{"id":31761,"date":"2025-05-12T15:13:18","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T13:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.camac-harps.com\/blog\/?p=31761"},"modified":"2025-05-23T14:32:22","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T12:32:22","slug":"an-ode-to-joy-and-nostalgia-harkan-at-the-espace-camac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.camac-harps.com\/blog\/en\/news\/an-ode-to-joy-and-nostalgia-harkan-at-the-espace-camac\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAn ode to joy and nostalgia\u201d: Harkan at the Espace Camac"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\u201cAn\u00a0<\/p>\n

Harkan is a trio led by renowned French harpist Ma\u00efa Darm\u00e9, featuring Tunisian kanun player Mohamed-Amine Kala\u00ef and Iranian Kurdish percussionist Ebrahim Ahmadi (daf, dayereh, and bendir).\u00a0 Harkan blends sensuous compositions with exhilarating dances and balances the musical influences of East and West. On Saturday, 17 May at 8 pm, they invite the audience of Espace Camac on an enchanting journey to distant lands. We asked Ma\u00efa how it all began.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI met Mohamed-Amine in 2016, backstage at the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre de Tunis. We crossed paths as he left the stage, and I was about to go on. I had come to play Boieldieu’s concerto with the Tunisian Symphony Orchestra, and he had just performed Vivaldi’s mandolin concerto on the kanun. I found the transcription very interesting, and we exchanged contact details.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The idea of playing together slowly matured over two years: I returned regularly to Tunisia for concerts, and each time, we took the opportunity to jam, think about the best repertoire, try out pieces, and, on my side, get to know the kanun better so that I could make arrangements that would showcase its strengths.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Despite the logistical constraints such a collaboration would entail (distance, visas, schedules, and the fact that there was only one pedal harp in Tunisia, etc.), Harkan was launched in the summer of 2018 with a tour of the Maghreb. In addition to concerts as a duo, they quickly started playing with several other musicians, performing as a trio with different percussionists, using traditional percussion.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u201cEbrahim, an Iranian Kurdish daf player, joined us in 2022. We were looking for a percussionist for concerts in France, and we discovered him and contacted him on Facebook! Since then, we’ve been focusing on this trio format with percussion, which we really enjoy.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\"Harkan<\/p>\n

They describe themselves as being <\/span>\u2018at the crossroads of jazz, classical (both Western and Eastern) and world music\u2019, but in reality <\/span><\/i>they cover a rich repertoire that incorporates traditional melodies from Spanish-Andalusian, Turkish, North African, Levantine, and Greek cultures, as well as discovering the Kurdish repertoire with Ebrahim. For Ma\u00efa, however, this is part of what keeps the experience of being a musician fresh:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I need variety in the genres I play on the harp to feel stimulated. I love discovering styles and instruments I didn’t know before.\u00a0 Ultimately, what interested us was discovering each other’s musical culture rather than playing in our \u2018native language\u2019.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Harkan is very happy to be playing in France in the coming months, where they will record their first album at the end of June. After having to postpone it a few times,\u00a0 the recording represents a joyous moment of arrival.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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