'Razz' blends rock, Arabian, jazz music
Wes Putt, Staff Writer
Issue date: 5/3/06 Section: Lifestyles
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Maraka's invention took time and hard work. During the six years of development, Maraka practiced jazz, played with rock bands, and performed with purely Arabian instruments. His band consists of a string quartet, bass and electric guitar, percussions, trumpet and Oud, the Arabic equivalent of the lute. Maraka performs vocals and plays piano. "It took me seven months to put all these musicians together," Maraka said, including a non-UA student who "is an amazing musician, and could understand my ideas and the Arabic beats.
"I had to practice with each section as if we were playing their style in the show," Maraka said, "then I combined all of them together." All seven songs are original works, six of which are sung in Arabic with one in English.
In order to incorporate a string quartet into the Razz performance, "I had to write every single note for them with small details including dynamics and effects," Maraka said, "putting them with the rest of the musicians was hard, but it worked out great.
"Musically, the reason I came up with this style is because I noticed that a lot of rock or jazz musicians fail to feel jazz the way they should," Maraka said, "or [that] Arabs fail to feel rock ... Razz gives the chance to anyone to apply whatever they got from their background in this musical style."
While Razz is cultured from three different genes of music, the influences of the band come from all over, Maraka said. "As for myself, I am influenced by Arabic music, [which is] very expressive."
After living in Tunisia until age 10, Maraka moved to Amman, Jordan. Maraka later came to the United States to find that people are all the same.
"I get the American humor," Maraka said. "People get my humor.
