Prochaine Station

Admit it : W e all love the unusual rhythm and melody of A rabic music. It's so relaxing to be going about your typical day and hear those magical notes from an instrument most of us don’t even know how to pronounce. Today’s post is all about Arabic music and a very talented Buzuq player. Music of the M iddle E ast has a long tradition going back many centuries. It has had influence on other kinds of music around the world. We can even see this influence in the work of composers like Mozart and Beethoven. There are 4 genres in today ’ s Arabic music: Modern, Classical, Pop and Arabic G u lf style music. Because of the more elastic sound of Arabic music, the songs are sung in a minor key, which is why they are not that up beat in pop. Enough with the general knowledge lesson, n ow take a look at the video below.                               The f irst n ame of the artist in the above vid...

After an evening class (duh, thinking about school assignments), our involuntary motor system took us to the Guy-Concordia metro and we were lucky to stumble upon the music emanating from the strings of  Gilbert’s  guitar. The moment we heard his strumming, the memory part of our brains sprung up and made us realize that the idea for this blog had actually been framed after listening to his music a couple of days earlier at Snowdon metro. We stood near him, wondering how this guy plays at such a frenetic rhythm, whilst being in his own realm, oblivious to the surrounding noise of chatter, laughter, hurried footsteps, and people gawking at him. Gilbert opened his eyes and saw two guys with awkward smiles wanting to ask him something (yes, it was us) and cheerfully spoke to us at length. What struck us during our interview was the positivity in his thoughts and action. Gilbert started as a hip-hop artist, who became a dancer and then started playing guitar ten ye...

Let’s admit it: we live in a never-ending bubble, especially during our daily Metro commute - a bubble comprised of our text messages, social media feeds and Spotify/iTunes playlists (thanks to those damn noise cancelling headphones). But every now and then, the bubble bursts and we look up and interact with the real world for a moment. That’s when, we get a glimpse of some incredibly talented artists, who perform at the Metro. The music and the energy of these artists instantly uplift us and makes us forget everything else for a few minutes. In fact, the vibrancy and diversity of the population of Montreal is well represented by the plethora of talented musicians to whom we listen to few seconds on our hurried way to the train. These artists play every instrument under the sun, ranging from cello to saxophone to even the oud and genres ranging from hip-hop to classical . Therefore, being music crazy STM travellers, we decided to blog about these artists, as a way of sh...