Mercan Dede-/ Secret Tribe CD Nar
(from mecandede.com)
Mercan Dede believes that when you put digital, electronic sounds together with hand-made, human ones, you can create universal language, capable of uniting old and young, ancient and modern, East and West. It’s a bold claim, but the Turkish-born and Montreal-based musician/producer/DJ has the career and the music to back it up. When he takes the stage with his group Secret Tribe, he hovers at the side behind his turntables and electronics, occasionally picking up a traditional wooden flute, or ney to float in sweet, breathy melodies, while masters of the kanun (zither), clarinet, darbuka (hand drum) and whatever other instruments he’s decided to include that night, ornament his grooves and spin magical, trance melodies to match the whirling of the group’s spectacular dervish dancer, Mira Burke.
This contrast between electronica and classical or folkloric arts cuts to the core of the Sufi philosophy that guides this one-of-a-kind artist. “Those things are not really separate,” says Dede. “The essence of Sufism is counterpoint. Everything exists with its opposite. On one side, I am doing electronic music. The other side of that is this really acoustic, traditional music.” Dede doesn’t just bring in any traditional sounds and sights as adornment to his techno beats. He is ever on the lookout for new collaborators, and they might come from any tradition, any country, any generation. For Secret Tribe’s U.S. debut in January, 2004, he flew in three, teenage prodigies of Turkish classical music from Istanbul and two of the pieces they played were improvised during the concert. “When I choose a musician,” says Dede, “I need to be connected with them in terms of personality, heart-wise we say in Turkey. We should have a similar energy and feeling about life. The second thing is they need to be down with the technical part of music. Once they’ve done that, you don’t need to worry. They can play anything.”
Mercan Dede and Secret Tribe’s splendid 2002 release Nar realizes this elegant marriage of old and new stunningly. Along with the groups’ spellbinding performances, it is helping them build a worldwide following. When the group plays in Turkey, they can draw as many as 20,000 people. But for Dede—whose name comes from a minor character in a contemporary Turkish novel—it has been a long, highly unconventional road to success. Raised poor in a Turkish village in the 1970s, Dede recalls the moment when listening to the radio as a six-year-old, he fell in love with the sound of the ney. But even when he moved to Istanbul to study journalism, he could not afford an instrument, so he made his first one from a length of plastic plumbing pipe. Although he eventually found a ney teacher, Dede did not pursue music as a career. He was more deeply involved with photography, and by chance, an official at the Saskatoon Public Library in Canada saw some of his work and invited him to come and do an exhibition.
Dede wound up studying multimedia in Saskatoon, and he worked in a bar to earn rent money. That was where he first encountered the art of deejaying. One day the bar’s deejay couldn’t make it, and Dede stepped in. The techno revolution was just beginning, and Dede was getting in on the ground floor. By the mid-80s, he was traveling to do “technotribalhouse” deejay gigs under the name
Mercan Dede believes that when you put digital, electronic sounds together with hand-made, human ones, you can create universal language, capable of uniting old and young, ancient and modern, East and West. It’s a bold claim, but the Turkish-born and Montreal-based musician/producer/DJ has the career and the music to back it up. When he takes the stage with his group Secret Tribe, he hovers at the side behind his turntables and electronics, occasionally picking up a traditional wooden flute, or ney to float in sweet, breathy melodies, while masters of the kanun (zither), clarinet, darbuka (hand drum) and whatever other instruments he’s decided to include that night, ornament his grooves and spin magical, trance melodies to match the whirling of the group’s spectacular dervish dancer, Mira Burke.
This contrast between electronica and classical or folkloric arts cuts to the core of the Sufi philosophy that guides this one-of-a-kind artist. “Those things are not really separate,” says Dede. “The essence of Sufism is counterpoint. Everything exists with its opposite. On one side, I am doing electronic music. The other side of that is this really acoustic, traditional music.” Dede doesn’t just bring in any traditional sounds and sights as adornment to his techno beats. He is ever on the lookout for new collaborators, and they might come from any tradition, any country, any generation. For Secret Tribe’s U.S. debut in January, 2004, he flew in three, teenage prodigies of Turkish classical music from Istanbul and two of the pieces they played were improvised during the concert. “When I choose a musician,” says Dede, “I need to be connected with them in terms of personality, heart-wise we say in Turkey. We should have a similar energy and feeling about life. The second thing is they need to be down with the technical part of music. Once they’ve done that, you don’t need to worry. They can play anything.”
Mercan Dede and Secret Tribe’s splendid 2002 release Nar realizes this elegant marriage of old and new stunningly. Along with the groups’ spellbinding performances, it is helping them build a worldwide following. When the group plays in Turkey, they can draw as many as 20,000 people. But for Dede—whose name comes from a minor character in a contemporary Turkish novel—it has been a long, highly unconventional road to success. Raised poor in a Turkish village in the 1970s, Dede recalls the moment when listening to the radio as a six-year-old, he fell in love with the sound of the ney. But even when he moved to Istanbul to study journalism, he could not afford an instrument, so he made his first one from a length of plastic plumbing pipe. Although he eventually found a ney teacher, Dede did not pursue music as a career. He was more deeply involved with photography, and by chance, an official at the Saskatoon Public Library in Canada saw some of his work and invited him to come and do an exhibition.
Dede wound up studying multimedia in Saskatoon, and he worked in a bar to earn rent money. That was where he first encountered the art of deejaying. One day the bar’s deejay couldn’t make it, and Dede stepped in. The techno revolution was just beginning, and Dede was getting in on the ground floor. By the mid-80s, he was traveling to do “technotribalhouse” deejay gigs under the name Arkin Allen. He debuted as Mercan Dede in 1987 with he released his first album, Sufi Dreams, recorded for Golden Horn Records in San Francisco. The album was a minimalist techno project featuring the ney flute, and it earned impressive reviews. A few years later, Dede moved to Montreal where he first studied, then taught, at Concordia College, moving ever more forcefully into the burgeoning techno scene. Recordings he made under the name Mercan Dede got noticed in Istanbul, and a festival invited him to perform, expecting an older gentleman, as Dede means “grandfather” in Turkish. When people saw a young band mixing techno and tradition, they were exhilarated, and Dede has stuck with this adapted name ever since.
Dede formed his first group in 1997 and created more recordings, Journeys of a Dervish (Golden Horn, 1999) Seyahatname (Doublemoon, 2001), and Nar (Doublemoon, 2002 ) From the start, the group was more an idea than a set lineup. “I always get different musicians,” says Dede, “all the time. When I do a European tour, each country, I choose a guest musician from that country. This is the essence of the group.” The Canadian TV station Bravo filmed and aired Dede’s concert with Turkish master kemence (Persian violin) player Ihsan Ozgen at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in the Fall of 1998. German television producers Saarlandischer Rundfunk were so moved by Dede’s music that they traveled to Canada to feature him in their documentary about Sufi Music. While filming Dede at work in Montreal and Toronto in February of 1998, the producers requested that Dede create the soundtrack for this project. Mercan Dede’s album Seyahatname includes pieces composed for a dance theatre project, directed and choreographed by Beyhan Murphy for the Turkish State Modern Dance Troupe.
Both as Mercan Dede and his alter ego DJ Arkin Allen, he has performed at events as diverse as the Black & Blue 98 (a world-renowned Montreal circuit party attended by 15,000 people) and a concert of improvisations with on classical Turkish music at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. In July 2001, Mercan Dede performed at the highly acclaimed Montreal Jazz Festivals, sharing the General Motors Big Event stage with Burhan Öçal and Jamaaladeen Tacuma, in a concert called “East Meets the West” before an audience of more than 150,000 people. On that same evening, right after his concert, he appeared at Spectrum, this time performing with his project Montreal Tribal Trio, again as part of the festival program. In 2002, the group electrified the WOMEX world music trade fair in Essen, Germany, and also the International Transmusicales Festival in Rennes.
Dede has also performed with such musical personalities as Peter Murphy, Natacha Atlas, Mich Gerber, Omar Sosa, Maharaja. Mercan Dede and Secret Tribe’s summer tour 2003 included Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland), Arezzo Wave (I?taly), Skopje Festival (Macedonia), Moers Festival (Germany),World Roots Festival (The Netherlands), Jaen-Etnosur (Spain), Rhythm Sticks Festival (UK) and many others. The group’s 2004 U.S. debut took place at Joe’s Pub in New York in January, 2004, as part of the city’s groundbreaking world music marathon, GlobalFest. Mercan Dede also provided music for Pina Bausch's recent work, "Istanbul,” performed in the city it was named for in the spring of 2003. He is now working on “Orman S¸ehir” (Jungle City) MDT Turkey’s new modern dance performance, and a new album for Secret Tribe.
Mercan Dede was invited to play at GlobalFest” (APAP Conference) in New York in January 2004, where 16 different bands from 5 continents play. He is commissioned by the Turkish Ministry of Culture as the music director of the Güldestan Project. The project is destined to represent Turkish Culture and Arts all around the Globe.
Mercan Dede is keen to bring his extraordinary music and stagecraft everywhere in the world because he feels its inclusive spirit carries a profound message of understanding and reconciliation. “I don’t like the separation,” says Dede. “The Sufi poet Rumi has a very good saying: ‘If you are everywhere, you are nowhere. If you are somewhere, you are everywhere.’ My somewhere is my heart. I try to figure it out. The rest—the hype, the trends—they are not important. Instead of talking about war in Iraq, if you can make a sound of a small instrument from an Iraqi village, you can tell people more about what is going on there. For me, the future is electronic and folkloric.” Arkin Allen. He debuted as Mercan Dede in 1987 with he released his first album, Sufi Dreams, recorded for Golden Horn Records in San Francisco. The album was a minimalist techno project featuring the ney flute, and it earned impressive reviews. A few years later, Dede moved to Montreal where he first studied, then taught, at Concordia College, moving ever more forcefully into the burgeoning techno scene. Recordings he made under the name Mercan Dede got noticed in Istanbul, and a festival invited him to perform, expecting an older gentleman, as Dede means “grandfather” in Turkish. When people saw a young band mixing techno and tradition, they were exhilarated, and Dede has stuck with this adapted name ever since.
Dede formed his first group in 1997 and created more recordings, Journeys of a Dervish (Golden Horn, 1999) Seyahatname (Doublemoon, 2001), and Nar (Doublemoon, 2002 ) From the start, the group was more an idea than a set lineup. “I always get different musicians,” says Dede, “all the time. When I do a European tour, each country, I choose a guest musician from that country. This is the essence of the group.” The Canadian TV station Bravo filmed and aired Dede’s concert with Turkish master kemence (Persian violin) player Ihsan Ozgen at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in the Fall of 1998. German television producers Saarlandischer Rundfunk were so moved by Dede’s music that they traveled to Canada to feature him in their documentary about Sufi Music. While filming Dede at work in Montreal and Toronto in February of 1998, the producers requested that Dede create the soundtrack for this project. Mercan Dede’s album Seyahatname includes pieces composed for a dance theatre project, directed and choreographed by Beyhan Murphy for the Turkish State Modern Dance Troupe.
Both as Mercan Dede and his alter ego DJ Arkin Allen, he has performed at events as diverse as the Black & Blue 98 (a world-renowned Montreal circuit party attended by 15,000 people) and a concert of improvisations with on classical Turkish music at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. In July 2001, Mercan Dede performed at the highly acclaimed Montreal Jazz Festivals, sharing the General Motors Big Event stage with Burhan Öçal and Jamaaladeen Tacuma, in a concert called “East Meets the West” before an audience of more than 150,000 people. On that same evening, right after his concert, he appeared at Spectrum, this time performing with his project Montreal Tribal Trio, again as part of the festival program. In 2002, the group electrified the WOMEX world music trade fair in Essen, Germany, and also the International Transmusicales Festival in Rennes.
Dede has also performed with such musical personalities as Peter Murphy, Natacha Atlas, Mich Gerber, Omar Sosa, Maharaja. Mercan Dede and Secret Tribe’s summer tour 2003 included Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland), Arezzo Wave (I?taly), Skopje Festival (Macedonia), Moers Festival (Germany),World Roots Festival (The Netherlands), Jaen-Etnosur (Spain), Rhythm Sticks Festival (UK) and many others. The group’s 2004 U.S. debut took place at Joe’s Pub in New York in January, 2004, as part of the city’s groundbreaking world music marathon, GlobalFest. Mercan Dede also provided music for Pina Bausch's recent work, "Istanbul,” performed in the city it was named for in the spring of 2003. He is now working on “Orman S¸ehir” (Jungle City) MDT Turkey’s new modern dance performance, and a new album for Secret Tribe.
Mercan Dede was invited to play at GlobalFest” (APAP Conference) in New York in January 2004, where 16 different bands from 5 continents play. He is commissioned by the Turkish Ministry of Culture as the music director of the Güldestan Project. The project is destined to represent Turkish Culture and Arts all around the Globe.
Mercan Dede is keen to bring his extraordinary music and stagecraft everywhere in the world because he feels its inclusive spirit carries a profound message of understanding and reconciliation. “I don’t like the separation,” says Dede. “The Sufi poet Rumi has a very good saying: ‘If you are everywhere, you are nowhere. If you are somewhere, you are everywhere.’ My somewhere is my heart. I try to figure it out. The rest—the hype, the trends—they are not important. Instead of talking about war in Iraq, if you can make a sound of a small instrument from an Iraqi village, you can tell people more about what is going on there. For me, the future is electronic and folkloric.”
Music of Laos- The Buddhist Tradition (Celestial Harmonies)
Laos has remained a mystery to most Westerners even after the names of its neighboring countries—Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand—have become commonplace. Music of Laos: The Buddhist Tradition is the result of a collaboration between the University of Applied Sciences in Emden, Germany, and the Ministry of Information and Culture of Laos. If Laos is still a mystery to the West, its music is even more obscure. As producer Gisa Jähnichen points out, little research has been done on musical practises in Laos. She determined that only 22 albums were ever issued of Lao music—some on cassette only, many of dubious quality, and most generally unavailable. Apart from the khen, most types of Lao music were woefully underrecorded.
Buddhism has greatly affected both the ‘classical’ ceremonial ensembles and the rural or ‘folk’ singing and playing of the farmers and villages. Music happens at all the major events in the Lao calendar, especially at the beginning of the New Year and during full moons, and at weddings, funerals, and other special occasions. The songs performed at these events are not haphazard; there is a strong tradition of prayer and thanksgiving that can be heard at a village wedding as clearly as at a grand temple festival. It is this tradition that is represented on this recording.
Recording the ceremonial ensemble of Champasak in Champasak province (which is the source of the first four tracks on this collection) offered an opportunity to record a fabulous set of instruments that had been made in 1750 and are still in use. But in Xieng Khuang, Jähnichen’s crew spent three days without water and electricity, and automotive repair seems to have been as much a part of the production team’s job as the actual recording.
The infrastructure of Laos is not up to modern standards, and while the area of Luang Prabang was served by a new road, unregulated irrigration by local farmers made it difficult to get very far without having to alter course several times. Jähnichen also found that the religious/ritual music of the province was far less accessible than the classical court and entertainment styles. The last five tracks on this collection come from Luang Prabang, featuring the Pi Mai ensemble, and while they clearly feature a ‘classical’ ensemble and some fairly obvious ‘popular’ tunes, they nevertheless show the pervasive influence of Buddhism, as they were all part of the Buddhist New Year celebration held in April.
Through it all, Jähnichen recorded as much as she could. “We made a cross-section of actual music practices; it was not our aim to record the whole musical history of a particular ethnic group.” With her crew she documented 24 different ethnic groups in Laos between June 1999 and May 2001. They made nearly 1000 audio recordings totaling almost 80 hours of material. Music of Laos: The Buddhist Tradition is obviously just a sample of the resulting archives. This volume, as the title indicates, serves merely to hint at the enormous presence and impact of Buddhist thought in various forms of Lao music.
Philip Glass- CD Kundun- Escape to India
Philip Glass's score for Kundun is the realization of a long-cherished dream. For years, I had hoped to work with Glass, and in Kundun we found the ideal subject for a special collaboration. His Buddhist faith and deep understanding of Tibetan culture combine with the subtlety of his composition to play an essential role in our movie on the life of the Dalai Lama. Philip Glass is an artist of tremendous sensitivity whose music works from the inside of the film, from its heart, to produce a powerful emotional intensity which remains for days in the listener's head. The beauty, magic, grandeur, and spirituality of the score allow us to feel the pulse of the story as it unfolds. For me, the images in the film no longer stand on their own without Philip Glass's music. I consider myself fortunate, indeed blessed, to have worked with him on Kundun...
- Martin Scorsese.
Satsuki Odamura- Koto Dreaming- Dancing on Rainbows
Satsuki Odamura's new CD, Koto Dreaming is a collection of innovative and uniquely Australian multicultural compositions for koto. Koto Dreaming breaks away from the traditional sounds and compositions for koto, and includes Satsuki's own collaborative compositions with Australian artists. It is a synthesis of her inspirations gained by her working closely with Australian artists and a culmination of her fifteen years accumulative experience as a koto virtuoso based in Australia.
Koto Dreaming begins with a work commissioned by celebrated Australian composer Ross Edwards and includes pieces by composers Caroline Szeto, Anthony Briggs, Linsey Pollak, as well as Satsuki herself, in collaboration with Sandy Evans and Tony Lewis – who together comprise the trio Waratah.
Nitin Sawhney- CD Philtre (Instrumentals)- Mausam / The Sanctuary (Promotional)
(from http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/world/reviews/nitinsawhney_philtre.shtml#review)
Nitin Sawhney is never at ease. Since the release of Human in 2003, he has DJd all over the world from the Hollywood Bowl in LA to London's Fabric, assisted the Royal National Theatre, starred in award-winning TV programmes and written scores for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and about a dozen films. Back in the studio doing his own material, it's the same crisis: no genre quite satisfies Sawhney, no suit ever fits.
On Philtre, he travels restlessly though global club beats, Indian classical music, hip-hop,Bengali folk and occasionally somersaults away from this already eclectic milieu to toy with Flamenco, Americana and old-style Soul. No single tune is exactly representative, but "Dead Man" is typical: you're not sure if you're in Arizona or Assam. Oh, and it's slow pounding rhythm, grinding guitars and blues-Bollywood vocals (shared with soundtrack star Reena Bhardwaj) are just sublime.
Collaborations are the crux of Sawhney's work. With Barcelona-based flamenco-hiphop collective Ojos de Brujo he teases out a stunning, fast-plucked two-parter, "Noches en Vela" and the equally frantic "Footprints". Tracing a melodic line from flamenco to raga, it's a subtly modulated burst of Hindu-lusian passion. He also teams up with Ninja Tune's Fink and human beatbox Jason Singh, as well as regular invitees Tina Grace, Tai and Sharon Duncan - and Mrs. Sawhney, his mum, guests on a Rag Doll, bright Hindi poem about a walk along the Ganges.
He's often angst-ridden and energetic and can deliver raps and rants with gut-twisting anger, but Sawhney also knows how to slow down: much of this album is meditative and mellow. It opens with a slow, pulsing triphop 'Everything' and often makes excursions into yogic, relaxing ambient: "Void", "The Search", "Sanctuary". Elsewhere, the danceable beat hasn't gone - but it's now more of a deep, subdued groover pulsing through all the songs. Imagine Moby with a cultural heritage and an attitude.
Prolific, polyglot, political - Sawhney preserves modern music's mental health. In many ways, he's Britain's Indian Manu Chao, but this album suggests he is not so much a global magpie in the postmodern mould as an aspiring craftsman. He weaves fusions with delicacy and pays tribute to well-established, traditional styles and genres rather than slapping and scratching them into a cacophonous collage. 'Philtres' are magic potions, healing balms - they make life better - and only canny, cunning wizards like Nitin Sawhney know how to mix them and serve them up.
Pharoah Sanders-CD With A Heartbeat- Across Time
Jai Uttal and the Pagan Love Orchestra- CD Beggars and Saints- Gopala
John Martyn- CD Couldn't Love You More- One World
Daniel Lanois- CD Sling Blade- Blue Waltz
The Daniel Lanois interview can be downloaded as mp3 from the Powerspot blog. I will also be downloading in the next few weeks the interviews I did some time ago with Nitin Sawhney, Jon Hassell re Fascinoma, Ralph Towner and more.
