Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Nasyid Cafe: The History of Contemporary Nasyid in Malaysia.

part 3.

1- 2 of the most prominent nasheed group in the early 90's were Nada Murni, led by two of the most talented nasheed vocalists ever to storm the local nasheed scene, Allahyarham Ustaz Asri Ibrahim and Munif Ahmad, and The Zikr led by Nazrey Johani. I guess you must have recognized these names by now.



2- These 2 groups dominated the scene and were the pioneering template for so many more newer Nasheed groups that came immediately after them. Nada Murni released their debut titled Kelahiran whereas hot on Nada Murni's tail was The Zikr releasing their debut album called Kenangan. The songs were still mainly minimalistic and percussive.

3- These two monsters kept on releasing albums after albums especially Nada Murni in the early 90's. The percussive elements (congas, bongos and tamborines) which have dominated their songs gave more room for vocal harmonies for the back ups acting as the rhythm section for the songs replacing the sound of guitars and keyboards which were pretty much dominant in pop music at that time. It was a kind of a new realm since the version of Nasheed championed by older groups in the likes of Al Jawaher and Al Mizan was more straight forward and with very minimal usage of harmonies. This maybe due to the modern instruments which were used in their music.

4- The Zikr for example kept on experimenting with various types of harmonies and it is evident in their third and final album titled Secerah Pawarna. This particular album featured a song called Allah Is Calling with a much more extravagant arrangement of harmonies compared to their previous works.

5- Nada Murni on the other hand utilized the huge number of members in their camp to fill their songs with more harmonies as the time passes by. Bass vocals and Falsetto vocals were the normal tones utilized by these group before adding various tenor harmonies creating a wall of sound that would later inspire the younger nasheed groups at that time to also experiment with different types of harmonies.

6- They had also moved away from the typical Mediterranean sound that was so frequently associated with Nasheed at that time opting a more poppish sound for their songs which made them even more appealing to a greater mass.

To Be Continued:

7 comments:

  1. What about groups like Qatrunnada' (did I spell this correctly?) and vocalist like Hasnul Jamal? C'mon bro, I know you're a fan of The Zikr and Nada Murni but the history of these groups are already well documented. It would be good if you can share with the readers some info on the other not-so-popular groups :)

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  2. Qatrunnada came very much later bro.. They even got like at least 3 different groups using the same name, Malaysian, Indonesian and Jordan Qatrunnadas. The awesome two, Nada Murni & The Zikr, were the so called "pioneers" lah so to speak. I will mention those less popular and obscure groups in part 4 including that of Hasnul Jamal and his nasyid group Diwani. Remember their awesome classic "Tafakur"?

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  3. Tafakur is great, the same can't be said about the vocalist though. Don't forget an insight to Hizbi, Al'an. And my personal favourite, Mawaddah!

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  4. Semua tu ada Mal... Hizbi, Alan, One Faith etc will all be mentioned in my next serie of entries called Making The Band. Part 1 will only be posted somewhere in December tho. Scheduled entries lah.

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  5. Making The Band, haa? Now your talking... kinda like Mamat Khalid's, Rock. Speaking of which, I'm thinking of watching Estet.

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  6. assalamualaikum,,
    anyone knows about Zikraa' nasyed..
    the popular song is tafakur (not diwani actually)
    the main vocalist is likely same as the main voice from Nada Athirah"s group..

    pliz..
    i need to know very much..
    jazakallah..

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  7. 1- Yes... Thank you for pointing that out. I think I should have corrected that mistake earlier since Diwani's hit single was actually called Di Hening Malam and not tafakur.

    2- Yes Zikraa was one of those obscure nasyid group from the earlier era of the millennium. They have released their first album, i believe independently before one of the more major label picked that album up and repackaged the album for a wider distribution. I believe the label was Ambang Klasik.

    3- When Zikraa released their debut, they got no permanent solo vocalist thus if you still got the first pressing of the album, the group featured three guest vocalists, one of them being Mr.Hasnul Jamal from Diwani and maybe that guy from Nada Athirah.

    4- But I thought the dudes from Nada Athirah went on to form Jauhari?

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