The Adventures of Prince Achmed, created by German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger, weaves together several different storylines from her 1926 silent film, the first feature-length animated movie in film-making history.

Inspired from One Thousand and One Nights, Reiniger’s resulting narrative is told in five delightfully chaotic acts and is a tale of good versus evil played out between Prince Achmed and the evil magician; involves a magical flying horse, Princess Dinarsade, the demons of Wak Wak, plus Princess Peri Banu, Aladdin, and a witch.

American musician Tom Teasley creates a musical Arabian tapestry throughout the screenings of the film with his one-man original score of “world music live.” During a recent performance at the Constellation Theatre in Washington D.C., Teasley’s deciphered music blended effortlessly between big percussion and very sweet, melodic oriental lines — both of which bring out the nuance and textures of Reiniger’s movie.

Teasley’s musical themes transition magically from one scene to the next, and he easily captivated the viewers. “My music is a blend of African, Indian and Middle Eastern — which have had the biggest influence on me,” Teasley said after one performance.

Teasley remains faithful to Reiniger’s film; his surging, pulsating percussive music fuses with Reiniger’s imaginative cinematic world, creating a show that is both fascinating and enchanting.

Reiniger required three years to make her film, which is now almost 100 years old. Each frame had to be painstakingly filmed, and 24 frames were needed per second. She and her husband spent the next three years photographing 250,000 individual images on a multi-plane camera designed specifically for the film. Her silhouette film technique involved elaborately detailed and jointed paper puppets, unique (at the time) multiplane camera techniques and fascinating experiments on film stock with wax and sand.

A Berlin-born avant-garde artist, Reiniger was only 23 when she made The Adventures of Prince Achmed, and it has been acclaimed by contemporary critics as “a rapturous animated kaleidoscope.”

Teasley’s vast knowledge of Arabian and world music are what makes his oriental musical accompaniment of Prince Achmed so gratifying and exhilarating. His cultural acumen comes through years of experience playing with musicians throughout the Middle East.

Endlessly clever and constantly entertaining, Teasley’s talents include playing so many instruments, from tablas to tambourahs, that it is often hard to comprehend that the resulting music is being played by one person. His use of “traditional world instruments” Teasley said, “makes me feel like I’m playing some instrument with each limb at all times.”

Using traditional percussion, while singing into a keyboard that amplifies it, allowed him to create “some original textures with the crazy percussion stuff that I do.”

Several years ago, through an introduction by Bahraini friends, the Minister of Culture in Bahrain invited Teasley to play at Bahrain’s International Music Festival in Manama.

While there, Teasley said, “I saw these Bahraini drummers doing this amazing stuff that I had never heard before, that was not within my understanding Middle East percussionists. I scrapped my program and incorporated them into my show and it became a Bahraini-US hybrid of music that ‘sparked the ignition.’”

A three-time recipient of a Fulbright-Hayes grant for performances in the Middle East, the US State Department sponsored Teasley on a trip back to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. While in Dhahran, Teasley said he “collaborated with an absolutely amazing Saudi oud player.” Teasley also performed with Saudi musicians in Riyadh and Jeddah.

Word got out regarding Teasley’s interpretive love of Middle Eastern music, and soon he traveled to the West Bank, where he played with Palestinian musicians during Ramadan. Recounting what he calls “an incredible experience,” some of the programs he performed was with “‘anasheed,’ a premier religious music.”

“They saw me perform and invited me to play with them. I did a series of concerts with them in some of the Palestinian refugee camps on the West Bank, it was a tremendous honor for me to participate,” he said.

Teasley’s talent has also brought him to Iraq, where the US State Department sponsored his trip there as a musical ambassador. In Irbil, he conducted a week-long residency at the cultural institute, “working and training with other musicians and students.”

Traveling next to Baghdad, outside the Green Zone, he worked on many residency programs with the junior colleges there, including the Peace Through Arts Academy.

Duraid Fadhel, the famous Iraqi oud player and composer, invited him to play with him.

“Duraid and I also collaborated with Iraqi poets there; the poets read their poetry in Arabic and Duraid played. It was then translated into English and I played. It was a very cool, ingenious idea.”

“The musical highlight of my fantastic trip there was when I traveled to Basra,” Teasley said, where he met with musicians from their Iraqi-African population, “which I didn’t even know existed.” He said he discovered “a unique drummer style which exists only there,” but which in many ways “reminded me of the Bahraini drummers.”

The Washington Post described Teasely as “a multi-instrumental genius,” and he maintains his unique career as a solo percussionist, composer and collaborator. Teasley has been an artist-in-residence at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and has collaborated with the National Symphony as both a soloist and composer.

For more information about Tom Teasley and his music, log onto: http://tomteasley.com/

To hear a performance by Tom Teasley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_ji_T_Rb2c

Tom Teasley with Master Drummers live in Bahrain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3lOfEZwtgY

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Photo caption below: Aladdin Confronts the Demons of Wak-Wak

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