Christmas: Rhythms of the Holy Land
Recorded By
Desert Wind

Overall Rating: (on a scale of 1 to 5 stars)

This is a collection of Christmas music, mostly religious in nature, performed by the New Age band known as Desert Wind. The percussion includes some Middle Eastern drums, including riqq (Arabic tambourine), dumbek (hourglass-shaped drum), tar, and tablas playing Middle Eastern rhythms underlying familiar melodies.

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What I Liked:

• The music is pleasant for listening.

What I Didn't Like:

• I was not happy that the song Little Drummer Boy was included. (I'm sorry, but I've always detested that particular song. It's a bias of mine.)

This is a collection of Christmas songs, mostly religious-themed ones, played by the band Desert Wind. These arrangements are layered on top of drumming using Middle Eastern percussion instruments such as riqq and dumbek, playing Middle Eastern rhythms. The melody lines are played in Desert Wind's standard New Age style, on instruments including assorted flutes, piano, mandolin, harpsichord, recorder, and others. Out of 15 songs in the collection, 3 were composed by Alan Scott Bachman and the rest are traditional Christmas music.

For the most part, the use of the Middle Eastern percussion is very subtle. Although there's an occasional dumbek accent, for the most part I found the melody instruments to overpower the percussion and often I couldn't really hear what rhythm the percussion was playing. It's there, but it's very understated. Despite the use of this Middle Eastern percussion, for me the album came across as simply traditional Christmas songs played in the New Age style. The Middle Eastern influence is so subtle that if I were describing these arrangements for someone who was not part of the belly dance scene I wouldn't even mention it.

In general, the format for each song opened with a bit of lead-in, followed by the main melody of the song played in a reasonably straightforward way. After a time or two through the verse and chorus, the musicians would then transition into an extended improvisation section. These improvisations tended to be entirely different melodies, rather than variations on the original, so if you came into a song in the middle of one of these you would probably not be able to identify which song was currently playing. I enjoyed the improvisations - they were musically interesting, and well executed. But they also diluted the Christmas-ish feel of the songs, which could be an issue, depending on what you're intending to use the music for.

I found the arrangements of all these songs to be fairly mellow and low-key. For belly dancing, I might be able to envision doing a quiet-mood piece such as a veil performance or balancing a candle on my head to one of these songs, but none of the songs were high-energy enough for me to choose them for an exciting entrance or a powerful finale. Since most of the songs stay close to the Christian theme, they might be appealing for a church Christmas pageant or liturgical dance presentation.

You Will Probably Like This Collection If

• You enjoy listening to traditional Christmas hymns and you would appreciate a fresh new arrangement.
• You're enthusiastic about Desert Wind's style of music.
• You need some Christmas music to play in the background for a Christmas party or other holiday event and you'd like it to have a slight Middle Eastern flavor.

You Probably Won't Care for this Music If

• Your taste in Christmas songs runs more to secular music like Jingle Bells.
• You're looking for Christmas songs with an obvious Middle Eastern influence to use in a holiday belly dance performance.
• You're looking for something you can use for Christmas choreography. The long duration of the cuts (mostly 4-6 minutes) would lead to a large amount of material to memorize.

In Conclusion

Generally speaking, I probably wouldn't recommend this music for a belly dancing performance unless you're planning a quiet-mood performance such as veil or balancing a candle on your head. It could be pleasant as music for liturgical dance, background music for a holiday party, or entertainment for a long drive in the car.

I wouldn't recommend these songs for beginner performance because they're all quite long, and usually for beginners I recommend using songs that are no more 2 1/2 or 3 minutes in length. It can be challenging for a beginning dancer to sustain an interesting interpretation of the same song for much longer than that.

Song Title

Length

RealAudio Clip?

Comments

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Desert Wind
P.O. Box 3722
Salt Lake City, UT 84110-3722
U.S.A.

Phone: (801) 274-8818
Fax: (801) 278-3141
Web Site: www.desertwindmusic.com
E-Mail: info@desertwindmusic.com

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