Thursday, April 19, 2007

African Recitation

The Prophet (Pbuh) said, "ليس منا من لم يتغن بالقرآن", which means, "The one who does not sing with the qura'an (recite it in a melodious voice and with tajweed) is not from us."

Ofcourse, this does not mean that our sole purpose of listening to the qura'an, or reciting the qura'an is for the beautiful voice. The purpose of qura'an is guidance. But, it is from the mercy of Allah (swt) that we should recite the qura'an with nice voice so that our hearts can more easily be attached to the words of Allah.

The beauty of this "singing" is that every people/nation have a different kind of personality; a different kind of tone to their qura'an. For example, we find that in Saudi Arabia, the most common melody used is a very confident, powerful melody. This melody is known as Rast and is most commonly used by Qura'an like Saud Shuraim, Sudais, Ali Al-Hudhaifi and Adil Kalbani, to mention a few. In al-sham (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan) a 7azeen (sad) melody is what is most commonly used. Egyptian Reciters are good at mixing it up.

This is what makes the Egyptians the most famous, their ability to change their tone based on the meaning of the verses. The famous qura'a are really, really good at this, like Mohammed Jibreel and all the old school reciters. You feel it most when listening to a story, like surat yusuf or one of bani israeel's stories. He changes his tone to fit the part of the story.

Out of all these recitations, probably the most beautiful and the most hidden of these recitations is the African recitation, used in countries like Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia and so forth. It is an unbelievably soothing melody that makes you feel very calm. You can almost feel the simplicity of the Africans when you listen to this melody. Unfortunately, there are ZERO recordings online of this melody. I found something that is very similar though, alhamdulillah. This guy's name is Faisal Mohammed. I think he is somewhere here in the US or Canada but I don't know much more about him. Here are a couple recordings for him:

One
Two

3 Comments:

Blogger Ridwan said...

subhan Allah!!!!!!!!!!! i am officially in love with the African recitation style...
jazakAllahu khairan for the post brother akh!

6:09 PM  
Blogger ShakirSahab said...

nice dude! i heard one of those recitations before and wanted to hear more. have you ever heard the "panipatt" style of recitation that is widespread in pakistan/india? it's also very unique, and somewhat similar to the african style.

7:45 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Assalaamu alaykum.

Just came across the 'African recitation'. MashaAllah
Anyone knowwho this recitor is? where can i get more?

Link 'one' was broken so nothing to compare to.

Anyone got an audio clip pf the Pannipatt recitation from subcontinent?

Many thanks
Abduljaleel

9:41 AM  

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