Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Louai Alhenawi, Alia Alzougbi, Roskar Nasan, Sanaa Wehbe.

Storytelling is such an important facet of human nature that it strides, like music, across the many diverse and wonderfully different regions and countries of the world. Our own culture, derived as it is originally from many distinct and rampaging races and creeds, is full of folk tales and parables from many customs and backgrounds that it surely is a thrill when the sounds and stories of another area of the world comes and adds more influence to life.

As part of the Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, London based Diwan brought the sounds and stories of the Arabian, Kurdish and Yazidis cultures to the Unity Theatre in their performance Ancient Routes. The taste hung in the air like an exotic market place, just being able to wander through the mysterious spices, to roam and be guided by the music provided by Louai Alhenawi, Roskar Nasan and Sanaa Wehbe, especially the strikingly rich plush sounds that floated through the Unity Two stage from the Qanun, played with a great delicate nature by Ms. Wehbe, and to be finally confronted by the outstanding story-telling ability of Alia Alzougbi; a woman who was able to hold the audience’s attention to the point of explosive release, a rare feat in this day and age.

To be ensnared and enthralled by another’s culture for a while is a privilege, an honour that some never grasp the full extent of and yet the benefit is to be seen everywhere and to be felt where it matters most, in the soul. The music arranged by Diwan was of such freedom that even in the most stoniest of hearts, the smallest flutter of artistic impressionability and exultation would have been heard.

The songs, Tahmilah Hijaz, Ez Kevokim, Mutribi Harifan and Sayyed Muhammed were played with enrichment and style and complimented fully the various tales repeated with charm by Ms. Alia Alzougbi.

To understand someone you must listen to their stories, their history and take in their music and poetry, we do the same courtesy to American culture, we take in the past offered to us in the plays of William Shakespeare and the tales of Chaucer, history is after all another country; then that same courtesy should be grabbed with both hands if the chance comes to take in the spellbinding Diwan, utter magic.

Ian D. Hall