Samuel Kaldas

A group of elderly Egyptian men in white robes crowds around a lectern, upon which sits a dusty tome. The eldest moves his finger slowly across the open page as they chant, crawling from letter to letter of the Coptic script. One of them is holding a pair of cymbals, another, a triangle. At certain points in the tune, they begin to play, completing their piece with a few dramatic strikes, after which the chant settles back into a gentler, more solemn tone, unaccompanied by the instruments’ metallic voices. With the occasional exception of a microphone or projector screen, this scene has not changed much in more than a thousand years… . Continue Reading »