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Episodes Season 1 · Inside

Episode 3March 10, 20262:07

Tarab: when the room sings back

Bassel Kanaan, a concert sound engineer in Amman, on tarab: the enchantment of music that reaches you, and why he leaves the audience in the recording.

0:00 / 2:07The word

With Bassel Kanaan · Concert sound engineer, Amman

Show notes

Tarab is the state music puts you in when it truly lands: joy, but heavier. Bassel Kanaan mixes concerts in Amman and explains the people who make it happen, the mutrib on stage and the sammi’a in the seats, who hear the turn in a melody a second early and call out before it comes.

In this episode

The singer, the listener and the circle between them
Why a line is sung ten times
Recording a room that answers back

Transcript

Click a time to play from there.

0:00
OdileThis is The Long Vowel. I'm Odile Marchetti.
0:04
TeodorI'm Teodor Halvorsen. Our guest works behind the music: Bassel Kanaan, a concert sound engineer in Amman. Bassel, your word.
0:13
BasselTarab. It's the feeling music gives you when it really reaches you. Joy, but heavier. A kind of enchantment.
0:22
OdileIs it the music or the feeling?
0:25
BasselBoth. We say a singer is a mutrib, the one who brings tarab. And there is even music called tarab music: the old, long songs.
0:36
TeodorWhat does it look like from the outside?
0:39
BasselPeople close their eyes. They lean forward. Somebody calls out, Allah, or Ya salam, in the middle of a phrase. In a classical concert in Europe that would be rude. For us, that's the sign it is working.
0:54
OdileSo the audience is part of it.
0:57
BasselThe audience is half of it. The singer repeats a line because the room asks for it. Ten times, maybe, and each time a little different. The song gets longer because the people want to stay inside it.
1:11
TeodorCan anybody feel tarab?
1:14
BasselAnyone can, but there are listeners who know where it's coming. We call them sammi'a, the ones who listen well. They hear the turn in the melody one second early, they react, and the singer feels them react. It goes round in a circle.
1:31
OdileLike a conversation.
1:33
BasselExactly a conversation. Sometimes with no words in it at all.
1:39
TeodorAnd you are at the mixing desk at the back.
1:43
BasselYes, and my job is strange. For tarab, I must not make it perfect. If I cut the noise of the audience, I cut the tarab. So I leave their voices in: the applause in the wrong place, the calls. That is the recording.
1:59
OdileBassel Kanaan, thank you.
2:01
TeodorThat was tarab. Next time, a word from Korean about reading a room.

Download the transcript: WebVTT · SRT

In this episode