Vancouver-based, award-winning sitar player and composer Mohamed Assani has created compositions for sitar which bring the instrument to the attention of a wider audience.
Assani is known for his genre-defying approach to music creation. He has performed with classical, hip hop, and jazz artists and as a solo player. His Concerto for Sitar and Orchestra with John Oliver was a huge success. After graduating from Dartington College of Arts in the U.K. with a degree in Western Classical and World music, Mohamed learned traditional sitar and is a senior disciple of Ustad Ashraf Sharif Khan of the Poonch Gharana. He has taught at prestigious colleges, including the Royal Academy of Music, and is a leader in taking world music into the classroom.
His last album Wayfinder was a breakthrough for Mohamed Assani. A track lifted from the album, “Lullaby for Guli” has now been reworked, and a new official music video has been produced to accompany it. The track is a passionate ode to mothers everywhere. It is inspired by his love for and mastery of the sitar and his relentlessly experimental spirit, which guides him to fuse electronica, classical, world, jazz, and progressive rock influences in his music.??
“Often a child’s first experience of music is in the form of a lullaby sung to them by their mothers,” Assani says. “This was definitely the case for me: My mother sang me lullabies and told me wonderful stories that shaped me and how I viewed the world.”
In deep appreciation of this act of love, Mohamed Assani wrote a lullaby particularly for his mother and as a tribute to all mothers whose stories and songs inspire us. Wayfarer was written in a rainforest, surrounded by animals and the sounds of nature. That sense of different journeys taking place around you and coming together in the music is strong on the album.
The original version of “Lullaby for Guli” featured an orchestral arrangement with oboe and string sounds overlaid across the melodies of the sitar, but on this single release and video, the sitar takes on the role of the story-teller of the track, the introduction full of warped and mesmerizing effects from the strings. As the track develops, the theme grows, along with an energy and a sense of the spiritual echoes of distant memories and wistful longing.
“Lullaby for Guli” steals your heart, because of the ebb and flow of the melodies and the many textures created on the strings of the sitar. In one track, Mohamed Assani demonstrates the versatility of the sitar as he blends rocky riffs and echoes with wavering Indian phrasing. Assani has taken a beautiful track and added ingredients that strengthen the dynamic content and add colorful phraseology and rhythms.
The music video for Lullaby for Guli was produced by Pool Service Productions.
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