Ustad Saami’s ‘mind-boggling’ album God Is Not a Terrorist: ‘It’s superhuman’
The 76-year-old music virtuoso released his first record last year. He’s the last surviving practitioner of a 13th century tradition at risk of dying with him
Ustad Saami is a slightly built man with long graceful hands that sweep skywards and then down as he sings, as though conducting a theremin. His hypnotic voice leaps from octave to octave as he homes in on the precise microtones of the 49-note scale of which the 76-year-old is the world’s last surviving practitioner. He performs cross-legged, his eyes wide and hawk-like, flanked by his four musician sons.
Yet for Grammy-winning US music producer Ian Brennan, who travelled to Pakistan in late 2017 to record Saami’s first ever album, God is Not a Terrorist, the humble master of eastern classical music often frightened the daylights out of him. Recording live on Saami’s Karachi rooftop, in marathon sessions that began after sunset and continued long after sunrise, Saami’s voice, Brennan has said, would suddenly escalate to “10 times heavier than anything Metallica has ever produced”.
＼ 最新情報をチェック ／
