Orpheus 21 and Jordi Savall invite you to a sound journey that crosses borders, eras and memories. This concert, the result of the collaboration between migrant and refugee musicians from different Mediterranean countries, is a space of dialogue between ancient and current voices, between foundational myths and stories of exile, between different and yet closely connected shores. This event took place on 30 November in Barcelona, in the framework of the Day of the Mediterranean, organised by the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed), the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), Barcelona City Council, the Government of Catalonia, and the Spanish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation.

We invite you today to rediscover three magical moments of the concert, in which music revives old Mediterranean myths. From the Italian shores of the Trecento to the holy mountains of Kurdistan, passing through the springs of Syria, this musical journey takes us to a sensitive dialogue between memory, myth and exile. Each piece is a door open to an ancient imaginary, in which the voices, instruments and silences tell stories of impossible love, sacred water or persecuted faith. The selection of these passages has been made together with the Syrian musician Waed Bouhassoun, whose artistic sensitivity has guided this sound journey.

This journey through sounds and times reveals profound links between the music traditions of the Mediterranean basin. Like the legends that circulate from one shore to the other, music becomes a place of passage, of transmission and of transformation. First, the Italian Lamento murmurs the lost love of Tristan and Iseult; then, a Syrian chant celebrates water as a source of life and desire, and, finally, a Yazidi hymn makes the voices of a people rooted in the mountains resonate, a people who are the bearers of thousand-year-old spirituality.

Repertoire
Hakan Güngör, kanun
Rusan Filiztek, voice and saz
Wassim Halal, percussions
Waed Bouhassoun, voice and oud

🎵 Lamento di Tristano

Be transported by this instrumental lament from the Italian Trecento, by an unknown composer, but infinitely alive in its musicality. Despite evoking one of the great myths of tragic love of the Middle Ages, that of Tristan and Iseult, it conveys the emotion of a lost love, of a vanishing sweetness, of a suspended memory. The Lamento embodies sadness, impossible love and desire, themes at the heart of the myth. The music, although non-narrative, is imbued with a sweet melancholy and contained passion. For some minutes, we travel through this lament, between history and myth, between medieval Italy and the shared shores of the Mediterranean.

Preserved in a valuable medieval manuscript held at the British Library, this piece murmurs a wordless poetry through the centuries, framed by ancient modes and a sensitivity that touches the soul. Its simplicity, a melodic line that has to be interpreted and enriched, evokes the shared traditions of the Mediterranean basin, where nomadic, Arab or Occitan music made inner worlds vibrate. Thus, the Lamento becomes an intimate dance, a fragile elegy whose beauty is revealed in the performance, improvisation and ornament. Once it is over, the piece is often followed by La Rotta, more alive and earthy, like awakening after a dream.

Although the legend of Tristan and Iseult was born in the Celtic-Breton world and spread throughout medieval Europe, it finds a particular resonance in the courtly traditions from Southern France and Italy.

This cultural crossing, between myths, legends and musical influences, reflects the time when artistic exchanges through the Mediterranean basin nourished the stories and musical forms, merging traditions and creating new expressions.

🎵 ‘Al-Maya ‘Al-Maya

Listen now to this traditional chant from eastern Syria from which an entire Mediterranean memory emerges: water is a myth, a remembrance, a desire. It is the source of life, but also the source of stories.

In Greek mythology, the nymphae of the springs or naiade, the daughters of Tethys and Ocean, symbolise youth, beauty and fertility. They live in the sources, in the rivers and in the springs, mysterious places full of life, replete with ancient stories. In the villages, women and girls go to the well to take water, transforming the springs into discreet scenes of life, where gazes and primary emotions cross.

This chant evokes water as a space of life, meeting and sacrality. It speaks of the women who go in search of water and the meetings woven around these springs. Water becomes a holy social place, a space where the daily and the divine meet, the force of nature and the sweetness of human emotions. Through chant, water takes on a mythological dimension, linking us to the Mediterranean through the eras and cultures. This water, today like yesterday, embodies a life and cultural bond, weaving the threads of a common story in the large Mediterranean space.

🎵‘Sharaf el-Dine’

Listen now to this Yazidi religious chant, orally transmitted from the heights of Mesopotamia, among the holy mountains and the fertile valleys of Kurdistan. It is a voice that raises up towards the invisible, between prayer and lament, memory and hope. This chant invokes Sharaf ad-Din, a protective figure of Yazidi tradition, the custodian of an ancient wisdom born between the Tigris and the Euphrates.

In Mediterranean myths, the summits have always served as shelter for the deities and the oracles: the Mount Olympus of the Greeks, the prophetic grottoes of the Sybille or the holy summits of Anatolia. A place of revelation and refuge, the mountain is a threshold between the terrestrial and the spiritual worlds.

This chant, rooted in the Yazidi mountains, make this intimate relation between man, the earth and the sacred resonate. It tells us of a persecuted people, the custodian of millenary traditions, and of a faith conveyed by the voice, taken by the winds of Kurdistan to the shores of the Mediterranean.

It is there where the myth is gestated: it is in this voice that crosses centuries and borders that the shared memory is raised up of a Mediterranean space made of migration, ancient worships, pain and beauty. A memory that continues to sing, both fragile and powerful.

These chants, far from being mere vestiges, are living memories. They unite the peoples and the lands, evoke the pain of the absence, and the beauty of the sacred, and reactivate the foundational myths of our plural Mediterranean. This musical journey is a homage to Mediterranean diversity, to its capacity to bring differences into dialogue, and the shores closer beyond exile, faith or lost love. It is a sensitive crossing, while listening to what the Mediterranean still murmurs to us: stories woven out of pain and light, humanity and fragile beauty.