WXDU : LIVE RADIO BROADCAST : 88.7 DURHAM NC

- the interviews -

march 22 2003

may 24 2003

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11.00am:We started the performance with HAKIM

Marty the DJ: Yikes. In case you're wondering at home, no the building has not colapsed. That was JAAFAR live, here in the studio. JAAFAR being a 4 piece. Do you all want to identify yourselves, or do you perfer to remain incognito?

Troy: Well, w'll start over here with Guhl on percussion and oud...soon to be. And myself Troy Cole on the acoustic bass, Pat Madison here on the acoustic guitar, along with Chris Conley, the man, on percussion and other things.

DJ: Yeah, pounding away. What's the brief history of JAAFAR? Once upon a time...

Troy: We started playing together about last year, last summer(2002), and it's just progressively continued to move, and revolve with many musicians..

DJ: Revolve and evolve?

Troy: Yes, exactly.

DJ: And occassionaly devolve ? (laughs)

Troy: That's been known to happen.

Pat: Hopefully evolution.

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Troy: That last song we did was called HAKIM. It's loosley based off a melody I heard while I spent some time in Egypt. And based the song around that.

DJ: Oh wow.

Troy: The next piece we're gonna do is entitled IFRIKA. It's a combination of North African and West African rhythmic concepts.

DJ: Cool. And what is that largw instrument he has there?

Guhl: This is an oud. This comes from Istanbul, Turkey specificly. It's an Arabic lute. It's what alot of arabic music, and the maqam system is based off of.

DJ: It's a 12 string?

Guhl: 11 string. This is the ancestor to the guitar, it's before they had frets.

DJ: Go for it.

Troy: Alright. This is IFRIKA.

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After performing IFRIKA

DJ: Most excellent. Now I'm still fascinated by that oud. How it has an odd numbered amount of strings. All the other stringed instruments I come across have 6 or 8 or 12 strings. It's just intriging. How do they work with the scales? I'm kinda' cluless about instrument playing. How is it different to play from other things?

Guhl: Well, it's not having the frets makes it posiible to use semitones. In western music we have a note and then you have a note- it's sharp or it's flat, very often. In middle eastern music, a note is half sharp, sharp half flat, flat. So to the new listener of middle eastern music it often sounds out of tune. But this instrument enables you to do that, woth out the frets. There you have it.

DJ: Cool. Is it difficult to learn to play for someone that's use to western instruments?

Guhl: It's helpful to have a background with strings. I started on guitar when I was a kid. It's helpful, but you can't treat it like a guitar. You have to learn it from recordings, and things like that. For not having a real teacher, I'm doing the best I can.

DJ: Sounds good to me.

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DJ: I'm curious to hear a little bit about traveling in Egypt, or play some more music, and then talk about Egypt, or vice versa.

Troy: My travels in Egypt...were totally amazing. To wrap it in a nut shell, the main lesson I learned was that there is life out there. It is out there. And just because it's a little different than yours doesn't make it any more wrong or right. It's just there, as it is. I've always been interested in middle eastern and arabic music. And eventually it just led me there. Just soaked up as much as I could. Unfortuantely I was only there 6 months. In that short time, I was really able to get into the culture, into Cairo, the whole country of Egypt. The people are amazing.

DJ: Did you live with a host family?

Troy: No. My main plan was to go backpacking through Egypt, but as fate would have it, things happen for reasons, and I didn't. And I wound meeting the most amazing people, and became very tight with their families, and I traveled around Egypt, and eventually got my own place in Cairo, and stayed there for a couple of months, and tried to become as Egyptian as I could.

DJ: I'm trying not to make jokes about "Walk Like an Egyptian".

Troy: No , please don't.

DJ: So what would you like to do next?

Troy: Our next piece is entitled BHAKTI. And that's actually a Hindu term. Which means devotion of it's worshippers. A good definition is - The infinite transforms Itself into the finite and appears before the worshipper as god with form. And a good example would be something like the Virgin Mary sightings. It's a powerful thing, and it's what inspires us for this piece. And here we go..BHAKTI.

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After performing BHAKTI

DJ: Alright. JAAFAR in the studio- tearing it up. We've got some kind of mysterious incense. I'm not sure what kind, but it smells good, Incidintely, does the term JAAFAR... , where does that come from?

Troy When I was in Egypt, I took that name. It's actually pronounced ( gaafer).

DJ: I was using the Disney pronunciation. (laughs).

Troy: That;s fine. It's really an old islamic name that they don't use much anymore, and it's very similar to one of the 99 names of Allah. Al-Ghaffar. It means something like "The Sublime Forgiver"- He (Allah) requites evil with good; a covering which connotes an act of "shielding" with forgiveness. So we thought it would be a good name for the band.

DJ: And you all have an album?

Troy: We have a cd out, and you can get that at our web site-jaafarmusic.com. You can get our cd's for $5. We're actually playing tonight at the GreenBean in Greensboro on S. Elm St. You can pick up the cd's there too.

DJ: cool.

Troy: So, we're gonna carry on...

DJ: Please do. Please do.

Troy: This next piece is called MOKSA: THE WHEEL ROLLING OF ITSELF. Which is Hindu. It means release, absolute release from virtue. MOKSA: THE WHEEL ROLLING OF ITSELF.

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After performing MOKSA: THE WHEEL ROLLING OF ITSELF

DJ: All I can say is Greensboro is in for a treat. Do yall have any gigs in this area soon?

Troy: April 6th, we are performing at De La Luz at Temple ball in Carrboro opening up for Rasinhill. That will actually be one of our electric sets. We'll be joined with an electric piano. And then on Easter Sunday mornibg w'ee be performing at Weaver St. Market; the sunday brunch thing from 11am-1.

Chris: What's the date on that?

Troy: April 20th.

DJ: I think we have time for one more.

Troy: Thanks for having us.

DJ: Oh, thanks for coming by. It's a wonder the building is still standing. It's a good thing the window is open.

Troy: Then we are going to close with a Jonas Hellborg composition- DEATH THAT SLEEPS IN THEM.

page 1

May 24 2003

11:00am

Marty the D.J.: We've got JAAFAR live in the studio with Troy Cole, Vishnu Gangadaran, and Naji Hilal, and Chris Conley on the percussion here. Lets roll.

We perform LOTUS FEET

Marty the DJ: All right, That's like a eastern-western jam going on there.

Troy : Well, if you were interested, that was our latest rendetion of a John Mclaughlin piece, "Lotus Feet". An old Mahavishnu John Mclaughlin song. And I'll introduce the band here; we got Naji Hilal on the oud from Lebanon, myself Troy on the bass, Vishnu Gangadaran on the piano, and Chris Conley on percussion. And we are very excited to be here once again.

Marty: What's your gig schedule like?

Troy: Well, actually tonight we are playing in Durham, right around the corner from here on 9th St. at Bakus, a wine bar.

Marty: Oh yeah, the new place that just opened.

Troy: Tha's right. we will be playing from 6:30 to 9:30pm every Saturday evening.. If you like what you're hearing out there people, come check us out.

Marty: Nice wine drinking music.

Troy: Yeah, we're going for the Mediteranin vibe.

Marty: Is there a native drink in Lebanon like Uzo in Greece?

Naji: Yes. It's called Araq.It's the same as Uuzo.

Marty: It has the same intoxicating qualities on unsuspecting tourists?

Naji: It's worse. (laughs)

Marty: All right, let's here some more.

Troy: ok, this next piece we are going to do is titled "Al Malik Al Maluk" , and it is roughly translated as "the king of his kingdom". Now we are going to pick up the pace a little bit.

We perform AL MALIK AL MALUK

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After performing Al malik Al maluk

Marty: well that should get them dancing on the wine bar (laughs). I was thinking the cool thing about this..he's got this one drum here, varying on the angle and how hard he hits, you get this wide range of sounds.

Chris: This is a West African style djembe. And it has an enormous amount of versitility. If anyone were listening and were an authentic djembe player, they would be probably spitting and cursing and screaming and throwing things. It's tuned differently, and played differently, it is very much an ensemble instrument, it's really meant to be played with many other djembe's, so that it's own voice, each singular instrument is supose to be more simpler than I am playing it, but I think that that is one of the magical pieces of this one, tuned differently..

Marty: I think there is a djembe ensemble that plays here at Duke, with the local Capoaria group. One of the drummer's was also a dj, but stopped showing up, so we had to move on.

Chris: Yeah, drummer's are so unrealiable.

Marty: You want to hear another one?

Troy: Yeah, we'll do another one. It's called "Al Baqara", "the holy cow". It's basically ....

Marty: You mean it literally means holy cow?

Troy: Yeah, more or less the holy cow, the heifer. When Moses went up onto the mountain, his followers stayed on the bottom (you know the whole worshipping the cow story), so this is based on that. The whole intifada thing that's been happening over the years, "They try to decieve others, but only decieve themselves and know it not". That's the inspiration for this piece. Ok, so here we go.

We perform AL BAQARA

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After performing Al Baqara

Marty: That's one lively cow

Boooo!

Marty: So the theme of your music is, you take tradtional middle eastern tunes and work them into jazz thing; everybody take a solo and goes back to the main theme. Is that correct?

Troy: Yeah, More or less. In American jazz, and in alot of Arabic music, and Indian middle eastern music, there is alot of the same concepts, and what we hope to do is tie alot of those together musically through maybe Arabic heads and then into improvising, trading solos around that, or taqsim,, improvising, raga, alap, depending on what culture you're in. And that's what we hope to do. Hey , anything can be spiritual.

Marty: For those that can't see this on the radio, the oud's body is shaped like half of a pear, with a couple od soundholes with some intricate ivory laced through the soundholes, how many strings?

Naji: It's 10 double and one bass.

Marty: In Lebanon, do most kids want to grow up and play like rock and roll, or do some of them train on the oud for classical music.

Naji: Half and Half. We have both western and eastern schools of music , and you can go study either classical middle eastern and specialize in it..

Marty: Allright, I think we are going to give the guys in the band a little rest and we will be back soon with JAAFAR.

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Marty: And here is JAAFAR

We perform HAKIM

Marty:All right. Thank you Troy and Vishnu and Naji, and Chris. You can hear them tonight at Bakus wine bar on 9th st.

Troy: Thanks for having us. we really enjoyed it.