Belaharr CDs
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Music chosen by a Bellydancer for Bellydancers, arranged by a drummer for dancing, and brought to life by talented musicians. Traditional Middle Eastern rhythms transported to America in 2010.
Perfect for Bellydance!
Featuring a range of rythms and musical sounds from around the world, reflecting musical influences from the middle east to afro-cuban to polynesian to indonesian.
Newly Re-Released!
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The Album
by Sonya Taft
Many bellydancers bought our first CD, Worlds, and asked, When will you do a CD just for bellydancers? I am a dancer first, and a drummer second, so when the chance came to make a CD of Middle Eastern rhythms, I jumped into it with dancers in mind. . We used several common rhythms recognized in the dance scene today, but I also wanted to sprinkle in some more unusual pieces. The 10/8 time signature used in The Fingers of Your Hand is one of my all-time favorites, one I rarely hear used in performances. The musicians we brought in added a whole new depth to our drum sound, adding authenticity, or familiarity, as dictated by the piece. One Shining Moment, especially, was one of those magical accidents in the studio, not something we planned, but now have come to love. I truly hope these songs will inspire dancers to use them in performance, as this music has inspired me to explore new levels of structure as well as the organic flow of creation. Peace and Shimmies |
Liner Notes
by Scott Swearingen
Nine Lives (Karshlimar); Scott: Dumbek, Dun-Duns. Sonya: Dumbek. Ahmed Garcia: Glissintar and Bass Guitar. Ahmed really knows this rhythm, and I love having him play it with us on stage. Its a 9/8, and for whatever reason, his brain just “gets it”. Which is really good, because I have never learned how to put together a good solo in 9, so I just let him do all the work. Thanks Ahmed! The Gypsy’s Skirt (Baladi): Cedric: Violin and Bass Violin. Fadi: Dumbek. Scott: Dumbek. Sonya: Dumbek. The Baladi is one of the basic middle eastern rhythms. The first solo is Fadi, Sonya is the second. Those impossibly fast rolls you hear in Fadi’s solo are not a drum machine, unless you count Fadi's hands as machines, and he just throws them out like you and I would say “whatever”. But that is how people are trained to play drums in Syria, where he learned to play drums. The Journey (Masmoudi): Gives a good feel of what we sound like on stage playing live off each other. We are all playing dumbek. Fadi is on Left channel, Scott on right, and Sonya in the middle. Cedric is on strings. There is a bit of Faerie in the journey between the drums and strings, and ought to allow for all sorts of interesting interpretations by different dancers. Ghazaleh (“peace”): Fadi and Cedric both knew this one, and surprised us with it. We were all warming up in the studio when Cedric began to play it. Fadi heard and let out a yell: “That is a traditional song!”. So they ran through it together one time, Sonya got her zills out, and we recorded it the second time through. The Fingers of Your Hand (Samai): Sonya likes to pick weird rhythms to play and dance to on stage. She taught this one to me (it is in 10/8), and we often use it in performances as a duet with me playing drum and Sonya dancing with her zills. This studio version allowed me to play around with various percussion voices that add to it. Sonya: Dumbek, Zills. Scott: Dumbek, Toere (a Hawaiian log drum), Gongonquin (an african bell), Shekere. Shifiting Sands (Chiftitelli) - A standard slower rhythm that allows drums and dancers to fill long extended silences with spunds and movements. I like to “talk” with my dumbek on this one - that’s the pitch bending you hear. Scott: Dumbek. Sonya: Dumbek and Zills. Fadi: Dumbek. Cedric: strings. One Shining Moment (Wehde). Cedric was warming up on a different night, Fadi heard it, and knew how to make it work with a wehde rhythm. Fadi and Cedric ran through it a couple of times, Scott and Sonya added the Dun-Duns and Zills, and voila! - probably the best song here, the Shining Moment of this CD in my opinion. Fadi: Dumbek. Scott: Dun-duns. Sonya: Zills. Cedric: strings. It's all live - we had never played it before that night. Khaliji (north african/middle eastern). When I met Fadi years ago, we used to go down to Barton Springs pool (in Austin, TX) and play together on summer afternoons, me on djembe and Fadi on his dumbek. We could do that together because Fadi can play unbelievably loud on his dumbek, and the sound of his dumbek and my djembe just worked in really cool ways. It became a weekly thing, with various other drummers adding in at different times. There were days when we had up to 10 drummers and 30-40 people standing on the dam dancing and clapping along. Sometimes the entire hillside would applaud when we finished. And everything from hip-hop dancers to Peruvian singers joining in. We usually just made it up as we went along, but one day I asked Fadi to show me a rhythm he liked. He showed me this one, and it has become my favorite rhythm we play. This version has Fadi on dumbek, me on my djembe, Sonya on her dumbek, and me on the Dun-Duns. It's another place you get a sense of what Middle Eastern dumbek players sound like; the first solo - the one that sounds like a drum machine - is Fadi and his hands. The second solo is Sonya’s, and I do some djembe solos in the third and final verses. The recording has a really nice organic feel to it, and gives a good sense of what we sound like playing around outside. What are we all saying? “Audun” - “bones”. It's a way to call the break, which is built around the bones of the rhythm. |
Liner notes and mp3 cuts for Worlds are here.
Worlds was released several years ago, and I have just finished remixing and remastering it to provide the better sound quality available today. I could not have done it without the excellent engineering ear and skills of Tim Gerron, Studio Manager and Engineer for Music Lab, in Austin, Tx. I can not say enough about Tim and the good people at MusicLab, other than THANKS!
Worlds contains a wide range of rhythms from around the world, which we use as the basis for our own songs. A few of the songs are pure drum and percussion songs, a couple feature Cedric on strings, and the others include Scott and Brett on various instruments. About half the songs are our own creations, mixing african and afro-cuban influences.
Sonya, Brett, and I like to take rhythms and turn them into arrangements that "makes sense" to our western trained ears. So you will not hear "traditional" arrangements; you will hear how we take the traditional patterns and use them to craft songs for our generation. We like them, and think you will too.
They are from all our worlds.
-scott