Rose Of Lifta

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Lena Bloch

Label: Fresh Sound Records
Released: 2021
Views: 845

Tracks

Promise Of Return; Mad Mirror; New Home; Climbing Rose Of Lifta; Old Home; Mahmoud Darwish; Wintry Mix.

Personnel

Album Description

"You don’t need to know the narrative of Lifta to enjoy and admire the music of this quartet, its leader and composers, but it’s worth bearing its background in mind. Another writer on exile, less kind than Darwish or Said, but no less penetrating in his way was Sir Vidiadhal Surajprasad Naipaul, known to the literary world as V.S. and to his friends as Vidia. He believed that it was the duty of the artist to live in the world, and that to claim exile as an excuse was a form of self-annihilation. So let’s be clear that Rose of Lifta and its creators obey that injunction. This isn’t a plangent song of sorrow, but an affirmation of life. It is as much about the business of getting gigs, buying food, meeting friends and nursing them when they’re down than it is about “the condition of exile” which is all too easily mythologised and fetishized. It is music about life... a continuous suite of dances and narratives, the voice of someone telling her and their story, arrestingly and thoughtfully. You cannot ask for more in music." ———- Brian Morton, liner notes