As Ney

“As Ney” is the ECM debut of an unique band. The subtle yet dynamic, softly-pulsating music of Cyminology (formed 2002) takes its cue from the sound of the Persian language. “This was the turning point for us,” says singer Cymin Samawatie. “When I began singing in Farsi, the music of the group started to become unified. There are still elements from different kinds of music” – including chamber jazz, open improvisation, modern composition, art songs, minimalism, even a distant hint of bossa – “but once we brought in the Persian poetry, it seemed to bring everything together. Farsi is a soft language and has a unique melody in itself, it already gives you a sense of direction. And the changing meters of the poetry influence the rhythm and the time signatures.”

Cymin Samawatie writes most of the band’s music, as well as song lyrics which, in the tradition of Persian verse, can be interpreted on several levels: are these love poems or do they hint at wider, spiritual, concerns? And she looks also at words from masters of the tradition including, on this recording, Rumi (1207-73) and Hafiz (c.1325-1389). Cymin incorporates, too, verse of Forough Farrokhzaad (1935-67), Iranian modernist poet and film director, a strong feminine voice, whose cry for personal freedom takes on a particular poignancy in the light of political developments of the last 30 years. Cymin would sooner celebrate positive aspects of Persian culture than dwell on present-day restrictions, but her very profession, lead singer of a band, is not one currently available to Iranian women in their homeland.

Born to Iranian parents in Braunschweig in 1976, Cymin was raised bilingually and bi-culturally, spending summers in Iran. In Germany, as a teenager, she raced through musical idioms in search of a mode of expression. At 13 she led a choir, at 17 had an acoustic-grunge duo with Ralf Schwarz on guitar, singing self-penned songs of alienation. She studied classical music in Hannover, specializing in percussion and piano, and jazz in Berlin where, at the Hochschule der Künste, her teachers included American jazz veterans David Friedman and Jerry Granelli. She credits Granelli for encouraging her to improvise with Persian poetry, and to set it to ‘non-traditional’ music.

It’s not a coincidence that Samawatie begins the album with a setting of Jalaluddin Rumi’s “Song of the Reed-Flute”, from the compendious “Masnavi”: “Listen to the song of the reed-flute / Lamenting its banishment from its home / ‘Ever since they tore me from my reed bed / My plaintive notes have moved men and women to tears / I burst my breast, giving vent to sighs / To express the pangs of yearning / For everyone who is far from his home / Longs for the day he can return.” If Cyminology’s music is still, broadly, “contemporary jazz” – jazz experience being common to all members’ backgrounds – it also aspires to regions beyond it.