live sample-based music exploring Sufi sonics from Sri Lanka
Imaad Majeed’s journey into making sample-based music from recordings of Sufi music from Sri Lanka — under the moniker of KANNOORU — began over the course of Ramadan IN 2021. Chopping up samples on the free and open-source Audacity, their unreleased 7-track demo was awarded a production grant from Experimenter's Generator Co-operative Art Production Fund. Since then, with Ableton, an analogue synthesizer and an MPC-style drum pad at hand, they’ve further delved into exploring resonances within and across their archive of Sufi sonics. Rhythms of the daff and darbuka are struck in staccato, against the voices of devotees stretched into ambient washes like waves lapping at the shore, before a synthesized harmonium introduces melodies drawn from Arabic maqam and regional influences — all evoking a lost past and a future that may never be.
What might the relegation of Sufism as shirk (idolatry) and unislamic by reformist Islamic movements — sound like? What might the abandoning of Sufi practices by Muslims of the island — sound like? Employing found sounds, KANNOORU attempts to refract the state of the existing archive of Sufi sonics in Sri Lanka, which encompass the Rifai, Naqshbandi, Qaddiriya, Mufliheen, and Shazuliya orders, and the correlating sacred sites and communities, while speaking from its continuous erasure.
October 14 marks the New Moon and also the debut performance of KANNOORU hosted at the Goethe-Institut Sri Lanka.
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