Sheva,Omar Faruk Tekbilek
Great American Music Hall,
San Francisco, CA
October 21, 1999
Incense wafted up to the rococo ceiling, drifting past the arched red marble balcony columns of San Francisco's Great American Music Hall. The tie-dyed and belly-bangled set mingled amiably amid the loosely packed tables and dance floor, with Santa Cruz Cabalists shuffling Deadhead-style alongside bearded men in rumpled dark suits and homburgs. This being the second week of San Francisco's citywide annual Jazz Festival, and with Turkish multi-instrumental virtuoso Omar Faruk Tekbilek having played and recorded with such avant-gardists as Don Cherry and Karl Berger, one could also discern the dazed and confused faces of North Beach bohos who took a look at the marquee and wandered in thinking this was a Jazz Fest program.
Israeli (Arab and Jewish bandmembers) tribal roots rockers Sheva opened the concert. Although "Sheva" (or "Sebah") means "seven" in Hebrew and Arabic, the group has picked up a new full-time member, now making them an octet. With the stage draped in fresh white linen and the players sporting either pale or rainbow loose linen clothes, this reviewer felt especially scruffy covering the event for Dirty Linen.
Lead vocalist Vered Cohen cupped her right hand up to her ear, Oum Khaltoum-style, and led the group into "Shechinah," a piece named after the feminine aspect of the Divine in the Old Testament. Cohen adapted the Hebrew verses from King Solomon's "Shir Ha/Song of Songs." Ahmed Taher's burbling brook rhythms on darbouka and daria and Amir Paiss' feathery touch on Persian santour painted softer tones around Cohen's sometimes stridently ecstatic vocals. "Loh ish b'loh isha/ V'loh shnayhem b'loh Shechinah/ No man without woman/ And no such couple without the Shechinah." This chorus was soon picked up phonetically from the crowded floor to the balconies. Its musical message of spiritual unity, embedded in Middle Eastern polyrhythms, would be masterfully echoed later in the evening by Omar Faruk Tekbilek's spiraling Sufi Qawal: "Allahu Allah/ You are One, o' God/ Yuo are beautiful, o' God/ We found the middle way through you, my God/ Your light has always been present/ You have always been the cure."
Sheva also brought the crowded house to its feet with "Akedah/The Bond" as charismatic acoustic guitarist and electric bassist Mosh Ben-Ari added male energy to Cohen's rapturous recounting of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhamed's inner devotional struggles on behalf of a unified Creator. Verses harken back to dreams with flutes beckoning from the east, but the rhythm and choruses insist on taking love and the land to the streets of Jerusalem and even Tel Aviv.
Omar Faruk Tekbilek's combo featured his son, Murat, a law school student playing glorious hooky and soloing like a Mediterranean rhythm demon on darbouka. Playing a standard western drum kit (though in Middle Eastern modalities) was Randy "Crafty" Crafton finessing sticks, brushes, and fleshy palms on cymbals. Tekbilek himself switched between circular breathing on Arabic wood and reed flutes (nay and thalathnay) to dervish accelerated Byzantine runs on the double reed zurna horn that, when slowed down, sounded like bop goosey soul shadows of Don Cherry on pocket trumpet. Tekbilek's baglama (Turkish three-string lute) reveries were sometimes gently nudged down newer roads by Ali Kahya, a splendid keyboardist now based in New York, who brought a synthesizer programmed to play oud and qanun (Arabic lute and zither) in quartertones. Their interplay, especially in the Levantine mode (or maqam) known as Ahjaam, could be scintillating, fearsome, or heartbreaking.
The Sheva octet and Tekbilek combo joined forces for a post-midnight stage-filled jam and were even joined by East Indian chanter and harmonium adept Jai Uttal, who leads his own band of unity ecstatics named The Pagan Love Orchestra. Sheva's "Hillula," a traditional psalm of praise for holy saints, is dedicated on their new Yom V'Laylahl/Day & Night CD to Bob Marley and Chief Seattle. That ecumenical spirit of danced wisdom emerged from the traditions of spiritual unity sharing the stage as well as every nook and cranny of the Great American Music Hall.
— Mitch Ritter (Concord, CA)
