Rami, a stranger who never travelled

Rami is a street poet.

You are a travelling stranger.
I am a stranger who never travelled.
Why is it like that ? I will anwser with a poem of mine.

Here's Tongue's Talking Head version of Rami's contribution. we thank him a lot for that!

Mozaar's comment about the TH

You know, it’s very funny because when I listen to your Talking Head imitations, it gives me the impression to hear the sound that you are receiving from the Arabic language. When I concentrate on the words I can more or less reconstruct the meaning, but when I listen to it as sound, then I see what you are actually hearing!
It makes me think about a piece of music that I brought with me from Zanzibar. (he plays it). They are singing in Swahili, an African language that has a lot of Arabic influences. To me it’s like if it where a song in Arabic. It sounds like Arabic without being it, like your work. What we are hearing is a tune from a CD I bought from a taxi driver, one of most beautiful music I ever heard. Zanzibar was a place where I felt very much in peace. The architecture, the streets, an island, a small piece of Africa which has fallen down in the sea, a Muslim population, speaking an African language, such a mix, a lot of Indians, Persians, British people… After their revolution in the 40’s, some socialist stuff, the mix of the culture was even obligatory…

Abdul's comment on Talking Heads

Considering your blog, I think it’s a good idea to give people the possibility to make their own mix of the different sounds of Cairo. Hearing your speech imitations I only recognize some words. In the contrary to Ash's opinion, I think that you were right to use the file which speaks about this Arabic man who loves Swedish blond girls because that’s true that a lot of men here think about sexual things and about making love with blond girls.
There is something beautifull in this idea that I can’t express. I think you mean to transfer the human beeing’s feelings. Like if someone would like to talk to the others, to communicate. During this process you move to the position of the other and the other takes your position, it’s a kind of exchange of positions… the great idea : How to accept the other ? How to adapt to the other ? this is a good starting point. The sentences that you are repeating are almost all incorrect, but what matters is the feeling, you can feel some words that I say and that touches you, so this is perfect. My only objection is why did you choose Teeth and Tongue ? To me those words mean the language itself.

Ash, The woman of the dream, 1994

I saw myself in the bed of the lighting, sleeping to the wounds
My finger is diving in the seas of passion
Opening my hymns, singing the last thing I wrote about her
Going into the crazy world of her eyes
Climbing up to the dream
To her star which stayed in the night of her childhood desert
But when the monster sweeps the suns from the café of my blood
She leaves my soul without a shelter
And in my hand the reminds of the last stars
She travelled

(self-translation)

Ash's comment about our imitation of his poem & the Talking Heads in general

(see previous post with our performance of his poem HERE)

Teeth caught the rhythm but not really the letters or the phonemes. He only touched the words through rhythm. He plays the real game, because the whole Arabic poetry has been written in this rhythm that is a meter, a timeline that is not related to the syntax. Although the modern poets use western rhythms now, only a few like me still write in the old one. So, one can say that he caught the rhythm in my voice, considering it as music, as a row of musical units or pieces. Altogether my poetry becomes abstract, so that I only understand 50 percents of the word-centred meaning.
Tongue concentrated more on the letters. They are more precise. His pronunciation is better. He caught the units of the words, the contours of which become here sharper, as if he knew them. Tongue really imitated my voice. I understand more than 70 percents, except regarding some letters that are particularly difficult to pronounce and that he should work on, if he wanted to learn the language. The combinations of letters reach very deeply into the language, they are also hard to be seized. But sometimes Tongue did touch them and in that case his voice relied on the very background of this text that is the Koran and its particular combinations and formulas. They are rare, beautiful and I was keen on imitating it, especially in that sentence which says, “when the monster sweeps the suns from the café of my blood” [tahshufushumuseh].

First to my surprise I found it clever, but now I see how sensitive this idea can be, because the emotion I’ve put into this poetry has moved into the voice of someone who ignores my mother tongue. It’s amazing how the spoken language keeps the feeling, even transferred through their blind performance. Although they can’t speak Arabic some word stay understandable and moreover the emotion. I don’t know how they managed to transmit my expression, not only my words but also my voice with both my particular way to pronounce phonemes and my rhythm. Of course something remains lost, which is a certain singular belonging to a culture, as a native speaker. So it’s neither the same profound sadness nor the same shallow I spoke out, but what I can hear here is my own expression that has been abstracted.

Ash's contribution

After having severely critized the quality of our arabic sound sources, here's Ash's contribution. he said it's a poem. we have no idea what it means, but did our best to reproduce it. I still can feel the circonvolutions of his words in my mouth.

tongue's version


teeth's version

New vocal contribution by teeth

here's a talking head contribution by teeth who found the source file randomly on the web. please leave a comment...or send us an audio file with our new RECORDER on the right.

Talking head in arabic - 1st try !

Here's my first try to appropriate a fragment of arabic language through audition & repetition. I found that randomly on the web and have only a vague idea of what it could mean (you can view the source HERE). i did my best and rehearsed a lot to achieve this personal version of it. i had to slow down the original file so that i can repeat it.
rather than discussing the meaning of it, i'd like to know if people can understand anything, recognise elements of their language and contribute by sending us their own soundfiles so that we can repeat it.

the same file, back to original speed. ... any comment ?