MazaJ is interested in the musical heritage found in traditional Middle Eastern techniques of improvisation and making music. We were moved to explore links between heritage and new forms by starting a space to hear and perform new experiments.

MazaJ is a strike against the tyranny of stereotypes and commercial pop. Pop addresses the desire for easy distraction, entertainment, denial of the difficult, easy solace for those with no particular interest in sound and musical art (feel free to take issue!). Other places cover it (see the links), we're not really interested.

The emerging arab experimentalists are asking something else of us - the sounds of new processes, of possibilities, techniques and improvisations. The sound worlds in which we live are opened up, the digital grain exposed. Links with national identities, museum cultures, orientalist packaging and repackaging are all now problematised. If we can't interrogate those who control us, who constrain our lives, we can reclaim and develop our subjective space, our internal spaces, our perceptions can be forged anew. A new generation is refusing to play the world-muzak game.

Arabic music and musicianship has always been an evolving hybrid - interacting with elements of traditions from here and there, from jahiliyyah sources such as indian and greek to contemporary fusions with reggae and dubstep.

Voice, rhythm, microtones, noise, sorrow and ecstasy have always been deep in the sound. There's too much to say here, but check the links for more background.

There are words we need to remember before they disappear into a mish-mash of slick overproduction and gross simplification. MazaJ has been about some of these central ideas - tarab, bahha, taswir al-ma'ná, samma'iyyun.

The ideas around tarab are very important - it means to be moved, to touch and be touched. It is enchantment if we know how to listen. There is much to listen too, for instance bahha, a hoarseness, a break in the voice at the right time, an imperfection that reveals truth. There is taswir al-ma'ná, the timbral shifts and drifting colours that articulate and express meaning. We most of all need to learn to listen - not simply to hear, to be new samma'iyyun - knowledgeable listeners. This requires an open ear, an open heart, and an open mind.  

Sound envelops us (ever been to Cairo?) as a physical and psychological reality that shapes our consciousness. It is about time and it's unfolding and suspension. It penetrates into the secret spaces of the heart.