Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 5 from 4. May 2009
EAC extraction logfile from 23. November 2011, 22:54
Hamza El Din / Al Oud
Used drive : Optiarc DVD RW AD-7700H Adapter: 0 ID: 1
Read mode : SecureUtilize accurate stream : YesDefeat audio cache : YesMake use of C2 pointers : No
Read offset correction : 48Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : NoFill up missing offset samples with silence : YesDelete leading and trailing silent blocks : NoNull samples used in CRC calculations : YesUsed interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000Gap handling : Appended to previous track
Used output format : User Defined EncoderSelected bitrate : 32 kBit/sQuality : HighAdd ID3 tag : NoCommand line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\FLAC\FLAC.EXEAdditional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=EAC FLAC -8" %s
TOC of the extracted CD
Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector --------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 0:00.50 | 4:36.00 | 50 | 20749 2 | 4:36.50 | 4:56.00 | 20750 | 42949 3 | 9:32.50 | 11:40.00 | 42950 | 95449 4 | 21:12.50 | 2:51.00 | 95450 | 108274 5 | 24:03.50 | 4:22.00 | 108275 | 127924 6 | 28:25.50 | 4:36.00 | 127925 | 148624 7 | 33:01.50 | 4:04.00 | 148625 | 166924 8 | 37:05.50 | 7:17.00 | 166925 | 199699 9 | 44:22.50 | 3:01.50 | 199700 | 213324
Track 1
Filename C:\Users\sony\Music\Rutracker_Seeds\01 - Childhood.wav
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Peak level 76.8 % Track quality 100.0 % Test CRC 6A48A32F Copy CRC 6A48A32F Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 2) [46B1F1DF], AccurateRip returned [89B6B747] Copy OK
Track 2
Filename C:\Users\sony\Music\Rutracker_Seeds\02 - The Spirits.wav
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Peak level 75.1 % Track quality 100.0 % Test CRC DE2C5606 Copy CRC DE2C5606 Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 2) [DFBB1401], AccurateRip returned [1E710ACD] Copy OK
Track 3
Filename C:\Users\sony\Music\Rutracker_Seeds\03 - Granfather's Stories.wav
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Peak level 67.1 % Track quality 99.9 % Test CRC 1279D4F4 Copy CRC 1279D4F4 Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 2) [C9F8E781], AccurateRip returned [6841446C] Copy OK
Track 4
Filename C:\Users\sony\Music\Rutracker_Seeds\04 - Did Nura Remember.wav
Pre-gap length 0:00:02.25
Peak level 66.6 % Track quality 99.9 % Test CRC 0B780948 Copy CRC 0B780948 Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 2) [AA735EE6], AccurateRip returned [B861BFF1] Copy OK
Track 5
Filename C:\Users\sony\Music\Rutracker_Seeds\05 - The Message Bearer.wav
Pre-gap length 0:00:02.25
Peak level 76.7 % Track quality 99.9 % Test CRC 4D21052C Copy CRC 4D21052C Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 2) [CC318CA9], AccurateRip returned [9D73F225] Copy OK
Track 6
Filename C:\Users\sony\Music\Rutracker_Seeds\06 - The Gondola.wav
Pre-gap length 0:00:02.25
Peak level 78.9 % Track quality 100.0 % Test CRC A35D03EE Copy CRC A35D03EE Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 2) [8DE24C31], AccurateRip returned [29785902] Copy OK
Track 7
Filename C:\Users\sony\Music\Rutracker_Seeds\07 - Call For Unity.wav
Pre-gap length 0:00:02.25
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Track 8
Filename C:\Users\sony\Music\Rutracker_Seeds\08 - The Fortune Teller.wav
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Peak level 89.2 % Track quality 99.9 % Test CRC 6FBD66CF Copy CRC 6FBD66CF Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 2) [F1185A2E], AccurateRip returned [664B88E1] Copy OK
Track 9
Filename C:\Users\sony\Music\Rutracker_Seeds\09 - Greeting Card.wav
Pre-gap length 0:00:02.25
Peak level 76.0 % Track quality 99.9 % Test CRC 95F08313 Copy CRC 95F08313 Cannot be verified as accurate (confidence 2) [A721C2BD], AccurateRip returned [0AC9ED55] Copy OK
No tracks could be verified as accurateYou may have a different pressing from the one(s) in the database
No errors occurred
End of status report

REM GENRE FolkREM DATE 1965REM DISCID 820B1C09REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v0.99pb5"PERFORMER "Hamza El Din"TITLE "Al Oud"FILE "01 - Childhood.wav" WAVE TRACK 01 AUDIO TITLE "Childhood" PERFORMER "Hamza El Din" PREGAP 00:00:50 INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 02 AUDIO TITLE "The Spirits" PERFORMER "Hamza El Din" INDEX 00 04:34:08FILE "02 - The Spirits.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 03 AUDIO TITLE "Granfather's Stories" PERFORMER "Hamza El Din" INDEX 00 04:53:50FILE "03 - Granfather's Stories.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 04 AUDIO TITLE "Did Nura Remember" PERFORMER "Hamza El Din" INDEX 00 11:37:50FILE "04 - Did Nura Remember.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 05 AUDIO TITLE "The Message Bearer" PERFORMER "Hamza El Din" INDEX 00 02:48:50FILE "05 - The Message Bearer.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 06 AUDIO TITLE "The Gondola" PERFORMER "Hamza El Din" INDEX 00 04:19:50FILE "06 - The Gondola.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 07 AUDIO TITLE "Call For Unity" PERFORMER "Hamza El Din" INDEX 00 04:33:50FILE "07 - Call For Unity.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 08 AUDIO TITLE "The Fortune Teller" PERFORMER "Hamza El Din" INDEX 00 04:01:50FILE "08 - The Fortune Teller.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 09 AUDIO TITLE "Greeting Card" PERFORMER "Hamza El Din" INDEX 00 07:14:50FILE "09 - Greeting Card.wav" WAVE INDEX 01 00:00:00

Hamza El Din -- 1929-2006
Hamza El Din is one of those amazing performers that you have been searching for your entire life. His vocal and musical abilities are sublime. At the same time, his music sounds both ancient and accessible. Hamza's music is meditational. The songs will gently paint pictures in your mind of the rolling Nubian desert scenery. Much is said of his musical abilities, but the rhythm is also a highlight as the doumbeks and handclaps add to the trance inductive sounds. His voice is very deep (like an Egyptian Johnny Cash) and his oud style expressive. Traditionally, the oud is an accompanying instrument and is almost never played by itself and usually does little or no improvisation. It is Hamza who can maintain the integrity of this music while being an innovator at the same time.
A longtime Oakland resident, Mr. El Din was a subtle master of the OUD (the Arabian short-necked fretless lute), and the TAR (the ancient single-skinned drum that originated in Nubia, the ancient upper Nile land) along with his gentle voice and original compositions. Mr. El Din sought to preserve his native culture, singing Nubian songs and stories in a warm, reedy voice that merged with his instrumental overtones to create music of quiet intensity and beauty.
Hamza El Din is considered the father of modern Nubian music. He was born 1929 in Toshka, Nubia, Egypt. Hamza studied at King Fouad University (now the University of Cairo), then enrolled in the Popular University and at Ibrahim Shafiq's Institute of Music (Shafiq was renowned as a master of Arabian music and of the Muwashshah rhyme forms). Following graduation, he continued his studies at the King Fouad Institute for Middle Eastern Music, mastering the oud. Later, with an Italian government grant, he studied Western music and classical guitar at the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome. After moving to the United States, he taught as an ethnomusicologist in several American universities, including the University of Ohio (Athens), the University of Washington (Seattle) and the University of Texas (Austin). Aided by a grant from the Japan Foundation, he went to Tokyo to make a comparative study between the Arabian oud and the Japanese biwa during the 1980's.
Hamza El Din is one of the first African musicians to gain widespread international recognition. Western listeners are as likely as not to have been exposed to his work via the Grateful Dead and Kronos Quartet, who played with him on-stage occasionally. (El Din also helped arrange the Dead's tour of Egypt.) He played an integral role in modernizing Nubian music, using his work to both evoke and tell stories of Nubian life. On a fellowship to study Western classical music in Rome, he met American Gino Foreman, who exposed Hamza's work to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. This resulted in a contract with Vanguard. His mid-'60s debut, “Al Oud - Instrumental and Vocal Music from Nubia”, was one of the first "world music" recordings to achieve wide exposure in the West.
First discovered by Western audiences through his performance at the Newport Folk Festival, the U.N. Human Rights Day and Vanguard recordings in 1964, his 1971 Nonesuch recording, Escalay: The Water Wheel is legendary among musicians and connoisseurs. The Escalay album, 1971 Nonesuch recording, was re-released in 1998. His best known recording in the U.S. is Eclipse, produced and engineered by Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart. Hamza's music has also appeared in movies soundtracks including the Black Stallion, You Are What You Eat and, The Passion in the Desert. Hamza has appeared regularly with the Kronos Quartet, which included Escalay: the Water Wheel on their chart-topping Pieces of Africa album (Elektra/ Nonesuch, 1992). From 1995 to 1997, Hamza toured most of the world. Hamza's 1996 album, Available Sound: Darius debuted from Lotus Records (Salzburg, Austria) and was nominated for the European equivalent of the Grammy, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplatten Kritik. A new CD A Wish by Sounds True was released in May 1999. Hamza's compositions were performed by many ballet companies such as Maurice Bejart Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Molissa Fenley Dance Company and Lines Contemporary Ballet in San Francisco.
In recent years, he performed at major festivals including Edinburgh, Salzburg, Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Montreux, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Monterey and Festival Cervantino (Guanajuato, Mexico).
Hamza El Din died Monday, May 22nd, at a Berkeley hospital from a gallbladder infection. He was 76.
Press Clips
Hamza El Din, who has made his life's work reinterpreting the songs of his native region of Nubia on the oud, performed intense music with extreme quietude at Symphony Space on Saturday night... Ben Ratliff The New York Times, Reviews, March 2, 1999
Music doesn't get much starker than the songs of Hamza El Din, the Nubian musician who performed Saturday night at the Triplex Theater .... He is a virtuoso, but one who uses his technique toward clarity rather than display. Jon Pareles The New York Times, Reviews, April 19, 1989
(Hamza) began to evolve new musical forms by drawing the moods and colors of Nubian music into the vast technical and aesthetic structure of Arabic classical music. The result is not a loose amalgamation of tow variant forms of music but an entirely new mode of expression. What is especially significant is his full command of the technical possibilities of the Oud combined with new musical patterns and ideas, growing out of the vocal music and drumming of traditional Nubia. Elizabeth Fernea, Liner notes of Escalay: the Water Wheel, Nonesuch 1998
El Din establishes a skittering rhythm and a melody alternately intoned by oud or voice. The melodies come and go with microtones and scales... SF Weekly, Music Reviews, February 18-24,1998.
Hamza El Din is a world music giant, an international emissary of Nubian music and culture and an artistic pioneer in the recording of world music. Rhythm Music Magazine, October 1997.
His playing, rich in overtones, is more relaxed, subtle and intricate than that of the typical oud virtuoso. San Francisco Chronicle, July 7, 1996
A warm cloud of silence seems to envelop the hall whenever this Nubian born Tokyo resident comes to town, A few impossibly elegant beats on his tar frame drum, some timeless notes plucked from an oud, or a couple of reedy vocal phrases, and you're off to a virtual Upper Nile desert. A more exquisite and less taxing holiday would be tough to conjure. Village Voice, (New York) March 8, 1994
Hamza El Din is one of the greatest ambassadors for Nubian and Egyptian culture ... [his] sound is so rich that it is sometimes hard to believe that only one man is playing. Al Ahram, (Cairo) January 20-26, 1994.
This was not some sort of exotic ethnic music, these were the songs and instrumental pieces of a great composer, steeped in the musical language of his Nubian heritage and gifted with the power to transform it into a shapely, sophisticated art form without destroying its own sense of place. LA Weekly, September 3-9, 1993.
Bypass this rare solo performance only at risk of extreme cultural impoverishment. San Francisco Bay Guardian, February 5, 1992.
In a harrowing beautiful 12-minutes piece called" Water Wheel" Sudanese born musician Hamza El Din creates a lament for his village, which was flooded, and its people forced to relocate, after the Aswan High Dam was built. Entertainment Weekly, February 28, 1992.
...El Din was renowned long before the new generation of hip young world music buffs "discovered" his haunting rhythm and surging lyrical instrumentals. Pacific Sun, February 7,1992.
The Sudan has not figured prominently in the most faddish recent preoccupations with world music, but native son, Hamza El Din, has been an important influence in the reclamation and forward progression of indigenous Nubian traditions. In addition to mastering the TAR, he adopted the OUD and became virtuoso, playing in the both its traditional as an accompaniment to mesmerizing, chant like singing and as solo instrument. The SF Bay Guardian, Critic's Choice, January 2, 1992
...Hamza's soaring lyrics, sang in the ancient Nubian Language, and his droning 'Ud hauntingly evoke the spirit of his home land. Louis Werner, Aramco World, July-August, 1992.
He sang and played in masterful form... The Japan Times, (Tokyo), November 13,1988.
Musicians’ clips
"It was mesmerizing. Hypnotic and trancelike,'' said Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. "Hamza taught me about the romancing of the drum. His music was very subtle and multilayered”.
"He was a deep listener,'' added Hart, who practiced daily for six years to master the tar Mr. El Din gave him. Sometimes the music they played together was so soft "we could hardly hear ourselves. He'd just suck you into this vortex, and all of a sudden what was quiet seemed loud in its intensity. He suspended time.''
Mr. El Din, who created music for "The Black Stallion" and other films, first played with the Dead in '78 at Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza and joined the band a few months later at San Francisco's Winterland with a group of Sufi drummers. He was a serenely joyous man whose glowing black face was framed by his flowing white garb and headdress.
"He was sweet, gentle soul,'' said Hart, who recalled that night at Winterland when Mr. El Din had the whole crowd clapping the 12-beat rhythm of the Nubian number "Olin Arageed.'' "If you took the time to visit his sonic universe, he'd welcome you with open arms. It was a joyous experience. Jerry (Garcia) just loved to play with him.''
So did Joan Jeanrenaud, the cellist who first met Mr. El Din in the 1980s when she was a member of the Kronos Quartet. It was in Tokyo, where he was living and teaching at the time. He played his signature composition "Escalay: The Water Wheel'' for the group. "It was a heart-touching experience,'' said Jeanrenaud, who played with Mr. El Din many times, as a member of Kronos -- which featured "Escalay'' on its hit 1992 recording "Pieces of Africa'' -- on Mr. El Din's discs and on her own.
"He put himself into the music so completely that when he played, it would take you away to another place. You went on a journey to this very peaceful, emotional, beautiful place. He was a mentor to many of us.''
“Hamza has the best oud tone on the planet and his albums show his tone to perfection. No one that I have heard so far has the richness and warmth and depth to their tone like Hamza has.”
"One day I felt the oud had a Nubian accent,'' Mr. El Din told The Chronicle in 1995. "I played for people in my village and they were mesmerized. I knew I had something.''
"Through very simple means, Hamza could create a spell on an audience. His music spoke directly to the heart,'' said Riley, whose groundbreaking minimalist music has some of the same hypnotic quality. "Audiences leaned in toward his music," he said. "It wasn't in their faces.''
Riley introduced Mr. El Din to Kronos. "He opened doors for a lot of people, doors between different forms of music,'' said Kronos violinist and founder David Harrington. "We lost a great musician and a great man.''
Mr. El Din is survived by his wife, Nabra, of Oakland. A musical tribute is pending.
- Jesse Hamlin, SF Chronicle - Friday, May 26, 2006

AMG Review
His second album is similar in tone to his debut, featuring original compositions based on Nubian folk traditions, masterful oud playing, and soothing vocals. Serene and haunting, this was among the first world music recordings to make an international impact. ~ Richie Unterberger