Traditional spiritual melodies.
Sufism, or liberal Islamic mysticism, is found across the Islamic world, its music fused with local traditions. William Dalrymple’s selection for this Rough Guide anthology ranges from the traditional, such as the excerpt of ney playing by Kudsi 
Erguner, to various encounters with contemporary commercial music, as in the blend of qawwali, reggae and electronica in a track by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Consequently, the disc is indicative not only of the variety of contemporary Sufi music, but also of the sort of thing embraced by the term “world music”. Dalrymple’s taste leans towards the contemporary, which probably fits the Rough Guide ethos but will frustrate those more interested in the roots of the music.
There is consolation in the accompanying bonus disc, Sufi Fakirs of Bengal, however, containing nine versions of traditional melodies previously unreleased outside India.
THE ROUGH GUIDE TO SUFI MUSIC, various artists, (RGNET/Southbound).
Influential and still widely-admired Armenian-born mystic Georges Gurdjieff (d 1949) dictated hundreds of original melodies, largely inspired by monodic Middle Eastern music, to his disciple Thomas de Hartmann, who notated them in piano arrangements most suggestive perhaps of an un-ironic Erik Satie. Titles are indicative: Chant from a Holy Book; Assyrian Women Mourners; Ancient Greek Dance, and so on. Levon Eskenian has here selected and rearranged some of the tunes most apt for traditional instruments, such as duduk, oud and saz, with sufficient freedom for them to sound idiomatic. Considering the multiple levels of borrowing, imitation and adaptation taking place, responses might be as mixed as towards Gurdjieff himself, but the high quality of the performers’ musicianship wins the day.
MUSIC OF GEORGES I GURDJIEFF, The Gurdjieff Folk Instruments Ensemble, Levon Eskenian (dir) (ECM/Ode).
At the heart of this recording is a commemoration of the arrival of St Francis Xavier and, with him, Christianity in Japan in 1549. About half the disc is based on the Gregorian hymn, O Gloriosa Domina, imported by Xavier, alternating with expert improvisations around it on instruments such as shakuhachi and biwa. It makes for a well-integrated, often austerely meditative, but original and very beautiful package. Liner notes are frustratingly thin – not in quantity but in detail – a quibble one can apply to many of Savall’s otherwise beautifully presented recordings.
But the more important generalisation about Savall is that the conception and realisation of his discs are brilliant, and this is no exception.
HISPANIA & JAPAN: DIALOGUES, Montserrat Figueras, Prabhu Edouard, Ken Zuckerman, Masako Hirao, Hiroyuki Koinuma, Ichiro Seki, Yukio Tanaka, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, Hespérion XXI, Jordi Savall (dir). (Alia Vox/Ode).