DeutschIncense of Music 29
A multisensory concert – Tuesday, 16 October 2018, 7:30 pm
Yasamin Shahhosseini: oud
Sebastian Flaig: percussion
Incense: Grapefruit, Galbanum
LouLou – meeting place for old and new neighbours, Lübecker Strasse 21, 10559 Berlin-Moabit
It is a special joy that the Incense of Music series, which stands for communication, intercultural exchange, shared experience, and openness, is invited on 16 October 2018 to perform in the rooms of Café LouLou (special thanks to Mariana Karkoutly) — a meeting place for new (refugee) and long-standing neighbours in Berlin-Moabit. For this occasion, we present the Iranian oud player Yasamin Shahhosseini and the German percussionist Sebastian Flaig, for an evening of traditional and contemporary music from Persia. We will burn grapefruit and galbanum for the occasion.
Incense of Music is an olfactory concert series in which exquisite incense is burned simultaneously with the music being performed. Sound and scent interpenetrate synaesthetically, interacting in ways that sharpen listeners' and musicians' sensory focus and support a shared state of awareness.
Guests who are particularly sensitive to smoke are advised against attending this event.
Shahhosseini and Flaig
Artists
Yasamin Shahhosseini — oud
Yasamin Shahhosseini was born on 4 November 1992 in Tehran. She completed her studies at the Tehran Music School, where she began learning oud, and went on to study traditional Persian music at the University of Tehran. Yasamin has played with various music groups, including the New Music Orchestra and Meta X (conducted by Alireza Mashayekhi), Paliz, Avaye Tehran, Derang, Tree Ouds (led by Shahram Gholami), and Mahbang. She has contributed to several albums and recorded her own oud solo album, "Gahan," released in Tehran in 2015. She researches the development of the Persian radif, with a particular focus on Urmawi's "Kitab al-Adwar" (13th-century Baghdad), and has won numerous oud prizes. Yasamin currently works with the research group "Pouyesh," which investigates various topics in Persian music and publishes numerous articles in Tehran.
Sebastian Flaig — percussion
Sebastian Flaig, from Freiburg, studied ethnic percussion, jazz drum set, and composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Leipzig. To deepen his knowledge of oriental percussion, he lived for a year in Istanbul, studying with various masters, including darbuka virtuoso Misirli Ahmet. He learned Persian percussion with Behnam Samani and Majid Khaladj. His stylistic range spans oriental music, jazz, and experimental music through to early music, performing in ensembles including the Taner Akyol Trio, with Maya Youssef, Pain Perdu, the KalhorFlaig Duo, Susan Weinert, Ensemble Resonanz, the Lautten Compagney Berlin, and the Musikwerkstatt Köln. In 2017, Maya Youssef's CD "Syrian Dreams" received the German Record Critics' Award. Sebastian has performed as a soloist with the Staatsorchester Braunschweig, the Hamburg Symphony, and the Mittelsächsische Philharmonie, as well as in various dance and theatre productions, including at the Komische Oper. He served as musical director at the Stadttheater Freiburg, Theater Erlangen, and the Bauhaus Dessau. In new music, he has premiered works as a soloist by composers Ali Gorji, Taner Akyol, Volker Staub, and Chen Zheng-Wen. He has composed music for documentary films and theatre productions, and has toured Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Bulgaria, and South America, among other regions.
Incense
Galbanum is the resin of Ferula galbaniflua (or Ferula erubescens), a member of the giant fennel family that grows chiefly in Persia and regions east of the Aral Sea. Today, the resin is harvested primarily in the mountains of northern Iran — around 80 tonnes annually — and contains a water-soluble gum fraction, alcohol-soluble resins, and essential oil.
Galbanum was traditionally traded through the ports of the Levant, though in difficult times trade shifted to centuries-old alternative routes, such as to Kochi on India's Malabar Coast. Kochi became a hub of intercontinental spice and incense trade after a tsunami in 1341 created a natural harbour basin there.
Planta de Cochim, Bocarro, 1635
Following the founding of the Viceroyalty of Portuguese India, galbanum was increasingly shipped between India and Lisbon rather than solely through Levantine Mediterranean ports. While it never ranked among the most coveted and costly Oriental spices such as pepper, cinnamon, clove, or nutmeg, it found wide therapeutic and palliative use in Europe as a so-called "mother resin" — used to relieve menstrual cramps, induce labour, and support postpartum recovery.
Carrack Madre de Deus
The scent of raw galbanum resin is considered rough and earthy; some writers describe it as outright unpleasant. The Babylonian Talmud (Kareithoth 6b) remarks that galbanum has a bad smell, and yet was numbered among the ingredients of the sacred incense. Indeed, galbanum is an equal component of the holy incense offering ("Ketoret") recipe recorded in the Book of Exodus (30:34). According to legend, the torch of Prometheus was fashioned from the woody stalk of a related giant fennel, and Pliny claimed in his Natural History that galbanum, mixed with hogweed, could kill venomous snakes by touch alone.
Portuguese Armada
Pedro Álvares Cabral
Galbanum reveals its full depth only when burned or blended into perfume, where it appears as a vivid, "green" top note or as an earthy base note alongside musk or pine — found in fragrances including Chanel No. 19, Guerlain's Vol de Nuit, and Balmain's Vent Vert.
The grapefruit (Citrus × paradisi) is a subtropical citrus tree believed to have originated in Southeast Asia or southern China as a natural hybrid between pomelo and mandarin. It bears glossy, evergreen leaves and the familiar round, orange fruit, whose fragrant peel provides the incense material.
Carried along the trade routes of Arab merchants and later the Crusaders, the orange had reached the Mediterranean by medieval times, and remains associated across many cultures with prosperity and good fortune. The grapefruit itself emerged only around 1750, likely on Barbados, as a spontaneous cross between pomelo and orange, reaching Florida in 1823 and entering commercial cultivation there from 1875. Its varieties fall broadly into white-fleshed and red-fleshed types — the latter tracing back to the American Ruby Red variety, patented in 1929, from which later selections such as Rio Red and Star Ruby emerged with even deeper red colouring. The fruit known commercially as Sweetie, botanically Oroblanco, is a 1958 Californian cross between pomelo and grapefruit.
Burned as incense, grapefruit releases a bright, cheerful, sweet-citrus scent. It is invigorating and energizing, and is associated with joy, warmth, and abundance — often used to counter low mood and create a welcoming atmosphere.