Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.It begins with a violin keening like the wind of the album’s title over intermittent slaps of frame drum. Then Simin Tander starts to sing, slow and deep, in Southern Pashto that yields to microtonal flutters: “Meena”, based on a 17th-century poem by Rahman Baba, celebrates surrender to love. The language is a nod to her late father, an Afghan who relocated to Germany, where Tander grew up. Other songs on the album also mingle English, Italian and Norwegian.“Woken Dream”, which follows, begins with the languid phrase, “touching the air with your skin/words unspoken” amid prickling high notes from bassist Björn Meyer — previously a driving presence in Nik Bärtsch’s Zen-funk band Ronin but here more contemplative. Tander’s vocals slip in and out, now chorusing polyphonically, now whispering.There is an Italian song from 1900, “I Te Vurria Vasà”, in which the narrator sings of impossible love as Harpreet Bansal’s violin weeps at the top of its register. The song is autobiographical: its lyricist, Vincenzo Russo, was the impoverished son of a cobbler whose love for an upper-class Neapolitan was thwarted by her parents. The melody recurs in a later interlude in distorted form, with knocks and shivers of percussion from Samuel Rohrer, as if a fragment of half-remembered history.Mayer’s bass is to the fore on the 16th-century Spanish song “Ay Linda Amiga” and in skittering form on “Nursling of the Sky”, a setting of Shelley’s poem “The Cloud” that builds in intensity amid abrupt yelps. The Norwegian hymn “Jesus, Gjør Meg Stille” provides the basis for “My Weary Heart”, which builds from low howls from Rohrer and Meyer to a thundering drum-and-violin climax with Tander yodelling and keening. The title track, which closes the album, swells with moody, acoustic chords and Tander singing in a close murmur.★★★★☆‘The Wind’ is released by Jazzland Recordings
