Kantara Music and Riadh Fehri

Today, I had the opportunity to meet one of Tunisia's most well-known musicians, Riadh Fehri. The Learn and Serve Program was going up to Sidi Bou Said to visit the Arab Music Museum, and to see Riadh at his office, so I tagged along as, ahem, Amideast support for the expedition (it's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it). After going to the museum and having lunch at a place called Tam Tam (right off the TGM stop - I'd reccomend it), where we ate Brik (a fried salty pastry with a filling, i.e.: egg or meat), octopus, and some other goodies, we went to Riahd's conservatory.


Inside, we talked about the history of musical instruments with him. He musical instruments in terms I'd never thought of before. For example, we talked about the three types of instruments - percussion, wind, and string - and what their natural components are. He said that percussion is the most natural, because even in the womb, a baby is surrounded by the rhythm of his/her mother's heart. He also talked about wind instruments, and its background in nature - the wind whistling past a tree and creating a sound, for instance. He also said that many similar instruments had evolved on the different continents, independent of eachother - he showed us examples from Persia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
After, we had a talk on a subject that's all-too familiar, the demise of traditional Tunisian culture - in this case, its music. The big radio station here is Radio Mosaique, which plays largely American music, along with other western popular music, and Arab music from places such as Lebanon - where most of the Arab pop music comes from. They play almost no Tunisian music (whereas in a country like France, there are laws on the books which obligate statons to play a minimum percentage of local music). He doesn't hold modern music in high esteem - he calls it "false notes," and maintains that electronic music is shifting the emphasis away from the skill of instrument-playing.
Riadh is part of a group called Kantara Music. Call it "Arab-Appalachian Music." You can listen to a few of their tracks on their MySpace page (I like "Wayfaring Stranger") - there's also information available through the Kennedy Center website, since they recently played at the Millenium Stage. Kantara, which means "bridge" in Arabic, is a collaboration between Riadh and several other musicians, including a former State Department foreign service officer named Brennan, who was stationed in Tunis recently. Brennan is an accomplished country musician, and when he came to Tunis on assignment, he sought out the local music scene. Eventually, the group was formed, and now they're doing concerts all over the world. I'm going to see them in July at the Carthage Music Festival, where they'll be playing with the Palermo Orchestra.

Me and Riadh