Ilyas Ahmed - Kabhi Ma Boley Ashista
It feels like the theme so far has been stark contrasts and uncovered secrets, and this song is maybe the best example yet. The opening notes crash heavily on the low strings of an acoustic guitar with all the overpowering resonance of a gong, it's like someone riding piano strings with a clawhammer. In a world where entire roomfuls of instruments can feel thin and hesitant, the richness of a single acoustic guitar can be a monsterous surprise the way it surrounds and rings out. Across the 13 minutes of "Kabhi Ma Boley Ashista" Ilyas introduces a complex web of tiny melodies, metallic scratches, cough-syrup drones and ghostly voices, but he steadily rides that pounding reverberation with a near-ritual repetition.
The wordless voices and folkish instrumentation quickly moves the song away from any realm and any time, which makes it tremendously easy to simply fall into the sound. This is maybe the most rewarding thing about Ahmed's music, the way he builds a complete world around you, but it's also a little bit dangerous. Because, for all of his influences - the dense spill of Robbie Basho's guitar, the natural-world restlessness of oud-player Hamza El Din, the flawless balance of meditation and fury in "A Love Supreme" - Ilyas plays uniquely contemporary music
that is truly more of a confrontation of life today than an escape from it.
It's a pretty common feeling for people these days; disquiet, searching without design, unfocusable accusation. There's a widespread sense that someone has ruined it for everyone and no clear sense of who to blame, or what to do if we could find a culprit. I think one of the best predecessors for Ahmed's music is Sandy Bull, who made three brilliant LPs that bound classical guitar to Eastern music traditions in the 1960s and then spent the next 30 years fighting addiction before his death in 2001. The darkness in his life is well documented, and yet his musical search has a tremendously positive, hopeful spirit to it.
Ilyas, on the other hand, gives off the impression of a man trapped in a labyrinth. The guitar notes feel like breathless turns down endless passages, percussion sounding as a too-infrequent light in these tunnels. His mournful, almost subhuman vocals set a cold, wasted tone that even the warmest hum from the harmonium can't compete with. This isn't to say it's depressing or even difficult music, but it does contain a spirit that will be intimately familiar to anyone alive and alert in these days.
So far Ilyas has released a handful of CDRs, each packaged in simple cardstock sleeves with minimal graphics. The most recent one I've found is called "Naqi" and every copy has a unique collaged cover. Although each one is clearly different from the last, they all share a common theme: people without eyes. My copy has a serious looking blonde woman, her eyes disturbingly clipped out leaving the yellow card to show through her sockets. I saw one with a young Mick Jagger: pouting lips, messy hair, empty holes. They're sinister but not pointlessly so; the hollow helplessness of the image falls right in line with the way the music seizes me.
At the conclusion of "Kabhi", each sound fades and turns off like companions parting at the end of the night, leaving only the guitar, notes pouring like water from Ahmed's hands. There's something very brave and noble about that last minute of solo guitar, after the strenuous journeys of the song, the round resonance of the final passage feels determined, undefeated. Ilyas confronts a lot in his music, and although there's no easy outcome, it's a massive comfort to hear him so composed and self-controlled at the finish.
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