Description
Our repertoire is a collection of songs and music from a variety of cultures: We will hear Kurd songs from Syria in the West to Iran in the East, Jewish inspired music,
Indian mouth harp from Rajasthan, as well as Bulgarian and Norwegian music played on the Nordic folk flute willow flute and the mouth harp.
Svein Westad initiated the group, after several years of collaboration with singer and musician Jan Ibro Khelil. In 2015, they produced the CD Sørgesanger for Syria (“Elegies for Syria”) for Etnisk Musikklubb, together with other invited artists. The album was well received both in Norway and abroad, and was ranked by the British music magazine Songlines among the top ten multicultural productions that year. Since then, the group has grown to include five members:
Jan Khelil is from Khobany in Syria. An educated teacher, he grew up learning singing and music from family members. Eventually his special voice became wider known, resulting in invitations to perform at weddings and public parties, like the yearly Navroz – Kurdish New Year – celebration. He is also playing an saz, a long necked lute. After his arrival in Kongsberg in 2012, he soon got to know Svein Westad. The two have given a range of mutual performances.
Musician Mohamad Ali is educated within musical composition and management from his home country Syria. In addition to being a skilled percussionist, he also plays a variety of keyboard instruments.
Sirvan Abdollahi is from the Kurdish region in Western Iraq. He studied both guitar and the violin in his home country, and performed at a varierty of concerts in Iran and Iraq. He is an excellent singer who performs songs in a local Kurdish tradition, as well as songs of Persian origin.
Konstantin Georgiev is from Bulgaria, and educated from the music academy in Plovdiv, in the East of the country. He came to Norway seeking work six year ago, starting off as an entertainer at various events, with the appropriate music. However, his heart lies with the folk music, and he is a considered a gadoulka virtuoso, a small violin that is crucial to Bulgarian folk music.
Svein Westad is known primarily as a folk musician with the mouth harp as his main instrument. He can play most musical genres with this instrument, from Indian ragas to Norwegian folk dances. Since his active involvement with the mouth harp began in the 1980s, he has participated in numerous kappleiker (competitions within Norwegian folk music) and concerts, both in Norway and abroad. The mouth harp has brought him to exotic places like Kyrgyzstan, Yakutia (Sakha Republic), Japan, Indonesia and Nepal. He spent one year as a guest teacher of the mouth harp at the Nepal Music Center in Kathmandu. Svein is well acquainted with rhythms and musical melodies from the Middle- and the Far East.
