The muezzin's call to prayer is one of Islam's great art forms. It can be as arresting as it is moving, even when it has to compete with the sounds of traffic, as it so often does. You can hear just such a rendition here, in a 2008 recording of a muezzin from the East London Mosque in Whitechapel. Traffic is busy, there's even an occasional honking sound, but the voice of the muezzin glides above it all like that bassoon descending out of nowhere in the adagio of Mozart's B-flat major serenade.
Muslim purists might take issue with muezzins' art being compared somehow to something so classically western as Mozart. But it's no weirder than hearing jazz's first strains in J.S. Bach--or, indeed, of hearing the origins of hip hop in the muezzin's art.
Sebastian Brameshuber certainly does so.
"I was and am a huge hip hop fan," he tells an interviewer. "As many American hip hop artists like Mos Def, Brand Nubian or Jurassic Five are devout Muslims, one again and again finds brief intros reciting from the Quran on their records. Sometimes it is a complete call to prayer. Brand Nubian, for instance, uses a looped 'Allahu Akbar' refrain on their track of the same name. For me it was the first encounter with the sound of the muezzin. That was before 9/11 and I accordingly faced it in an unbiased way."
He goes on:
Several years later, during my first trip to Istanbul, I had the opportunity to get to know a muezzin.
I asked him if he was specially trained or if he had to pass an audition. On this occasion, the subject of the competition also came up.
Brameshuber is referring to Turkey's celebrated annual muezzin competition. "Muezzin, competition, Istanbul ... I didn't have to think much longer about whether I should make this film. The question was merely how. That was in September
2005."
Now, here it is: Brameshuber's "Muezzin," the portrait of a profession, according to Claudia Siefen writing in the documentary's notes, "that has provided for controversy, if not evoked
fears in the Christian-Western world through the political events of the past several years." It is the story of the minaret with a human face, with Turkey's Call to Prayer Competition as its narrative hub and a focus on Halit Aslan, muezzin at the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul who decides to go up against the nation's best.
The film is just beginning to circulate in festivals and select movie houses in Europe. But you'll likely hear about it soon in the United States. Curiously, its world sales contact phone and email are based in Israel, which is likely to limit the documentary's reach in the Arab world (where, unfortunately, snubs by association is a reflex when it comes to Israel.)
See Also:
- Bahrain's First Human Rights Film Festival
- What Is a Muezzin?
- Cairo's Fired Muezzins, On Stage in Berlin
- Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World at D.C.'s Kennedy Center
- Muezzin Wednesday: Morocco's King Hassan II Mosque of Megalomania
Comments