Hamza El Din Al Oud (LP, clear Vinyl, Ltd.)

(Real Gone Music) 16 tracks, clear vinyl, limited edition of 900 copies.

It is fair to say that Hamza El Din has done for the oud (the Arabic short-necked lute) what Ravi Shankar did for the sitar (Arabic lute): He brought a little-known instrument to the West and popularized it. In fact, he ended up playing oud with everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Kronos Quartet to his one-time roommate Sandy Bull.

But El Din's skills went beyond that of an oud virtuoso; he was also a singer and composer, and all of those talents are on display on this groundbreaking album, released on Vanguard in 1965, shortly after his star performance at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, which attracted the attention of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Meditative, hypnotic and al Oud contains nine original compositions based on Nubian folk traditions; at first it is the exotic sound of the oud that captivates you, but it is the rhythmic pulse of the music and the expressive quality of El Din's voice that captivates you.