Burdah Variations, by Pat Thomas

Burdah Variations

by Pat Thomas

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	1.	Burdah 2-1 03:26
	2.	Burdah 3-1 06:22
	3.	Burdah 4 04:34
	4.	Burdah 4-48 03:16
	5.	Burdah 5 05:36
	6.	Burdah 5A 05:08
	7.	Burdah 6A 05:20
	8.	Burdah 7 05:12
	9.	Burdah 11A 01:31
	10.	Burdah 11B 04:32
	11.	Burdah 12A-2 02:23

about

'Burdah Variations' is a set of 11 electronic compositions inspired by the best known poem in the Islamic world, 'The Burdah', composed by the great Sufi poet Imam al-Busiri.
This poem was written in the thirteenth-century as a response to an Illness the Imam received which left him partially paralysed. He decided to compose a poem, asking for the intercession of the Prophet Muhammad to God, to remove this affliction.
After completing his ode in praise of the Prophet, he had a dream where he saw himself reciting his poem to the Prophet.
The Prophet was very pleased with the poem and smiled, placing his cloak ['burdah' in Arabic] on the poet's afflicted side. When the Imam awoke, he found he was cured and the cloak he had seen in the dream was beside him. From that day, his poem, which he had titled “The Celestial Lights in Praise of the Best of Creation“, would be known as 'The Burdah' and people still recite it for the spiritual and healing qualities it contains.

The pieces composed here are not an attempt to replicate the poetic metre or describe the events in musical terms; nor are they an attempt at “World Music”, a term I find redundant and incredibly patronising.
These are pieces which are concerned with combining various timbral characteristics to make new sonic soundworlds.
In my view music works best as music, and I hope the listener can enjoy the pieces as much as I did when I created them.

Pat Thomas [14 May 2023]

credits

released May 21, 2023

recorded between April 2021 and May 2023 at Urban Sufi Studios, Rosehill, Oxford
mixed and mastered by Pat Thomas
all compositions by Pat Thomas PRS

The instrumentation used in these pieces are all Kontakt sampled instruments, played in real time in Logic, then manipulated in TimeStretch, the same programme used for the previous scatterArchive release 'WAZIFAH volume 1':
scatterarchive.bandcamp.com/album/wazifah-volume-1

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