Seven Sufi musicians and five Whirling Dervishes have been brought from Türkiye for this season of performances in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane by the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.
Paul Dyer, the Artistic Director of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra (ABO), has for decades been fascinated by the poetry of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, a 13th-century Persian poet, Islamic scholar and Sufi mystic. The Whirling Dervish ceremony grew out of respect for the meditative nature of Rūmī’s poems.
All the music in Ottoman Baroque is composed for a small selection of Rūmī ‘s some 25,000 odes. His poems have been widely translated into many languages and transposed into various formats, such as this event by the Brandenburg Orchestra. Surprisingly, Rūmī is the best selling poet in the United States, according to Wikipedia.
The performers are eight from the Brandenburg Orchestra, seven Sufi musicians and the Orchestra’s choir of two women and six men. Paul plays the Ottavina, a small portable keyboard widely used in private homes in the 18th century to accompany singing. He directs the orchestra from his central sitting position.
The program opens with contemporary Australian Joseph Twist’s composition for the first of the ‘marriage’ poems. The remainder of the first part of the program continues in the slow meditative mood sufficient to send many in the audience into a peaceful trance. Specialist musicians and Baroque aficionados probably got more out if this half of the evening than many others in the audience. Many are waiting for the Dervishes. That’s what the Orchestra heavily promoted for the event.
During the interval the stage is cleared and the floor is prepared for the Dervishes. The balcony platform behind the stage of the Recital Hall is set for the seven Sufi musicians to accompany the Dervishes.
Slowly, ritualistically, the four Dervishes and their elder leader enter. There is a long reverential ceremony of nodding and bowing as the Dervishes prepare for their dance. It is slow, meditative, mesmerising. This silent meditative practice of the Sufi is completely peaceful.
Paul writes in the program notes that Sufi mysticism is ‘is the bridge between the divine and the human.’ The Dervishes ‘guide us to a higher plane during this unique ceremony’.
There are at least five branches of Sufi: the Naqshbandi, Mujaddidi, Chishti, Qadiri and Shadhili. There is at least one Sufi school in Australia. The goal of Sufism is the development of love, compassion, tolerance and patience through the purification of the self and the development of moral etiquette.
How fortunate we are to have a small glimpse of this particular example of a 600-year-old tradition.
The Sufi musicians and Dervishes were brought to Australia with the assistance of The Mevlana Foundation, the Australia Council for the Arts and Create NSW.
OTTOMAN BAROQUE is in performance at the City Recital Hall until July 29.
Concert review by Carol Dance
