For self-taught musician and composer Salman Ahmed, music is not to be created but rather explored, and in his latest album, he takes listeners on a journey within, as he probes what it means to be human.
Recently, the 30-year-old Bahraini released Marionettes – a string quartet written for two violins, as well as a viola and a cello.
“The style resembles Baroque dance suites which I’m very fond of, but I took many liberties with it, so it’s not 100 per cent ‘correct’,” the Juffair resident, who works as a software developer, told the GDN.
“It has Bach-style counterpoint and polyphony. The album explores themes such as fate, predetermination and the futility of our struggles against them.
“Hence the name Marionettes.
“We think we’re in control, and we fight tooth and nail for what we want to happen, but often the tides of fate just wash over us with inhuman coldness.”
Mr Ahmed composed the music for Marionettes with music notation, letting a computer software play it.
“I don’t think I’m good enough at these instruments to play it myself yet, and hiring a quartet would be expensive, so I put out the album as a draft of what the music is, and if people one day decide it’s nice and should be played properly, they can get the music scores for free from my website and play it – nothing would make me happier!”
The seven-track album starts with an ‘Allemande’ – a stately Renaissance and Baroque dance and a standard instrumental movement in Baroque dance suites – followed by a ‘Courante’ – a lively, flowing dance in triple metre that originated in the Renaissance era.
The allemande titled Against the Strings shows the turmoil humans go through, and at the end of each section, the first violin ‘tries to escape the clutches of fate, only to be met with the rest of the instruments in unison in an oppressing motif to put it back down’.
“The violin then rises defiantly swearing that this is not the end of it,” Mr Ahmed explained.
“At the second repeat of each section, we get the same thing, except the violin no longer has the spirit and just accepts that a feather will not be able to carve a rock.
“At the end, we get a short episode of acceptance and what little peace that offers.”
The courante Tragedies in Jest, is a lighter piece, with an undercurrent of powerlessness.
As Mr Ahmed explains, the marionettes dance to please their master, but underneath the surface, the notes convey tragic undertones.
The third track is a Sarabande – a stately dance and musical form that became a staple of the European Baroque period.
Titled Are You Still Here?, the track is a slow, calm and contemplative piece about finding comfort in the thought of someone even in their absence.
The next three tracks Birds of a Feather, In Another World and Flock Together are a mini story, starting with curiosity, moving into cohesion and then ending with reconciliation. The final track Selah is the most out-of-place and longest piece of the album.
“It’s a prayer,” he explained.
“The word ‘Selah’ comes up in David’s Psalms, and no one is exactly sure what it means.
“Some think it’s an indication in the text to pause and reflect.”
Mr Ahmed started playing the piano around 18 years ago after getting a digital piano.
“I could move my fingers around a little, and like magic, the music I always listened to would come out,” he explained.
“I then got into the music club at university, and got to play my first real (non-digital) piano there. “I met many aspiring musicians there, many of them have become life-long friends, and I played in concerts there.”
Around the same time, he picked up a used violin, learning it alongside the viola, cello, flute and clarinet.
He also started learning to read music and compose his own music, and had more than 100 half-written pieces that he ended up deleting one day – he has since been recreating them with his new-found composition skills. He releases his music under the moniker ‘tzilmarn’ – a play on a misspelling of his name by a coffee shop barista.
“Some years ago, a barista wrote my name as ‘Celmarn’, and I found it infinitely amusing – I couldn’t get the domain celmarn.com, so I started playing with the letters and ended up with Tzilmarn,” he added.
“Now my life is great and I can be sure that any website I register for doesn’t have my weird username taken.”
He has previously released Sensibilities of Flightless Birds – which he considers to be his favourite release so far – made up of six piano tracks that he recorded in less than an hour and then spent a month editing.
For more details, visit Salman’s website salman.so/
naman@gdnmedia.bh
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