[null, null, {"document_url": "https://sarahabed.com/2017/08/01/sacred-music-from-syria-st-josephs-assyrian-choir-and-syrian-music-documentary/", "unformatted_src": "https://i1.wp.com/www.aina.org/images/20150405112626.jpg", "src": "https://i1.wp.com/www.aina.org/images/20150405112626.jpg"}, null, null, {"document_url": "https://sarahabed.com/2017/08/01/sacred-music-from-syria-st-josephs-assyrian-choir-and-syrian-music-documentary/", "unformatted_src": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/s640x640/sh0.08/e35/22709550_1473736899413824_358916492642746368_n.jpg", "src": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/s640x640/sh0.08/e35/22709550_1473736899413824_358916492642746368_n.jpg", "alt_text": "#Aleppo", "rendered_width": 640, "rendered_height": 452}, {"document_url": "https://sarahabed.com/2017/08/01/sacred-music-from-syria-st-josephs-assyrian-choir-and-syrian-music-documentary/", "unformatted_src": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/sh0.08/e35/p640x640/22639536_2063143113914971_706178308059955200_n.jpg", "src": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/sh0.08/e35/p640x640/22639536_2063143113914971_706178308059955200_n.jpg", "alt_text": "My latest article with @mintpress can be read on www.mintpressnews.com/author/sarah-abed/ #KRG, #Iraq, #Kurdistan #Barzani #PMU, #Daesh", "rendered_width": 640, "rendered_height": 800}, {"document_url": "https://sarahabed.com/2017/08/01/sacred-music-from-syria-st-josephs-assyrian-choir-and-syrian-music-documentary/", "unformatted_src": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/sh0.08/e35/p640x640/22710893_139276886718057_3357136825863897088_n.jpg", "src": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/sh0.08/e35/p640x640/22710893_139276886718057_3357136825863897088_n.jpg", "alt_text": "Well that explains it. Clearly it was the Russians \ud83d\ude44 \n#cia #russiaphobia #jfkassassination #jfk #jfkfiles", "rendered_width": 640, "rendered_height": 800}, {"document_url": "https://sarahabed.com/2017/08/01/sacred-music-from-syria-st-josephs-assyrian-choir-and-syrian-music-documentary/", "unformatted_src": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/22637758_739459056255477_6885431328288800768_n.jpg", "src": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/22637758_739459056255477_6885431328288800768_n.jpg", "alt_text": "I really wish people would stop throwing around all these labels. It's really unnecessary and 10/10 they are getting it wrong. \nI was just reading the heading that a certain Anarchist publication (I am not labeling them as such, they do that on their site) wrote for an article of mine that they shared on their site, which I just stumbled on now and they had this to say about the publication that my article appeared on originally \"Part of the problem is that the Kurds are caught between a rock and a hard place. The Western axis within global capitalism is trying to co-opt the Kurds as a tool to be used against the Eastern axis, and the Eastern axis realizes this and is trying to suppress the Kurds. That\u2019s why so many publications that represent the Socialist hard Left are stridently anti-Kurd. The situation is a case study in why we need to build an alliance of separatists and independence movements from the bottom up that are mutually supportive of each other in a way that will make it less necessary for independence movements to receive support from major powers.\" Socialist hard left? What does that even mean? \nYesterday in Spanish someone referred to me as a \"nefarious tankie\". Whether it's a Nazi, radical feminist, anti-feminist, fascist, Assadist, Putinist, Duginist, deplorable, snowflake, an Iranian agent, a Turkish agent etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. x 10000 it's beyond ridiculous and is a clear sign of immaturity. \nWe are not a product that you can just slap a label on, we are humans with views that are spread over a very wide spectrum. We grow, we mature, we change, we learn, we adapt, we discover, we form new opinions, we expand our intellectual and mental horizons. \nWe are like a flowing river, never in the same place twice, filled with life, change and movement. We are not a stagnant body of water. Don't let people box you in. You are not a product but a living, breathing, amazing human being.", "rendered_width": 320, "rendered_height": 320}, {"document_url": "https://sarahabed.com/2017/08/01/sacred-music-from-syria-st-josephs-assyrian-choir-and-syrian-music-documentary/", "unformatted_src": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/s640x640/sh0.08/e35/22639405_2002910469968013_2943846450980716544_n.jpg", "src": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/s640x640/sh0.08/e35/22639405_2002910469968013_2943846450980716544_n.jpg", "alt_text": "Literally me.", "rendered_width": 640, "rendered_height": 335}, {"document_url": "https://sarahabed.com/2017/08/01/sacred-music-from-syria-st-josephs-assyrian-choir-and-syrian-music-documentary/", "unformatted_src": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/22708947_524376301239712_7272226878851645440_n.jpg", "src": "https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/22708947_524376301239712_7272226878851645440_n.jpg", "alt_text": "Be weird, original, unique... whatever makes your soul smile \ud83d\ude0a", "rendered_width": 640, "rendered_height": 640}, null]
Sacred Music From Syria By Ted Swedenburg The Assyrian Virgin Mary Church in Tel Nasri, Syria, was destroyed by ISIS on April 5, 2015.

The artists recorded range from the professional to the amateur. The Lebanese Shia chanter or munshid, Mahdi Kallas, has released a number of recordings in Lebanon. (You can find some on YouTube) He usually records with full instrumental backing, but here he sings to the very restrained accompaniment of a synthesized drone. The absence of accompaniment focuses our attention on the beauty of his voice and his facility for vocal improvisation. Mansour Zayter, a Sunni munshid from Syria, made his reputation in Damascus as a singer in the Sufi tradition, leading a group called Firqat al-Ikhlas al-Shamiya (Spirit of Syria Band), and he too has released a number of recordings. Here Zayter does a slow, mournful Sufi chant, backed by oud, qanun (box zither) and nay (end-blown flute).

Church choirs, some of them quite professional, are present as well. The Mt. Lebanon Orthodox Byzantine Choir, led Joseph Yazbeck and based at the School of Ecclesiastic Byzantine Music, has put out a number of recordings of Byzantine music. Here the choir presents two recordings from the liturgy of the Greek Orthodox Church, sung in Greek. The Choir of the Antonine School of Music is affiliated to the Maronite church, whose history dates to the fourth century CE. The Antonine Fathers School of Music is based at Lebanon’s Antonine University and is devoted to professional and theoretical music training in both Eastern and Western music. The choir’s two recordings here feature a choir, singing selections from the Maronite liturgy, in unison, in Arabic and Syriac (the Maronite liturgical language, a dialect of Aramaic), to organ accompaniment, in a manner that will not sound unfamiliar to Western ears. What will sound remarkable on the other hand are the vocals of the soloist, Nohra Azar, who improvises melismatically, in a style similar to the improvisations of the Muslim chanters like Zayter and Kallas who appear on the album.

At the more amateur, less-polished, end of the spectrum are refugee outfits. A group simply identified as “Syrian refugee children in the Assyrian tradition” are young Assyrians displaced by the Islamic State’s bloody takeover of northeastern Syria. They and their families continue to speak the dialect of Aramaic known as Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, and to use it in their liturgical traditions that date back to the first century. These children gather at an established Assyrian church in Beirut each week to learn and practice old songs from their tradition. Here they sing “Oshanna,” which Western Christians will recognize as “Hossana,” from the Aramaic (and Hebrew) spoken by Jesus. The St. Joseph Chaldean Choir are youth refugees from Iraq, who belong to a congregation that has no permanent worship space that depends on the largesse of established churches to hold their services. They are speakers of Chaldean Neo-Aramaic, which is closely related to Assyrian Neo-Aramaic. The Chaldean choir offers here a traditional hymn to Jesus put in a modernized setting, accompanied by violin and synthesized organ.

These are just a few of the vital recordings on this invaluable album, which manages to present a fine sample of the varied, rich, evolving, and deeply-embedded traditions of religious music in Bilad al-Sham. The recording is a testament to the region’s multi-confessional nature, the complex interconnections between musical practices of Christian and Muslim singers, the persistence of liturgical traditions that go back centuries, and the willingness of current practitioners to develop, innovate and adopt new instruments and styles. The region may be beset by horrible conflict, but the practitioners of religious music, Christian, and Muslim continue to reside together, at least in Lebanon, and to labor mightily, against all odds, to keep their invaluable traditions alive.

Feature Photo Credit Ammar Issa Pinterest Mosque (Al Tawhid) and Church (Mar Elias) in #Aleppo #Syria


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