Shifting Sands brings together musicians from the UK and the Arabian Peninsula. It will feature at this year’s Celtic Connections Festival. Hasan Hujairi, a young guitar and oud player who experiments with field recordings and soundscapes, blogs for us about the project and the concert.

Central to the music we are preparing to perform in Glasgow’s Celtic Connections 2011 Festival is the relationship between each of our musical traditions and the sea.

As a person with an academic background in Historiography and Ethnomusicology, I find examining how the sea connects us (and our musical traditions) extremely fascinating and beneficial.

Through the sharing of our musical traditions we not only learn new things about each other, but about ourselves as well – this especially applies to us musicians.

I am writing this before the first of our collective performances in Glasgow, which will be followed by a series of events in Bahrain. I feel very excited to be able to share our commonalities with the audience. I have gained much from our discussions on how to present sea-related musical traditions in ways that still appreciate their sources.

The atmosphere in Glasgow, particularly around the Festival venue, has been very conducive to creative music and giving the audience a very special performance.

But what really makes the experience special is the Shifting Sands team. Each musician adds a very important dynamic to the exciting and rare sound we have managed to create.

The back-stories and conversations I shared with the other musicians, and the team-based framework in which we made our music, are what have left the strongest impressions on me. Discussions on sea shanties and the mythologies linked to the musical instruments we play were fascinating, and reminded me how similar people are around the world.

I also rediscovered my appreciation for the aesthetics of traditional music, and how to present those aesthetics in a context that is exciting to the listener.

I strongly believe that projects such as Shifting Sands need to continue receiving support; there are important intangible benefits for all involved. Such initiatives provide an important platform for people from different cultures to meet and share ideas.

I also hope that by promoting creative and cultural exchange projects such as this, a refreshing new sound and experience can be presented to audiences, and to the artists involved.

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