”You can’t learn anything about love,

because love only comes in a state of grace” (RUMI)

What we need to know or to experience, in order to live a life significantly better, is sometimes a step away from us, hidden by the urban noise or by the noise of our minds. The encounter… is a matter of choice.

That evening, Bucharest was under the “siege” of three events, that were catching most people’s attention: The National Theatre Festival, The Pilgrimage on the Feast of Saint Demetrius the New and a new Indian summer, that filled the parks with people seduced, in the twilight, by the warm air and by the blossoming nature.

In one of the concert halls of the “Tinerimea Română” National Art Center, people of different ages, nationalities, ethnicities, religions, professions had gathered (I was happy to see the famous theatre director Alexander Hausvater) and were greeting each other with a smile, a warm embrace or with just a glance of simply recognition of a mutual feeling or expectation.

The occasion of the meeting was the concert launching the album “Ancestral Dialects” , but everyone experienced the meeting in his own particular way and, after the concert, most of the people in the audience left back home not only with the launched CD, but also with another way of looking at the world or towards itself.

”Ancestral Dialects” is a research project by the Iranian artist Ali Asghar Rahimi, composer, vocalist and master of the tambour, which recovers and encompasses sounds and ancestral beliefs from the Persian culture, but also the most beautiful lyrics of the Persian poet Mawlana Jalaludin Rumi (Moulavi), in a musical discourse, mystical, transcendental, inspiring peace and meditation.

His partners on this path to self-discovery and to knowledge the world through music are, just as they were in the album launching concert, Mircea Kirally, Romanian composer of theatre and film music, the cellist Attila J. Szabo, artist of Hungarian origin, member of the State Philharmonic ”Transilvania”, from Cluj – Napoca, and Elena Ivanca, actress of the National Theater in Cluj – Napoca. Together they succeed, effortlessly, despite the cultural and linguistic obstacles, to find the right way, both to each other, as well as to the finest strings of the soul, which vibrate and resonate in the whole being of the listener, regardless of nationality, religion or ethnicity.

It’s a “return to innocence”, to primordial truths, triggered by the artist Ali Asghar Rahimi‘s deep, mysterious, extra-telluric voice and by the sound of his tambour that he masters skilfully. Mircea Kirally, a crossover artist, blends into his music, at seaboard, archaic themes, with modern arrangements, and from his fingers give birth to rhythms and poems of nature. The cellist Attila J. Szabo is another distinct presence, sometimes playful, temperamental, other times subtle, as a wordless but meaningful accompaniment, in this scenic dialogue, in which the individuality and the artistic personality almost dissonant of every musician melt unitarily in the flow of interpretation. The warm, softly penetrating voice of the actress Elena Ivanca, also becomes music, when giving voice to the Persian poet Rumi’s lyrics. She knows how to find the perfect tempo and the right tonality for each word she speaks, to the point that, through her voice, poetry sounds like music, and all together, sounds and words, substances from which the soul is made.

You close your eyes and you listen… two Romanians, an Iranian, a Hungarian, you hear Romanian language, Persian language, you hear a seaboard, a cello and a tambour, but you no longer feel… any difference of nationality, religious difference, or any kind of difference whatsoever… just a magnetic vibe, in which the past blends with the present, reason with emotion, the sound of the strings and the flaps, with the sounds of nature, the notes become the Word, while the poems, the music of the soul…

The boundaries of time and space melt into this musical, mystical, spiritual encounter, which easily finds its way to the spectator’s soul, by the depth and, at the same time, by the simplicity of the message, so almost no one isn’t anymore, listening or performing, spectator or artist, Iranian, Romanian or Hungarian, Christian, Muslim or Jewish, young or old, woman, man or child, no one is, anymore, in this space and time redefined by music and poetry, anything else but… pure soul. And you melt into the understanding of this moment, no matter how fleeting your ability to look into the truth’s eyes would be and you know that there is no other universal truth than love, that, in fact, “Ancestral Dialects” are ”The Dialects of Universal Love”. And you become one with the voice of the Iranian artist Ali Asghar Rahimi, a voice like from another world and from another time, you become one with the light, musical rain that rips from Mircea Kiraly‘s synthesizer, with the beats of heart that can be heard from Attila Szabo‘s cello resonance box and with the whisper, like an inner voice, of Elena Ivanca.

Probably there is not anything more beautiful and pure like this little musical jewellery soaked with spirituality, created by the four artists, and probably that “Ancestral Dialects” is a concert that UNESCO should itinerate not only in the countries of the artists’ origin involved in the project, but in all the Unesco Member States, as an international message of peace and understanding, of respect for life.

For Mawlana Muhammad Djalal-u-Din RUMI, called “The Prince of Sufi Poets“, one of the greatest spiritual figures of all time, the heart was “the main organ of the perception of reality”. He believed that “love was the greatest sign of God shown to man”, and the divine love, the “spiritual guide” of his life. The only religion: 

I am neither from the east, nor from the west, I am neither the shore, nor the sea

I am neither a treasure of nature, nor the stars from the sky

I am neither the earth, nor the water, the fire or the air

I am neither the heaven, nor the mud

I’m not from India, China or Iraq

In fact, I don’t belong to… this World, nor to the Other

I don’t belong to Paradise, nor to Hell

I am neither Adam, nor Eve

My place is where there is no place

My trace is without trace

I am neither the Body, nor the Soul

Because I belong… to my Beloved,

I gave up on duality, and I saw the both worlds as one

You Are the only One I seek, You Are the only One I know,

You Are the only One I see, You Are the only One I call

You are the first, and the last, the One outside and the One inside

I know no one else but You, The One that You Are

The encounter with the album or with the live show becomes a very personal experience, an ecstatic, almost mystical adventure, or simply a state of detachment from everyday life, and you can discover yourself smiling or weeping, as in an Inner process of purification, where the purity of the music and poetry triggered it into the soul. And you involuntarily think of someone close to whom you would like to give this gift through The Ancestral Dialects album: the return to the true self, towards the ”ancestral dialects” of an universal feeling/emotion.

The side effect when listening to the album or to attending this concert will be that for a few days at least, you will not be able to listen to any other kind of music, except with the sensation that plastics gives you, after you have touched natural fibres, as if after hearing again your true self, no other sound fits into the resonance box of the heart. You listen to the “Ancestral Dialects” and then you move on in life. And you want to know more about Rumi, more about Sufism and Persian mystical poetry, more about Konya, Iran or Persia, more about Ali Asghar Rahimi, Elena Ivanca, Attila J. Szabo or Mircea Kiraly. Or, simply, more about … yourself.

Author: Laura Huiban, journalist, teacher of journalism at the Palace of Children Bacau

Hidden Music (Rumi)

”I wonder
from these thousand of “me’s”,
which one am I?
Listen to my cry, do not drown my voice
I am completely filled with the thought of you.
Don’t lay broken glass on my path
I will crush it into dust.
I am nothing, just a mirror in the palm of your hand,
reflecting your kindness, your sadness, your anger.
If you were a blade of grass or a tiny flower
I will pitch my tent in your shadow.
Only your presence revives my withered heart.
You are the candle that lights the whole world
and I am an empty vessel for your light”

(Source: ”Ancestral Dialects” Album)