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MESP 2006: Zipang: Retold stories from Ancient Iraq with harp Zipang: Retold stories from Ancient Iraq with harp Scottish Premiere performance 3rd International Festival of Middle Eastern Spirituality and Peace (MESP) 6 February - 12 March 2006 http://www.edinburghguide.com/aande/music/review.shtml?06_03/06_02_14_zipang Stories and Music Lugalbanda and the Anzu bird (2,500 BCE); Epic of Gilgamesh (1,000 BCE); Sumerian and Akkadian songs including the Hymn to Arbela Performed by Zipang: Fran Hazleton and June Peters (storytellers); Tara Jaff (harp) Date 14 February 2006 Venue Augustine United Church Address George IV Bridge Reviewer Pat Napier © Pat Napier. 16 February 2006 Concert Tour Run: 10 February: Glasgow, (Old Fruitmarket); 11 February: London (Barbican) Zipang: Retold stories from Ancient Iraq with harp Scottish Premiere performance 3rd International Festival of Middle Eastern Spirituality and Peace (MESP) 6 February - 12 March 2006 Stories and Music Lugalbanda and the Anzu bird (2,500 BCE); Epic of Gilgamesh (1,000 BCE); Sumerian and Akkadian songs including the Hymn to Arbela Performed by Zipang: Fran Hazleton and June Peters (storytellers); Tara Jaff (harp) Date 14 February 2006 Venue Augustine United Church Address George IV Bridge Reviewer Pat Napier Everybody loves a story. Especially when it's one from the mists of time, right at the beginning of recorded history, a remote and little-known time. So how could I resist the ZIPANG evening? More especially because it was billed as Edinburgh discovers a 'Twin City' in Ancient Iraq - and - in the year following the 2005 Edinburgh International Harp Festival's fascinating lecture on the Golden Lyre of Ur. Who or what were ZIPANG? Zipang is the Sumerian word for breath. Sumerian is the oldest written language in the world: cuneiform. And ZIPANG is a superb trio of ladies dedicated to studying, selecting and then telling the essence of the stories found on Sumerian and Mesopotamian clay tablets, written in that mysterious cuneiform language. The story tellers are English and the harper is Kurdish, now living in England. Retold: that's very important because both stories were very sensitive selections from much longer works. However, they were both essentially the same dynastic story from opposite ends of ancient Mesopotamia. Lugulbanda is Sumerian, from the northern end of Mesopotamia (now Kurdish Northern Iraq) and Gilgamesh is told in Akkadian (from the south, now roughly British-patrolled Southern Iraq). The selections were inspired highlights raising the stories into fascinating, atmospheric tales. The harp always heightened these feelings. Both tales, combined, tell the story of Gilgamesh and his grandfather Lugulbanda, who was the eighth and youngest son of the general who went to war with the Uruk which had Arbil © J M Taylor declared war on his ally Aratta. The teenage Lugulbanda, impetuous and eager to make his mark, volunteered to journey to the shrine of the goddess Inana in the sacred cedar forests in the mountains of Zabu to seek her aid for their cause. "I have to go alone" he declared, seeing this as a big adventure. On the way, having time to muse and think about things, he matures and becomes very wise. This process is told in a soliloquy about the Anzud Bird who lived in the great solitary eagle tree on Inana's sacred mountain and how Lugulbanda would treat it if he saw it. He encountered its chick, saved it, fed it and made the nest more comfortable. The Anzud Bird, returning to its family was much pleased with what Lugulbada had done. He fell sick and collapsed; his brothers, who'd been searching for him, found him near to death. After praying for his life over the three days and nights of fever, the Sun God heard their prayers and allowed Lugulbanda to live. But Inana, who'd fallen in love with Lugulbanda by this time, was not anxious to let him recover and leave her sacred mountain. So she had put him into a deep sleep for these three fevered days in which he had vivid dreams of meeting several gods, carrying out their tasks and pleading with them for the strength to recover and make his way home. During that dream his brothers performed funeral rites. Inana relented and gave him the strength to leave. On the way back, again alone, he arrived at a gorgeous pool by a river, once again encountered the Anzud Bird who, remembering Ligulbanda's actions, granted him his greatest wish: to have a fabulous fate, to go wherever he wanted and to run as fast as possible whenever he wanted. The Anzud Bird's only stipulations: to tell nobody and to "make statues of me". Aratta was won, Lugulbanda ruled wisely and well giving it walls of lapis lazuli, bright red bricks whose clay was dug out of the cedar mountains. Fran Hazleton's telling was luminous, poetic, vivdly bringing the ancient lushness of the area to glowing life which, today, is barren and rocky. After the interval, June Peters, a freelance story teller and one-time teacher, told the much better-known Epic of Gilgamesh. This long complex tale of Lugulbanda's grandson was just as expertly stitched together. So " let us open the lapis box, take out the tale and hear the story" of a pitiless,unforgiving warrior king, "a young hell-raiser" taking what he wanted when he wanted, doing anything to achieve his desires. He seemed to be the epitome of the angular, hard, weapon-like cuneiform script personified. Instead of being the "shepherd of his people" as he should, his people asked the goddess to make someone who would stand up to him. Aruru took some clay, fashioned it into a wild man living with the gazelles and called him Enkidu. When Gilgamesh heard about him, he sent a temple prostitute to tempt Enkidu and was so successful that Enkidu, now more civilised and presentable, was no longer accepted by the animals. Needing to forge a new identity, the temple woman told him about the great city of Uruk, painting it in glowing terms, all heightened by dramatic harp music. She also told him about Gilgamesh and his great longing to have a friend. So Enkidu decided to go there and challenge Gilgamesh to a contest of strength. They ended up as friends going off to the cedar mountains to fight foes and fell trees to float down the river to rebuild Uruk. When Gilgamesh rejected the goddess, now called Ishtar, she called down the Bull of Heaven. Together, Gilgamesh and Enkidu killed the bull, ripped off its hauch and flung it up into the heavens hitting Ishtar and bloodied her dress. This was a step too far. Gilgamesh had a dream in which the Gods sat in Council and decreed that Gilamesh must die. When he told this to Enkidu, the latter decided that he, Enkidu, must die instead of the King. "But it's only a dream" said Gilgamesh. Nevertheless, things were set in motion by Gilgamesh calling on Shamash the Sun God to curse the temple woman who'd started off the train of events. Enkidu reversed the curse and then had his own fevered dream and died. The distraught Gilgamesh undertook a quest for immortality and wisdom but failed to find it all. He died and was said to have been buried under the waters of the river Euphrates, which has since changed its direction south. Even in English, the two stories' very different styles and proccupations came through wonderfully well. The Mesopotamian people created its cosmologies or world view through looking up to the skies to try to understand their life challenges and place order into the stars and planets above their heads, thus creating their pantheon of gods. Both tales are set in the same area of Mesopotamia and involve the gods in very immediate ways. The Epic of Gilgamesh draws very heavily on the five main surviving epic poems of 1,500 years earlier in Sumerian with very obvious links back and to this group of deities, though their names changed in Akkadian. There are differences in time, in philosophies and in the cultural background which become more obvious when hearing both tales backto-back, which was a rare privilege. Tara Jaff also gave us a near-unique privilege and pleasure by singing the Hymn to Arbela (one of the main Mesopotamian cities, a centre of Tara Jaff culture, now called Arbil). She sang in Assyrian which had been taught to © Andy Lowings her by an Assyrian priest. So this was an Assyrian translation set to her own native Kurdish rhythms. Tara had also been privileged to have played a concert on one of the prototypes of the Golden Lyre of Ur. This was truly a unique and illuminating recital. Oh, by the way, the Edinburgh link was an elegant compliment to our city by comparing Edinburgh today with Arbela at its cultural height. ZIPANG MESP © Pat Napier. 16 February 2006 Concert Tour Run: 10 February: Glasgow, (Old Fruitmarket); 11 February: London (Barbican)