Tamino — Indigo Night: A Modern Arabic Fairytale
Beginnings are hard. I am not only referring to the difficulty of starting this article, but also to the long months, if not years, of inner battles that lead me to the moment of writing these first words. I love music. I love writing. Both have brought me joy for years, but I somehow never came to pursue them actively. And that is because beginnings are indeed hard! There is always the lingering fear of not being relevant or entertaining enough. There is always that one other idea that might work out better. Not to mention the “who reads about music nowadays anyway” argument. There can be a million excuses to not start this journey that I’ve dreamt of embarking on for so long… so I decided to challenge myself to complete one of those 30-day challenges you see around Instagram. However, instead of posting my answers to the challenge in a plain Instagram story, I will write something for each daily challenge. And as writing takes a little longer, maybe I will take more than 30 days. Shall we call that a good start?
The people who took the time to create those beautiful “30-day song/music challenge” templates, offered different options for day one. Lots of them chose the obvious “your favorite song” path, but that would be an impossible task for me. So I looked further and came across the Family-Feud-like challenge of naming a song that has a color in the title. Now that’s something fun! I admit — my brain jumped directly to Blue by Eiffel 65, then it calmed down a bit and Black Velvet by Alannah Myles started playing in my head. Red Blooded Woman (Kylie Minogue), Purple Rain (Prince), Nights in White Satin (The Moody Blues), Yellow Submarine (The Beatles). I could go on… That’s honestly the unedited version of the songs that came to my mind right away and in that order. But I’m here to challenge my creativity and hopefully give you a new interesting song to listen to as a result.
The color is indigo… and the song — the mesmerizing piece Indigo Night by Tamino. The use of color in a song’s title, especially a song as epic as this, cannot be coincidental. Being a color that is rare in nature, indigo evokes a certain sense of mystery. Even without having listened to the song, the name already puts you in a specific mood that could only come from having experienced such an “indigo night” yourself. I associate this with being somewhere away from the city at the time of dusk when everything else but the sky appears like dark silhouettes. It’s mostly silent, apart from the sound of nature, and the sense of mystery brought by the darkness is mixed with a feeling of tranquility. Then I play the song, and the instrumental complements this sensation perfectly. It’s magic that carries you away to the world described in the stories in 1001 Nights. For a few minutes, you’re there in the desert witnessing the beautiful story told in the lyrics.
I discovered Tamino quite recently and I fell in love with his music right away. He’s a young Belgian artist with Egyptian roots, who draws on his heritage to create contemporary pieces with an authentic Arabic sound. The result is an incredible debut album Amir, whose dark sound invites you to immerse into a rich culture surrounded by mystery. This darkness in his music is rather defining for Tamino, and I love the way he describes it in an interview: “It’s not the stark kind of darkness, it’s a warm kind of darkness, an inviting darkness.” Just like the darkness of an indigo night.
Hopefully, by inviting you to listen to Indigo Night, I’ll inspire you to listen to Habibi, Sun May Shine, w.o.t.h. and just his entire live performance at the Ancienne Belgique. Young musicians like Tamino deserve every bit of recognition. But you also deserve to treat yourself and your senses to music of great quality. And with that, I finish day one.
