The adage that adversity produces greatness is particularly pronounced in music. Jazz has its origins in the chanting of African slaves picking cotton on southern American plantations. Feelings of alienation and depression inspired Kurt Cobain to write some of the most profound lyrics in rock and roll history.
Gheorghe Zamfir, who played to a sell-out audience at the Cairo Opera House Tuesday, took the sound of the pan flute from the realm of obscurity and onto the world stage after growing up under Romania’s repressive post-war communist regime.
Among the instrument’s many qualities, he says, is how its sounds are associated with nature and freedom.
Although the pan flute is one of the oldest known musical instruments, it is because of Zamfir that it is now ever-present in music all over the world, used in symphony, jazz, and rock, and fused with many varieties of ethnic music.
Renowned artists including Billy Joel, Peter Gabriel and Eric Clapton have accredited Zamfir as a major inspiration, and have used his music in their work.
In a career spanning nearly 50 years, he has sold over 40 million recordings, had 90 gold and platinum records, won countless awards, and has played in every corner of the globe.
He is as comfortable performing in London’s Royal Albert Hall as he is recording soundtracks for Hollywood blockbusters.
On the stage of the Opera House, Zamfir’s pan flute – a shiny slab of carved wood comprising a number of pipes – seemed at odds with the well-dressed musicians and the general orchestra pomp.
The respective performances, however, were in perfect harmony.
The pan flute’s combination of wind and wood produces an elemental sound, like something that might occur in nature rather than come from a man-made instrument.
“It is the most natural musical sound in the world, Zamfir said backstage after the show, “not like the metal instruments such as the trumpet or the oboe. There is nothing to compare to it.
This unique sound was picked up on by the hippy movement in the late 1960s and early 70s, something that popularized Zamfir’s music and helped to raise his profile.
“The hippies were all about returning to nature so my sound spoke to them. My music became very well known after that, and from there I moved into different types of music.
But while the hippy movement and popular naturalistic and spiritualistic ideals faded with time, Zamfir’s love of nature and spirituality deepened. He began performing in churches and cathedrals throughout Europe – something he still does to this day – and came to see playing the pan flute as a form of prayer; a spiritual release.
“It is like the pan flute was built by God, he says.
The sounds Zamfir produces when playing the pan flute can vary from profoundly uplifting and joyous to eerie and haunting.
This repertoire, apart from generating constant invitations for live performances, has had moviemakers looking for the perfect soundtrack knocking on his door.
Many of the sequences throughout Tuesday night’s performance were easily recognizable from films that Zamfir has worked on, conjuring images of early 20th century New York from “Once Upon a Time in America, and scenes of espionage from Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill.
But it was the performance of composer Ennio Mariconne’s “Memories, used in films like “Arabian Nights, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and “A Fistful of Dollars, that had the crowd on their feet. By all accounts, it always does.
Much to the delight of his Egyptian fans, Zamfir has plans to foray into Arabic music, a genre one suspects would well receive the sound of the pan flute.
Though this will not happen before he ventures into Chinese and far-eastern music.
Zamfir hopes to bring God’s music to China in time for the 2008 Olympics.All photos by Khaled Farid, Middle East News Agency (MENA).
