prayer, until they reach a trance-like state.

Popular in Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey, the dance emerged alongside Sufism -- a spiritually focused approach to Islam, founded by followers of 13th-century Persian mystic and poet Jalal al-Din Rumi.

The Kharrat family is one of the most reputed in Damascus, and boasts 20 dervish dancers who often perform during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Muayad started twirling as a child, taught first by his grandfather, then his uncle and finally his father.

At 28, he now owns a fragrance shop in a popular Damascus market, but his real passion lies in Sufi spiritual practise.

"Sufism in general is a means to worship and exaltation," he said.

"Whirling is just one way of reaching God."

- 'Humility' -

Muayad said he can twirl dozens of times per minute "without moving an inch away from the axis".

In war-wracked Syria, whirling offers relief from the woes of a conflict that has been exacerbated by a dire economic crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, he said.

"Whenever I feel distressed... I confine myself to my room, and turn and turn until I feel at peace."

In the living room of their Damascus home, Muayad pulled a long white robe over Anas's head before helping him with a matching jacket and a tall burgundy felt cap.

Around them stood relatives in matching outfits and similar "sikke" caps, which can be brown or black and are designed to emulate the stick shape of the first letter of the word God in Arabic ("Allah").

They then descend a long staircase towards a courtyard, to practice whirling to the rhythm of prayer with Muayad's brother Mahmoud.

The 34-year-old is teaching the children how to hold their arms while twirling.

"By raising our arms we are begging for mercy from God and sending a prayer to the heavens," Mahmoud said, gesturing toward the sky.

"Placing our hands against our chest is a sign of submissiveness and humility before God."

- Ramadan special -

Before the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011, Mahmoud performed in several European countries, and even toured the United States.

"We spent more time outside Syria than inside," he said.

Travel restrictions imposed on Syrians due to the conflict brought the family's performances abroad to a halt, forcing them to keep up the tradition by performing at local events.

"We have performed in restaurants and weddings," Mahmoud said.

Evening performances during Ramadan "are one of our last hopes" to make a living, he added.

The holy month is a busy time of year for whirling dervishes, who perform for audiences sipping coffee or smoking shisha in cafes and restaurants after a day of fasting.

Almost every popular spot in the capital offers some form of dervish performance to attract customers.

"We eagerly await the month of Ramadan to share this ritual with people," said Mahmoud.

"Whirling is for every time and place, but it is even more spiritual during Ramadan".

2021 AFP

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Twirl and spin: Damascus family preserves Sufi whirling tradition - FRANCE 24

From the outside, acting does not look like a complicated profession. The common misconception with acting is that it is just the art of learning lines and delivering them convincingly. However, that couldnt be farther from the truth. An actor needs intense preparation for each role. While this mostly pays off, sometimes a role leaves an artist with severe mental trauma. Here are a few stars who opened up about being mentally affected by their roles.

Joaquin Phoenix in Joker

Actor Joaquin Phoenix might have won a Best Actor Academy Award for this film, but it also severely impacted his mental health. Phoenix talked about having to lose 23 kilos in a short amount of time. The first thing was the weight loss, thats really what I started with. As it turns out, that impacts your psychology, and you really start to go mad when you lose that much weight in that amount of time," he said in an interview. He also said that exploring a different aspect to his character was also mentally difficult.

Anne Hathaway in Les Misrables

Anne Hathaway, too, won a Best Actress in a Supporting Role as Fantine in Les Miserables. However, she had a very hard time recovering from the character. Hathaway had to eat lettuce and oatmeal paste for months to get in the physicality of the character. I was in such a state of deprivation physical and emotional. When I got home, I couldnt react to the chaos of the world without being overwhelmed. It took me weeks till I felt like myself again," she said.

Heath Ledger

Before his untimely death from accidental drug overdose in January 2008, Heath Ledger gave an interview to New York Times promoting his film Im Not There. In the interview, he talked about playing Joker in Christopher Nolans Dark Knight. He described the character as a psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy. He also admitted that playing Joker had led to his insomnia. Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night. I couldnt stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going, he said,

Kate Winslet in The Reader

The 2008 film The Reader, where Kate Winslet played a woman on trial for being a Nazi guard during World War II impacted the actress mentally. She said it took her a lot of time to let go of the character. Its like Ive escaped from a serious car accident and need to understand what has just happened, she said, adding, When I leave a character, I have to analyse the trance through which I have just passed. It can take me several months to say goodbye to them."

Adrien Brody in The Pianist

Adrien Brody has always managed to deliver unforgettable performances, but his most acclaimed one till date is that of a musician and holocaust survivor in Roman Polanskis The Pianist. In an interview in 2017, Brody admitted to still being haunted by the experience, more than a decade and half later. He said, I was depressed for a year after The Pianist. And I dont suffer from that, generally. It wasnt just a depression; it was a mourning. I was very disturbed by what I embraced [in making that film], and of the awareness that it opened up in me. But how much these things take from you changes project to project.

Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here

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Anne Hathaway to Joaquin Phoenix, Actors Who Opened Up About Being Severely Affected By Their Roles - News18

ZHU performs live at Red Rocks (Courtesy of Joey Vitalari / ZHU Music)

From the towering mesas jutting out on either side of the stage, to the eerie isolation of the mountainous venue, it doesnt take much to know that any given show at the alien-like Red Rocks Amphitheatre is unique in its own right. However, its hard to find a better example of a show being enhanced by its venue than when ZHU took the stage on May 5, the second night of his six-part DREAMROCKS concert series at Red Rocks.

Known on stage only as ZHU, the mysterious producer has garnered a devout following in the EDM world for his brand of the genre. His music often prioritizes alluringly spacey synths to generate an eerie atmosphere that burns slowly throughout his records, rather than the fast-paced build-ups and exciting drops that have become prevalent in more mainstream EDM acts. ZHUs despondent chord progressions and airy, falsetto-like lyrical delivery give his music a dark edge while remaining entirely danceable for a non-EDM comparison, think The Weekend. That carefully curated musical persona was fittingly put on full display from the moment ZHU took the stage at the otherworldly venue.

Lifes a risk, but were here tonight, ZHU proclaimed to raucous applause, or at least, as much applause as a socially distanced crowd of a couple hundred could generate. Regardless, this bunch of mostly-masked concert-goersbraving both a pandemic and unusually frigid May temperatureswere prepared to live it up for the night at the amphitheater as if nothing was different than normal.

Standing atop a minimalistic, neon-lit cube, ZHU began tearing through his discography from his recently released DREAMLAND 2021 album and old classics from 2018s Ringos Desert and 2016s Generationwhy.

While mainly relying on the familiar electronic sounds of his recorded work, ZHUs onstage performance found itself accompanied by a saxophonist and guitarist, often tearing through the booming beats with a refreshing sense of vigor, like the guitar-slamming rendition of Risky Business. An easy highlight from the performance was his rendition of Guilty Love, which mixed deep house beats with saxophone riffs to craft an exciting live recreation of one of the artists most popular tracks.

While ZHUs live arrangement took its time, often delving into long instrumental breakdowns, none of the three musicians seemed interested in leaving their neon cubes to roam the stage and take the physical spotlight for the performance. This lack of stage presence actually worked in ZHUs favor it seemed the artist was content reveling in anonymity. An atmosphere that worked to propel the surreal ambiance of his music into the foreground. Plus, it seemed eerily fitting for a performance made impersonal due to the sea of people obscured by face masks.

Most of the performance consisted of ZHU standing atop his cube, letting the flurry of sleek visuals give his fans something to look at while they became lost in the trance-like atmosphere of his music. Removing oneself from the center of attention during a musical performance is a bold creative choice that wouldnt work for many artists, but the audience never lost energy from the beginning of the act to the end. ZHU reminded them why hes just the artist to continue to thrive off anonymity.

By the end, the hypnotic tempo and seamless transitions between wildly different sides of his body of work made for a long set that felt all too short. However, ZHUs six nights at Red Rocks, all of which will play host to hundreds of fans, serves as a promising reminder that plenty more live music will return to the state of Colorado in the coming summer months.

ZHU will continue his DREAMROCKS series on May 9, 10 and 11. Tickets can be found here.

Contact CU Independent Arts Editor Ben Berman at ben.berman@colorado.edu.

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ZHU brings a surreal EDM atmosphere to the "DREAMROCKS" concert series - cuindependent