Friday 5th July | 7pm | £16 / £12 Conc
Please note, this gig will be held at Lewes Con Club
THIS IS GOING TO BE UNBELIEVABLE!!!!
A very rare opportunity to see a unique maestro perform : virtuosic playing of an extremely unusal instrument (electic Benju) from a fascinating part of the world (Makran coastal border of Pakistan/Iran) playing rarely-heard long-form spiritual dance music (Balochi).
“Bakhsh’s trills and cascading improvisations are guided by the unending pursuit of beauty, the simultaneous embrace of sorrow and transcendence (…) It’s the kind of music that leaves you grasping for the spiritual and indefinable, that burrows into your soul and glows there!!” PITCHFORK
After his first ever UK gig in March, a sell out show at Queen Elizabeth Hall (Southbank) in London, we are extremely excited to be hosting his trio show at the Con Club in Lewes! The seated QEH performance ended up as a riotous dance party with EVERYONE out of their seats and moving to the stunning music.
Ustad Noor Bakhsh, from Balochistan, Pakistan, is a legendary maestro of the Balochi Benju (a keyed Zither). In Pakistan he plays it through an amp powered by a car battery attached to a solar panel. He is well known throughout the Makran Coast (the coast which borders both Iran & Pakistan) but only garnered wider attention after his most recent recordings and videos. (see below)
Noor Baksh’s electric Benju tone and his melodic ornamentations may remind you of Ali Farka Toure’s style, with polyrhythmic grooves and improvisation that will make you move in very similar ways to the music of both West and East Africa. This is unsurprising, given the well documented migrations and seafaring, historical, intimacies between Balochistan (south east part of The Iranian plateau) and Africa, via the greater Indian Ocean.
There’s a fascinating Guardian article here about how Ustad’s talents first came to wider attention, 18 months ago.
“His music is incredible and his instrument is unusual, even in Pakistan,” Nabihah Iqbal
His debut album, ‘Jingul’, was released digitally in 2022, and on vinyl via Hive Mind Records in 2023.
His virtuosic playing is deeply rooted in Balochi musical forms and enriched by his knowledge of South Asian Raags, which he also renders in his own, experimental style. His repertoire includes Persian and Kurdish tunes that have probably floated around his land since before the modern borders of Iran and Pakistan were set up.
A bit about the instrument and sound:
The Benju, was once a Japanese children’s toy called the taishōkoto before it was adopted by Balochi musicians and made into the refined folk instrument that it is today. Noor Bakhsh plays an electric Benju, getting his sound through an old pickup and small Phillips amp he bought from Karachi 2 decades ago. He carries forward the legacy of his teachers and inspirations such as Bilawal Belgium and Misri Khan Jamali but his own music elicits influences from various traditions and musical forms far beyond Balochistan.
In one of his recent recording sessions, he played an Arabic Ghazal on his Benju. Needless to say, he also renders pop and folk tunes in all the major languages spoken across Pakistan. His Sindhi repertoire is particularly novel in that it reflects a beautiful conversation between the neighbouring musical cultures of Sindh (a province of Pakistan) and Balochistan. No surprises, that Noor Baksh plays several Bollywood songs too, after all, he has soaked the sounds around him like a sponge, including those of all birds in the mountains and the jungle near his village. His diverse repertoire also includes several original compositions too, including one inspired by bird song.
Their boiler room session: