With members from Turkey, Romania and Iraq, Arifa is a sweet hybrid of a band. I caught them in Amsterdam at the Dutch Jazz and World Meeting. They had already made waves with their first CD “Beyond Babylon” and they presented a program of their compositions with musical bridges between each song, so that the performance ran uninterrupted from start to finish. I videotaped until the number of people walking in front of my camera became unbearable. So here are the first 15 minutes or so.
It took a bit of time for me to warm to this semi-ambient music, but I eventually started to savor the flow of it, while appreciating the more animated passages. I even used the music to back up a “home video” I made of my trip to Fes, Morocco. It works wonderfully– music supervisors take note!
