Today, the programme is dedicated to the first of our two selections from the album From Minho to Euphrates — a remarkable work by Lamia Yared and Efrén López published by the Australian label World Within Worlds.

… I told Lamia that after countless complete listens, I felt that movement was not the goal — that the music does not build towards a climax, but simply remains. And that you remain with it, inhabiting a place. She confirmed this. She said she conceives it as a continuous cycle of presence. More precisely, she called it a waṣla.

A waṣla is sustained time: several pieces linked by a shared mode, where music does not move towards an ending, but stays,
listens, breathes.

At the end, I asked her to define it from the heart. She said it was the meeting — in our time — of instruments and traditions that had never touched, /but were destined to recognise one another.

Music made with care. Like a form of prayer. Not to distract,
but to accompany. Not to fill, but to open a space
where the sacred can breathe again.

Let me just remind you a few occasions -if you are lucky enough to be close- on which you can have the chance  to listen to Lamia Yared  Live

April/24/2026    Album launching From Minho to Euphrates – Chapelle Notre-Dame de Bonsecours, in Montrèal  with Efrén Lopez, Didem Basar, Araz Salez, Marie-Laurence Primeau and Hamin Honari

Then less then a week later Lamia will again hop to Europe to hold a Workshop on Arabic and Ottoman music for La Corde Sensible, on the Greek island of Syros. This is  April/29/2026 If you are quick you can still apply for the workshop.

For more details, please visit Lamia´s agenda on her website www.lamiayared.com

And I cannot forget to mention the Australian tour with Efrén Lopez, which comes in November.  

For the time being, we have three dates, so let me mention:

November/05/2026 Melbourne Recital Center,

November /07/2026    The Street Theatre, Canberra 

November /08/2026   Sidney                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Why did you decide to return? she was asked.

She said she had left — and had almost slammed the door —
because stridency had filled everything.

There was no space left. Only noise. Only exposure.

I returned, she said, because I understood that shared silence
is still possible — and necessary.

When I announced my own withdrawal, messages arrived.
Many of them. Some carried careful, elegant goodbyes, kind wishes.

Others confessed to feeling alone. Orphaned. Disconnected.

Orphaned of a place where music was not merely an object of immediate consumption — used and discarded, without pause,/without attention, without trace.

There was fatigue. Saturation. People exposed, one by one,
to a violence that seeps through everything from positions of power.

Those people — those singular lives — were seeking music as presence.

The word as refuge. Returning was not a professional decision.

It was an act of solidarity. A way of being there.

Hugs, Maja

PLAYLIST for this episode:

Track 01 — THEME MUSIC: Intro to Turkman Kamancheh: Kayhan Kalhor · Tar/Lute: Hossein Alizadeh · Tombak: Homayoun Shajarian

Track 02 —   Lamia Yared, Efren López: Mo Makikhat

Track 03 —  Marie Keyrouz:  Ya Umma Allah

Track 04 – LamiaYared, Efren López: Santa María Amar

Track 05 –  Parissa   Masnavi, Foroud (Esfahan)

Track 06 –  Hossein Alizadeh:  Emanations In Echoes

Track 07 – Lamia Yared, Efren López: Chqal Nourono

Track 08 Lamia Yared, Efren López: Muwashah Al Rifqou Bi Maftoun