Episode 21 — Oud, microtones and underwater soundscapes
Summary: This episode stitches together three threads: a live session at Wilton’s Music Hall with Hackney Colliery Band and harpist Valeria Clarke, a reflection on putting out the Collaborations Volume Two album, and an intimate conversation with Syrian musician Nawar Alnaddaf about the oud, the ney, Arabic maqam and the emotional pull of microtones.
There’s brass history, New Orleans lineage, split-kit nerdery and an underwater-inspired piece, “Flouresse”, before we dive into how fretless strings and quarter-tones open up whole new colours — and how music, for a refugee artist, becomes both survival kit and laboratory.
What we cover
Hackney Colliery Band at Wilton’s: Live Collaborations-era performance with harp, shells and stories of how the band’s sound and workload have evolved.
New Orleans, brass bands & split kit: How marching band history and instrumentation feed into HCB’s approach without imitation.
“Flouresse” and sea-inspired sound: An underwater, fluorescent night-dive piece as a bridge into wider soundscape thinking.
The oud up close: Construction, tuning, resonance, double courses, no frets and why that makes microtonal phrasing so expressive.
Maqam & microtones: 24-tone systems, quarter-tones, and the parallels with blues inflection rather than “out of tune” clichés.
The ney: Side-blown bamboo flute technique, overtones and why getting a sound at all is half the battle.
Music, exile and identity: How Nawar carries and mutates tradition in Norway; music as connection, agency and “the point” in itself.
Further listening & links
Support: Extended video, live performances and bonus audio live on Patreon.
Full Transcript
Verbatim transcript, reflowed for readability. No wording changes have been made.
Hello, my name is Steve Pretty. I'm a musician, composer, and performer from London. And welcome to my podcast, Steve Pretty On The Origin of the Pieces.This is the show that helps you to hear, understand and enjoy music in new ways.Hello, everyone, how you doing? It's great to be back. I'm sorry, it's been once again a bit of a delayed episode, another three or four weeks.Shameful, shameful, embarrassing. I said I was gonna try and get back to Fortnightly. It's been pretty full on, it's been pretty crazy, which is great, of course, as a musician and any freelancer will tell you, when work's there, you've gotta take it, and work has indeed been there in the last few weeks.I've been traveling a lot. I've been to Berlin, I've been to Portugal. Obviously, just before that, I just got back from Norway.I've been all over the UK, and I've also been finishing off a load of studio projects. Anyway, sorry about that. Sorry for the excuses, but the regular service will, I think, resume from this point on.Famous last words, but hopefully get back to every couple of weeks, because there's loads of great stuff that I've accumulated along the way in my travels and in various other things that I've been doing. I've been speaking to opera singers, I've been visiting techno clubs, all manner of great stuff, so hopefully that delay will pay off in the longer run. But anyway, thank you very much for tuning in.Once again, it's great to be back in your ears.So if you missed last episode, do get back and check that out. If you remember, it was a bit of an Arctic special. I spoke to an eight-string tenor ukulele maker based in the Arctic.Certainly the only eight-string tenor ukulele maker in the Arctic and one of the few in the world, I think. Certainly one of the few outside Honolulu. So that was really interesting.Igor Kill. You can tune in to find out why he's called Igor Kill. That's his name.Amazing character. And of course, I also spoke to the Bitchy Big Boobies Bang Band, who are a fantastic community folk band singing songs from Norway and around the region. Really fun interview that.Do go back and check it out. And as always, of course, that and all of the other stuff from that episode are available on my Patreon. The full videos and the interviews so you can see the beautiful settings that I did those interviews in.And I also did an interview with admittedly quite challenging sound because it was recorded backstage at a big festival, that Veranga Festival up in the Arctic Circle with Afro Joik. I talked about Joiking, the Sami tradition, that's the native people of Norway and what they call Finnmark, the Sami tradition of basically singing, creating music in this very interesting way. And we talked about the different functions that that music has there.Quite a different approach to music than I've experienced before really. So I really found that fascinating. Talking to Afro Joik and the guys from a great band called Gabba.So go and check them out, Episode 20.Now coming up in today's show, one of the reasons this episode is a bit late is because I've been trying to find time, carve out time to work on the genre tombolas properly. Sorry, you know, take a randomly chosen genre and try and make some music in it or try and interview someone from that world. And I've not managed to do that really in the last couple of weeks.It's just been so, so hectic. So fortunately, no genre tombola this week. But what we do have is a really interesting interview, again from Norway, actually, but from a Syrian refugee.And we talk about a couple of beautiful instruments that she plays from Syria. That's coming up later in the show. So stay tuned for that.And I've also got a bit of a special, I suppose, on Hackney Colliery Band. A little bit of self-indulgence. It's my band that I run with my friends and colleagues, Luke Christie and Olly Blackman.The reason I'm talking about that band today, as well as them playing the theme tune for this podcast, of course, is that we've got a new album coming out. It's coming out just after this episode drops. It's called Collaborations Volume Two.And we explore a little bit more about that album. There's some exclusive music from that album, because the interview that I did with Luke and Olly was recorded live at Wilton's Music Hall. That's the live podcast recording I did there back in January, where we had all sorts of amazing guests.We had Luke, Olly and Ed from Hackney Colliery Band, as I say, also Chris Lintott, the astronomer, Valeria Clarke, the harpist, who you're going to hear some beautiful harp from shortly, and also Filament Choir. It was a really fun show back in January. I've got a couple more coming up before I forget.Sorry, slight tangent, but I've got these shows coming up at Wilton's again, with some absolutely amazing guests, really excited by the different guests I've got coming up for those. The next one is the 30th of November, 30th of November, and there's another one which I'm technically not allowed to talk about yet, because it's not on sale, but it probably almost will be by the time this episode drops. That's on the 16th of January, so 30th of November, 16th of January at Wilton's Music Hall, with some amazing guests, some amazing live music.There is a discount code for the 30th of November, especially for you podcast listeners and the Patreon subscribers, and that is Steve Pretty F, with all caps, all one word, Steve Pretty F, with an F at the end. That was supposed to be Friends, but their code was too long, Steve Pretty Friends was too long. So, Steve Pretty F, and if you go to the Wilton's Music Hall website, you can book some discounted tickets, I think they're £15 for best available seats, which is a bargain, given what I've got lined up for that show.Anyway, that was a little tangent, little aside. So yeah, I recorded this interview with Luke and Ollie and Ed back in January at Wilton's. We talk a little bit about the history of the band, we talk about the forthcoming record a little bit, and yeah, before I play that interview, just to say how excited I am to be dropping this new album.It's been a very long time coming. Some of the tracks on it are, actually some of them we recorded in 2015. We've been sitting on them for that long, for one reason and another, we wanted to kind of bring them together. There's a lot of vocal tracks on this album, and in fact we have, sorry for another plug this early on, but we have a big show coming up on the 8th of October, so probably just after this episode drops. That is going to be at Earth in Hackney, Earth in Hackney, really fantastic venue. A second only to Wilton's, in my opinion, as a beautiful venue.That's in Hackney, quite a big kind of theatre environment, so seated gig, but a lot of fun. We've got, I think about nine or 10 different guests coming down for that show. Loads of the vocalists, we've got DJ Yoda, Ola Onabole, who you heard from a couple of episodes back, who's gonna be joining us.I've just come from a rehearsal with him today and the band and it's sounding amazing. So anyway, another plug, there you go, 8th of October and there is actually also a discount code for that if you want to come along to that one. Again, exclusive to you people, the discount code for that is origin with an exclamation mark.It's all caps origin with an exclamation mark and that will get you a fiver off the tickets for that. So it's 8th of October. So quick, hurry and get those tickets.If you haven't already, it's gonna be a really mega show. It's a lot of work getting an album out and I think since the last one, of course we've had a pandemic. Some of the band have moved out of London.It's been incredibly complicated thing to pull together and it's kind of an exhausting thing in the face of everything else. A lot of our careers have been slightly restructured. Before the pandemic, Hackney Colliery Band was probably the main thing that a lot of us were doing.We were doing at least 100 gigs a year, sometimes 120, 130 gigs a year with Hackney Colliery Band and as an associated sort of spin-off, smaller band that does private events and stuff. So it was really, really busy time for the band. And then of course the pandemic kind of changed things.We've restructured a bit, our careers have gone in slightly different directions. I'm doing a lot more composing and mixing and producing and that kind of thing. Some people are doing more teaching, some people have got new projects.So it's been a lot of work getting it together, but I'm really excited that it's finally here and the band's been busy again, of course touring in Norway. And some of the travel I've been doing has been some private events that the band has been doing. So yeah, it's great to get the band back on its feet, but of course trying to fit this in around everything else has been an interesting challenge.And part of the reason that this podcast is delayed is that basically, because it's been an enormous amount of work. The amount of work it is to get an album out at the best of times, especially for an independent artist, is huge. It's a huge volume of work.I think it's easy to underestimate as a sort of general public, but you've got to do the PR, the press, the marketing that, you know, these days, of course, social media is incredibly important. So all sorts of stuff for that. We're, there's quite a lot of us in the band.And although we're very lucky, we do lots of great stuff. The finances are not easy, especially post pandemic. So, you know, we can't really pay loads of people to do lots of extra stuff for us.So we do a lot of it ourselves. And yeah, anyway, it's a lot of work to do. It's a lot of very rewarding work.It's a lot of really fun work in some cases, but it can be a big old, a big old slog. And of course that's on top of trying to be able to play your instrument well enough that you can actually get through the gigs that are part of releasing an album. So alongside everything else, it's been a lot to get this record out.So forgive the slight self-indulgence of recognizing that to you guys. But yeah, I just want to say thanks to the band, especially Luke and Ollie, my partners in crime, in writing the music and producing it and all of the rest of it. So thanks to them and all of the musicians who've played with us.We've got this core of three or four of us with me, Luke and Ollie and Ed on the tuba, but we've probably had, I reckon, over a hundred musicians who've played with us over the years. So there's lots of fantastic musicianship going on, loads of different approaches and styles and things. Anyway, so yeah, just a little public acknowledgement for the great work that everyone has done on this record and on all of our live stuff.So thanks guys. I'm going to play this interview now. I have a little chat on stage at Wilton's with Luke, Ollie and Ed, and then you're going to hear some music from the four of us, plus Valeria Clark, who you would have heard from back in I think episode two, I think it was, of the podcast very early on, but who features on this record with this tune called Floresse, amongst other things.Stay tuned for some beautiful live music at the end of this interview. But meanwhile, here we are in Wilton's Music Hall back in January 2024. Has anyone seen the band Hackney Colliery Band before?Yeah, a few of you. We did a week's residency here in 2022, I think it was, called Explorations, in which we experimented with a lot of new music, which is going to go towards our new album, which we're going to talk about shortly. We played with lots of collaborators.For those of you who haven't heard of us or seen us before, the name Hackney Colliery Band is obviously a nod to the traditional brass bands of Britain and the great heritage therein. But of course, it's a slightly tongue-in-cheek name, but it's also paying homage to that great tradition. We imagined what it would be like if there were a traditional colliery band but in Hackney, with all the different music that goes on there, and the different cultures and the different styles that happen there.These are of course, the powerhouse rhythm section of Hackney Colliery Band. Yeah. So let's give it up for Luke at the end.Luke, Ollie in the middle, and Ed on the tuba.So when I was putting this show together, I thought it would be really interesting to get the band here, but not the whole band, just to do a kind of little stripped down version. There's nine of us who are on stage at any one time. I guess the kind of creative team us four, Ed newly, but also for many years, Luke and Ollie and I have written all the music.But I guess firstly, the thing I wanted to just ask about was why, I mean I know the answer to this partly, but I just wanted to ask about why we did the Split Kit idea, because there's two drummers, right, which is not an easy, two too many in Ed's opinion. We decided to do this early on in the band. Can you, maybe Ollie, you could sort of tell us why that was.I think I remember one of the first gigs was an outdoor gig, or I think we were at Spitalfields Market, if you know that place, which is an amazing market. It was a walking gig. I think we were marching around a bit and then doing some stationery stuff.But in order to do the walking bit, we needed to cut the drum kit in half, and someone take sort of the low end, the low frequencies and bass drum and toms, what have you, and someone take the snare drum. So I think that's originally where it came from, and it just enabled us to be a bit mobile, whilst still keeping the variety of frequencies that we needed to produce the grooves, essentially.Yeah, exactly, and I think it's also something we did invent, definitely, like when we first talking about it, Luke, like one of our early inspirations was New Orleans, right? You went there quite early on in the history of the band, I think, and were quite inspired by some of the drumming there.Yeah, I don't know if it was that early on, but yeah, obviously, as much as it's not like we invented it, New Orleans do it, they've been doing it for a hundred years or however long before we thought of it, invented it, a lot of it is based on that, the New Orleans marching band tradition, which probably was based on some kind of strange, pseudo-classical music before that.I mean, I think it comes from that melting pot in New Orleans, isn't it, where you've got European music meeting the blues, essentially.Yeah.So you've got European marching bands.So the history of New Orleans marching bands.Yeah, here we go. Yeah.In a very short ways. John Philip Sousa was this guy who created this instrument called the sousaphone. It's basically like a marching version of a tuba that he invented and called, named after himself, the sousaphone, modest.Although the same as the saxophone, Adolf Sax. He was bored of when he was writing all these marches for people walking around the streets, of the tubas pointing upwards and then being not heard. He couldn't hear his bass lines and they weren't loud enough.So he invented this thing that you wear that points forward. Now those marching bands are up in the north. This is during segregation and slavery.And as slavery was abolished, the marching bands and the instruments would move down from the north of the country, all the way down to the south, the deep south, like Louisiana, which is where New Orleans is based. And you'd have all these surplus of old instruments, ancient instruments being co-opted and used for the new music that was around that people were now allowed to play because they were freed slaves. And be able to play vibrant music that was, again, like you guys said, a mishmash of all the different cultures and sensibilities that were drawn to New Orleans as a port town and used these brass band instruments that were sousaphone, drums, split kit, trumpets, trombones, saxophones, and that's kind of where the history of it came from.Yeah, so it's a really, really interesting history, and as we've said, we were very inspired by that early on because obviously it's fantastic music, but I think it's fair to say that we moved away from that style, at least, fairly quickly. We were very inspired by that, but certainly speaking for myself, I was very keen that we didn't become a kind of middle-class London white version of this amazing music from New Orleans that came from a very different place than we do. So, much as we were kind of inspired by that, we've been very much trying to do our own thing with it as well.I think that's right, isn't it?Yeah. I mean, it's the same as what's rock music. Rock music is English people taking American blues in earlier forms of that type of thing, and just doing it a bit differently, and I think that's what you've got to do.So, obviously, you can be inspired by a line-up, whatever the instrumentation is, but then you're going to do something different. You're going to have different material that you're inspired by. So obviously, we've taken tunes by Prodigy, great British bands like the Prodigy.That's what you do, isn't it? As a musician, you take things.But we've got a new record coming up, because we've done, I think, five albums now. We've been going for a fair while, and the most recent album was called Collaborations Volume One, which we did in 2019, which, again, we were really trying to embrace this idea of being kind of genre agnostic and not needing to stick to, okay, well, you're a brass band, so this is how you're supposed to sound. That started a long time ago with us when we, as Luke says, when we started doing things like Music by the Prodigy and so on, and with our own music.We've kind of been exploring that more and more over the last few years. Ollie, maybe just talk a little bit about Collaborations Volume One and then Volume Two is coming up.When you're a band like us and you start off doing the kind of party scene, what have you, that's a whole load of fun, and then you just sort of think to yourself, well, where do we go from there? And then you realize you can go anywhere. So you start to look at who you might like to appear on your record and you try your best to get those people on it.So we were super lucky to get Melatua Stake, if you know, the Ethio Jazz King on the last record, which was incredible. And then just branch out from there. And this record really, I think, is going to be super interesting.We've got a whole bunch of incredible singers, instrumentalists from all walks of music involved. And I'm just, I think it will showcase the kind of diversity that we can bring to it. That we can move away from the brass band party thing, which is super cool.But at the same time, hopefully we've got something more to offer.Yeah, I think it's something that we love. But I think it's just, as Ollie says, showing the variety of what modern brass can sound like and kind of reconceptualizing this idea of what a brass band is, I think. We're going to do that now.As Ollie says, the next record is definitely, we thought the last one was pretty out there with ethio jazz, spoken word and all sorts of stuff. But this next one has got harp, it's got shells, it's got a lot of vocals, it's got all sorts of really interesting stuff on it. This is a fairly typical HTTP situation where Luke's looking at his phone while we do this.But I think that's because he's checking out the music that we're about to play. There we go. That's why he's looking at his phone.I assume, to be honest, it's often if Luke's looking at his phone, it's because he's playing chess.No, I had to delete you off my phone. I'm too addicted to it. No more chess.No more chess. Okay. Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen you play chess actively in a gig, luckily.Well, you haven't been paying attention. I was always playing chess.So, this is a tune, on the new record, this is the first time we've played this together. It's going to be on the new album, Collaborations Volume Two. And of course, my obsession with playing shells, as you may have noticed, has got a little bit out of hand.So, we couldn't make a record, it felt like, without sticking some shells on it. And so, this is a tune I actually originally wrote for one of the shows I was supposed to be doing with Robin Ince during the pandemic called Sea Shambles. It was a big show at the Albert Hall, all about the sea, it was going to be an amazing guest.I was so excited about it, then the pandemic happened, of course. So instead, we did it a kind of online version, and I wrote this tune, it is called Flouresse, because I do a lot of underwater photography, and it was inspired by night diving, diving at night, and you wear these kind of lenses, and you shine a particular type of light on the coral and the fish, and it is really, really trippy. It is kind of fluorescent, and some of the corals glow, some of it does not.It is absolutely amazing, I urge you to check it out, it is very little understood phenomenon as well. So really interesting, and I wrote a tune based around that, it is called Flouresse.So, there we go, little piece of abstract, underwater-themed music for you there. And that is of course from our album, Collaborations Volume Two. And on the record, it's obviously filled out with full brass and a lot more production and all sorts of shiny, polished stuff going on.That was very much a live recording with just a few of us giving you a sense of what it was like. I should say that that track isn't necessarily representative of the rest of the album. If you prefer vocal stuff, there's loads of vocalists on this new album.I think we've got six vocalists joining us, seven vocalists maybe, joining us at the gig at Earth on the eighth of October. And a lot of the record is kind of more upbeat, almost even poppy, soulful vocal stuff. So if you like that, that's there as well.In fact, you know what I'll do is at the end of this episode, instead of the theme tune, I will play it out with a track from the album, kind of more vocal track from the album. So you can check that out as well. And we have some beautiful double vinyl available as well.The album is out on the 11th of October, so you can get it then. You can pre-order it from Bandcamp. Or if you come along on the 8th to our gig at Earth in Hackney in London, using the discount code ORIGIN, with an exclamation mark, then you can buy it from us in person before it's even officially out.So it's beautiful double vinyl. If you do come to the show, do come and say hello. It would be lovely to meet some podcast listeners in person.But yeah, anyway, hopefully see some of you on the 8th. The album's out on the 11th. Plug over.So now we're back to the Arctic because you may remember back in episode 20, I talked to a range of people from Hemnersberger. I spoke to the bitchy big boobies bang band, very funny group of brilliant women singing folk music and having a lot of fun. And but there's all sorts of stuff going on at this amazing festival, the Hemners Jazz Festival and this tiny little town, very picturesque town.Music from all over the world, including Syria. And the next person I'm speaking to is a wonderful musician from Syria. I saw her gig and I thought I really must try and talk to her after her show and maybe get her to demonstrate some of her instruments and talk about her background and what brought her to music, what brought her to the type of music she plays.So anyway, without further ado, back to the Arctic via Syria. Would you mind introducing yourself?Yes. My name is Nawar. Nawar Alnaddaf.I come from Syria. I have been in Norway almost nine years soon. I studied Arabic music when I was there in Syria.When I came here as a refugee, and I had my journey long from Syria here, then I actually, in a way, I learned a lot about other music from other countries. I really wanted to continue my studying and my playing. Then I started studying at the Norwegian Academy of Music, which was very interesting because I had somehow to learn a new language to communicate with other musicians, which is really interesting for me to introduce or to communicate with other musicians how to play my music or how to learn other music.And when you say you learned on the journey over, was that learning different styles from other people you were traveling with or?Actually, my journey start when I start listening to the music from other countries. And when I was in Syria, for example, I started listening to jazz or fusion jazz and like Arabic musicians was trying to play jazz. So I find it so interesting.But it was so difficult to learn it because I'm in country like it's really difficult to learn western music and somehow. But when I came here, I found like now I'm in a place where which is really impossible to do that, to find musicians who is playing this music. So I think my journey started from that place, from Syria actually.And then when I came here, I found it possible to do it, to start studying.And did you, so you hadn't played the, any of your instruments before you came to Norway or you played already?Yeah, I started playing the Oud when I was 14 years old.Okay.Because I wanted to develop my voice actually. And like when you, when you are a singer and Middle East, it's like here, like people, when they sing, they play piano or they play the guitar. So when I went to my music teacher, he told me like, you have to play Oud.And I actually, I didn't want that because my father, he used to play the Oud. I'm like, oh, I don't want, I don't want to play.You don't want to do what your parents do. Yeah, exactly. But I ended up like, I'm stuck with the Oud.You're stuck with it, it's your destiny.Yeah.So speaking of the Oud, can you talk to me a little bit about the instruments?I mean, it's quite similar to lute, the European lute. It's a little bit bigger, has like a bigger body and a shorter arm, I can say. And it has six strings.Five of them are double strings, which is like make it possible to make more overtones and more reverb. And it's without frets. So it makes it easier to play microtones, like the violin or any other instruments, like with the contrabass.Yeah. It's easy to play the microtones to play the skills that we have in the Middle East, the macan, we call it.And that's because the scales in the Middle East are very different from the scales in Western music, right? So we divide our octave, so C to C or whatever, and ba ba into 12 tones. Exactly.12 semitones. But you in Syria and other places divide it?For 24. 24 tones, yeah.Could you just demonstrate those tones?Yes. I kind of play, say, and I play the Oud with the, what do you say in English?Like a plectrum?Plectrum, yes. It's like a longer plectrum, which makes it easier to play faster. It's not like the guitar, it's short plectrum.It's long one and thin. So, if I want to play from C, for example, this is C, this is D. Here, I have a quarter tone.If I want to play normal E, it's like this.Like a normal major scale. But if I want to play the quarter tone and the third tone of the scale, it will be like this.And I'm going to play a scale called Drust, which is very Arabic scale, has the third and the seventh tone with a quarter tone.So if you could just play that between that third again, so we can hear that third next to the other note. So that's a bit higher than we would normally hear that.Higher or lower than the eighth?Between the minor third and the major third, right?Yes, exactly.And this reminds me a bit of the blues in the West, right? Cause in the blues, we have major and minor thirds. So you have that kind of tension, that clash between them.So in a sense, this is sort of same idea, but playing with that perception, I suppose.Yeah, exactly.Yeah, really interesting. Okay, amazing. We were talking about the shape of it.I suppose it looks like a nut, I suppose, or a pair, that kind of shape, isn't it?Exactly.Can you just talk me through the strings again? We were just talking about them. So you've got these pairs of double strings and one, that's just a single string.And why is that?I think because, to be honest, I've always been asked this question. I'm not sure why, but I think because it's a bass string and I don't need to have it double because it's so thick.Because it's too low, so it would be too, right, too much pulsing or something between, right.This is my analyzing.Yeah, that makes sense, that makes sense.So, yes, and you can tune the Oud in different ways. There is no one like, there is Arabic way, there is Egyptian way, there is Turkish way. But I tune it like C from the highest string.C, G, D, A, G, D.Interesting.Yes. So I like, sometimes I change the D, the bass to C if I play a song on C, for example. So I have like a string with C.So you can, or I change the G, the second bass string to F or to E sometimes. Yeah.Yeah. And would you be able to play something for us? Yes.Fantastic, so beautiful. And I noticed there's a couple of things, there's that when you keep going down to the bass string, right, so this is a kind of pedal.Yes, exactly.It's really effective. And the other thing is the way you play with a plectrum is often very fast, you sort of tremolo it, isn't it? Yes.And there is a lot of way to play, but this is what we have the plectrum, to play fast and rhythmical. That's why, I mean, it's a little bit challenging to play chords on the Oud, because we don't have frets and because we play more rhythmical and melodic tunes.It's true because it's mainly single lines, isn't it? Or with a couple of extra notes sometimes. Yeah.And what do you know about the history? What can you tell me about the history of the?It's really difficult to know where it's come from, the Oud. Some people call, I say that it's coming from Iraq, or from Iran, from this area, actually. So it's difficult to know.And the Arab took it from the Middle East to Spain, and then it's become lute, and then it's become guitar. So it's actually difficult to know exactly the history of this instrument.It's one of those instruments, I suppose, or like pretty much all instruments, where they take influences from different places.Exactly. And some people say like it's the Oud came from Lira, the ancient Lira also. But it's a very old instrument.It was four strings in the beginning, and then a scientist, Ziryab, a very known musician and science person. So he added the fifth string to the string. And then after a while, they found out we should have six strings.Ah, okay, okay.Because it was a very long time ago they had six strings.Yeah, I think about 600 years ago, it was four strings in the beginning.I see. Right, right, right. And I guess there's influences from all over the place.As you say, maybe ancient Greece, and then it comes up here or maybe the other way around. Yeah, these instruments get crossed over and then adapted. And it's really beautiful. You have some really nice kind of wood carving, I suppose. Yeah, it's lovely. And you played another instrument that I'm interested in as well.Is that the ney? Is that? The ney.Yeah, ney, ney. Yeah, yeah. Which is lovely.I'm a trumpet player. And I play some other wind instruments. And so it's really always interested by flutes.Would you be able to show me the ney?Of course. The ney, it's a little bit challenging always for people who want to start playing the ney because it's difficult to find the sound in the beginning. But when you make the sound, I found it easy to play.Well, for me, when I started to play ney after the Oud, I was 19 or 20. It has seven holes, six from the front and one from back.Gotcha.So this is the tone of this instrument. So my ney, it's on E.Okay.Yes.So it's like a, people might know the Irish Tin Whistle where you pick a key and you have lots of different whistles and different keys.Yeah. You can play some keys on this ney, but it's easier if you have, for example, if I want to play something on D, it's easier to have my ney on D. Yes.Just to describe it, it's made of bamboo?Bamboo.Bamboo, yeah. So it's a piece of bamboo about an inch in diameter, with some string wrapped around it in places or some twine, and then these holes quite evenly spaced.If it's like taller ney, then it's deeper, the key. If it's short ney, then it's very like a high note.And is this somewhere in the middle of this one? Are you playing now?It's easy to start to play, or as a beginner to start on E or on F. Actually, I start playing ney on F. So F ney, it's the easiest ney to play, because it's exactly in the middle almost there.So this one is on E.We better hear it, I think.It's not easy to play the major on the ney, or the western minor. So you always play something between or some half, half. But I will play Arabic scale on the ney.Beautiful. And it's played in an unusual way, isn't it? It's not like a Western flute where you blow over the hole to get the sound.No. You blow through it, but from the side of your mouth.Yes. So I put it on my, like the corn of the mouth. And what is the sound of?Whistling.Yeah, and I try to whistle.How you whistle, so. Interesting. Ah, interesting.So yeah, so.Interesting.I'm not doing that, but it's the same way, like to learn how to do it.Do you know much about the history of this instrument? Where it comes from?I'm not sure.No, but it's the same part of the world, right? It's the same.Yeah.And it's been around also for a long time, I think.Yeah.Please feel free to say no to this, but would I be able to have a quick go?Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course.So what's the tip for?My tip, it's like not to put any of your fingers, just to try to make the sound first. Yeah.The left side? Right side?Yeah, the right side. Try to do this position.The side?Do it like this. Yes. And let me help you.Yes. Just do the whistling.Got it, got it, got it.Yes.And it's so normal to make this sound first. It's the second sound, we call it.So it's interesting because you're not blowing straight down it, and you have to sort of blow almost across it, but...Yeah.But with a bit of a seal.Oh, wow, this is amazing. Like all of these, any wind instrument, it's getting the sound is the hardest bit, right? And after that, I mean, it's not like it's easy after that, of course, it's still difficult, but getting that consistent, nice sound.Same with the trumpet. And yeah, it's so interesting as a feeling because you just feel like you're just blowing, whistling and blowing, and then suddenly the instrument comes alive and you have this quite big sound coming out of it. It's lovely, breathy.Try one more time and then...It's good again.And you can make the nature tones, you call it, from the same position.Yes, yeah, overtones.Yeah, yeah, yeah.That's what I was trying to do in failing.But this is the first tone everyone make when they learn it.Let's go again, let's go again, let's go again. Yeah, it's also, it's interesting again, as a trumpet player, people think that the trumpet needs lots of air, but really it needs almost no air, very little air, but just very well controlled. But the flutes, all flutes immediately make me go lightheaded.They need so much more air than the trumpet, and this one especially.And presumably, when you put your fingers down, you can get the equivalent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And would you be able to just play a little note for us?Beautiful. So nice. That's lovely.Thanks so much. That was really interesting.Thank you. There's one more question that I like to ask most of my guests, and that's a big, much bigger question, but that's, what's the point of music?Oh, the music is the point. That's a good answer. Yeah, I think so.Yeah? It's his own, it's his own point.Yeah. I mean, for me, I mean, it's very important. My life, I mean, like it's sometimes, it's my reason why I'm living.Yeah. It's like to continue to enjoy the life somehow. I mean, there is a lot of reasons, of course, but I think it's somehow something very spiritual or some very religious and the music.Yeah. How we connect as humans with each other by the music. Yeah.Everything about the music is like, it's the point. The music is the point.That's a great answer. Your heritage and your history as a refugee. How does music interact with that identity?Has it become more important to, for example, to keep your musical traditions alive now that you're not in Syria?Yeah. Actually, I'm not trying to keep my tradition alive. It's more I'm trying to change my tradition somehow.But I have it in my baggage. I studied it and I learned it and I heard it in all my life. And I have it inside me.And now I'm trying to explore something else by using the same music that I know from before. But it's, of course, the music has been very important for me to survive in Norway, actually, to meet new people, to socialize with other musicians and to continue to exist.Brilliant. Thank you so much. That was fascinating.I really appreciate it. And thank you again to Nawar Alnaddaf for that really lovely interview and some beautiful no playing. I tell you what, it's much harder than it looks.It's this, you know, this sort of small bamboo flute and you think, oh yeah, that can't be that hard to get a nice sound out of. That is incorrect. You have to sort of play out of the side of your mouth as I mentioned there.Do check out her work and the other work she mentions there and those beautiful instruments, the Oud and the Ney. Right, I think that's about it. As I mentioned, no genre tombola this episode, but lots in the pipeline there.I'm currently working on Tech House. I'm working on Tonas from Spain and various other things as well. So yeah, lots coming up there.I'm not gonna choose another genre because I've got enough genres to be going on with, believe me, but lots of stuff coming up on the next episode. Once again, I'm gonna make a promise that's hopefully not in vain to try and get an episode out within the next couple of weeks. It's gonna be topical.It's October. In October, brass music happens and I was in Germany earlier in the year and got a lovely interview with a band from Germany playing music that is appropriate to play in October. What could it possibly be?Anyway, meanwhile, everything you've heard today, of course, you can see and hear extended versions on my Patreon. If you go to originofthepieces.com, there's a link to my Patreon. There's a free tier with loads of great stuff and there's also a paid tier.You can give me either one pound or five pounds or as much or as little as you like every month to help keep the show flourishing, but also to join a part of a really nice and growing small community of musically curious folk. There's going to be some more stuff coming up once this album is out, so I can have a bit more time to invest in that community and I've got some ideas for how we might develop that. So if you join up now, it's a good place to say you can join for free, just be part of the community.It's originofthepieces.com and yeah, hopefully see you over there. Meanwhile, thanks again to all my guests, guys from the Hackney Colliery Band and of course, Nawar Alnaddaf there, who I talked to in Hemners. Thank you to Hemners Jazz again for having me and for giving me their stage to interview Nawar.And of course, thank you to Wilton's Music Hall. Come and see me there on the 30th of November and the 16th of January. Not on sale yet that one, but it will be very soon.And of course, if it hasn't happened yet, do come down to see Hackney Colliery Band Earth on the 8th of October. So I think I'm gonna leave you with Hackney Colliery Band and a track from the new album. As I mentioned, there's a lot of vocal stuff on this record and a lot of kind of upbeat, poppy stuff.So I thought I would leave this episode in a happy place with this beautiful song called Sure Feels Good. Speak to you in a couple of weeks. Possibly three, maybe four.Anyway, stay musically curious.