Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Powerspot no more
Powerspot as of last week went into a state of deep sleep. As of this week only The Spice of Life will remain.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Playlist for 11 June 08
Here is what I will be playing tomorrow night in case you will be listening.
Papua New Guinea Stringbands with Bob Brozman- Songs of The Volcano
Bob Brozman is a guitarist like no other: an established and prolific recording artist, performer, producer, and author, Bob is a non-stop world traveler and tireless researcher in ethnomusicology. His work with musicians from around the world in the past several years has marked him as not only a virtuoso musician and slide guitarist, but also as a pioneer in finding a common thread among global musical cultures.
SONGS OF THE VOLCANO is Bob's latest release. This special CD/DVD package features the music that Bob recorded with 5 Papua New Guinea Stringbands, plus the accompanying documentary by filmmaker Phil Donnison.
World renowned guitarist Bob Brozman travelled to Papua New Guinea – one of the last places on the planet to have guitars arrive from afar – to capture a sound largely untainted by outside influences; a raw, unique sound developed in isolation. The energetic and distinctive blend of voice and instrument performed by the Rabaul community’s local stringbands reflects their unfailing optimism in the face of adversity, be it war or the volcanic eruptions that have destroyed the town twice in one century, making this album truly ‘Songs Of The Volcano’.
In addition to this extraordinary album, this package features a full length, behind the scenes DVD documentary of the making of the album.
Songs of the Volcano - The Music
One of the few accidental, yet beneficial, side-effects of colonialism has been guitars washing up on shores all over the world. Papua New Guinea is no exception. Home to a huge indigenous population speaking more than 800 languages, it lay largely undiscovered until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and hence is one of the last places on the planet to have guitars arrive from afar.
Rabaul, in Papua New Guinea’s far flung province of East New Britain, is a town which has had its share of hard times. In the same century it has been destroyed twice by massive volcanic cataclysms and once by a devastating war imposed on it by outsiders. The Tolai people of Rabaul have suffered greatly from these natural and manmade disasters and yet, somehow, have always managed to bounce back and keep their spirits high. One of the main contributing factors to their capacity for optimism is their music, an energetic and unique blend of voices and instruments performed by the community’s local stringbands.
Bob Brozman is a world expert and leading exponent of the National guitar. An ethnomusicologist fascinated by the global voyage taken by the guitar over the last 500 years, he has collaborated with local musicians all over the world.
To create Songs Of The Volcano, in his capacity as Adjunct Professor of Music at Sydney’s Macquarie University, Bob went with filmmaker Phil Donnison to five villages in East New Britain to perform with five different Tolai stringbands. The purpose of filming and recording the performances was partly to document this fragile music before it disappears, and partly to facilitate the musicians in Papua New Guinea where there is an astonishing lack of musical infrastructure.
Rabaul is the location where guitars first arrived in Papua New Guinea, and the music carries a fragile innocence and beauty reminiscent of what guitar music may have sounded like in Hawaii in 1860, or Mexico in 1830. Most music travelled throughout the Pacific Ocean on boats, with sailors leaving behind instruments and ideas to then percolate in isolation. Hence, the music on this album will seem at once exotic, yet somehow familiar. Even today, there is still very little mass media penetration in Papua New Guinea, though that is changing and makes the preservation of this raw and unique sound more necessary.
This album and accompanying film present the story of this creative collaboration, a joint effort between an indomitable group of island musicians and one of the world’s greatest guitarists. Unlike Bob’s other world music collaborations, where there is a blend of styles between Bob and another established artist, Songs Of The Volcano has Bob in a more supportive role, playing simply as a member of each band in their own style.
The creation of this project not only yielded some great friendships, an unforgettable story and some remarkable results, but will enable the musicians to continue their pursuit of a musical life.
The musicians on Songs Of The Volcano are the first recipients of instruments, strings and musical supplies from Bob’s ongoing Global Music Aid Foundation, which seeks to provide donated instruments and materials to musicians in developing countries.
Through the language of guitar, Bob's ongoing body of work is launching a new aesthetic called "World Blues." His musical influences draw on a host of tones and beats from Delta Blues, Hawaiian, West African, Indian, Okinawan, Caribbean, Gypsy and Django-style Jazz, to the most modern rhythms of hip-hop, sega, funk, ska, calypso, maloya, and world island music.
Harry Manx - Brick & Stone / Reuben's Train-CD Dog My Cat
Harry Manx’s debut CD, Dog My Cat,breaks significant new ground in the blues world. A virtual one-man-band, Manx draws the listener in with his mastery of the lap slide guitar, harmonica, banjo, and vocals. But what makes Harry Manx truly stand out is the fact that he also plays the Mohan veena – a 20-string Indian slide guitar. Manx spent five years in India studying under the creator of this guitar/sitar hybrid, V.M. Bhatt, who won a Grammy award with Ry Cooder in 1994 for their CD Meeting by the River.
Vishwa Mohan Bhatt- Dhun In Rag Pilu- CD Saradaman
Sheila Chandra- Is / Not A Word in The Sky-CD This Sentence is True
Gigi-Aynama- CD Gigi
Issa Bagayogo- Diarabi- CD Sya
Issa Bagayogo is one of the great, if tongue-twisting, names in world music. In fact, even in his homeland of Mali, they rarely use his last name; he's usually just called "Techno Issa". Issa topped the charts in 2002 with his groundbreaking Timbuktu, an album that spawned a host of imitators hoping to match his compelling blend of Malian roots music and Western dance technology. But no one's been able to pull it off as convincingly and as elegantly as Issa has. Now he's back to show how it's done. Tassoumakan (meaning "Voice of Fire") is Issa's third full-length album, and represents the maturing of an artist who has found a way to honor his country's great musical traditions while creating a truly global, modern sound.
Since the music of Mali is the source of much of the world's popular music (the blues, R&B, soul, rock, funk, hip-hop), Issa Bagayogo's recordings are like an introduction to a great-grandparent you didn't know was still alive. Working with the French producer/keyboardist Yves Wernert, Bagayogo shows that the musical traditions of Mali are perhaps stronger now than ever before, building on the rhythms and the spirit of Manding emperors and Wassoulou hunters of a millennium ago, and evolving into something contemporary and relevant for listeners whether they're in Timbuktu or Toledo.
Baaba Maal- CD Senegal- Jamma Jeningi
Music was an integral part of Baaba's childhood as he grew up on the banks of the river Senegal. Born to the Hal Pulaar people, (known to the English speaking world as Fulani) his mother used songs she composed herself to educate and instill in him the value of intelligent and thoughtful lyrics. Technically speaking, he was not destined to become the master musician he is today by virtue of the fact that he was not born into the caste of artists and communicators known as Griots. Through time, travel and education, his experiences have resulted in profound self awareness allowing him to deliver the message of empowerment, enlightenment, and peace.
His early edudcation in St. Louis (the original French colonial capital) lead him to win an art scholarship in Senegal's modern capital, Dakar. There he joined Asly Fouta, a group of seventy musicians. Thus began his study of local instruments which he was later expanded through an extensive tour of West Africa with longtime friend, Mansour Seck. Going from village to village, they tapped the oldest person in each location to learn about the history of the village, the country and the music. The final leg of his studies were completed at the Conservatoire des Beaux Arts in Paris. Following his return to Senegal, he formed his band Daande Lenol "Voice Of The People."
Complementing his comprehension of traditional music, he was also influenced by black American singers of the 1960's such as James Brown, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett. He later discovered Jamaican musicians such as Toots Hibbert, Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff when they toured Senegal in the mid 1970's which further broadened his musical expression.
Using his music as a vehicle to express his concerns and empower his people, Baaba Maal sings and speaks for Africa with unprecedented authority.
Salif Keita / More Kante CD- Rail Band - Tiedioucouya
Mory Kante, Salif Keita and Djelimady Tounkara and many other great musicians from Mali started as members of the Rail Band : One the most legendary names of African music.
The Rail Band was founded in 1970, in Mali, with the sponsorship of the railway administration and the Ministry of Information. The National Railway Company secured a permanent venue at the Buffet Bar in the Station Hotel in Bamako. The band was formed with the hope of safeguarding and developing Malian music. The general idea was that weary travelers would tumble into the Buffet Bar where the Rail Band would perform real Manding music. Singing in Bambara, a Manding language spoken not only in Mali, but also in Guinea, in Gambia, and parts of Senegal, the band adopted traditional kora and balafon songs and rhythms mixing in an Islamic-influenced vocal style to what was becoming modern urban pop music. Salif Keita began singing lead for the Rail Band at it's inception, when he was only twenty-one. Instruments and equipment were government-owned and band members were considered government employees. The Rail Band quickly became a sort of rite-of-passage for Malian musical talent. As mentioned, Salif Keita got his start with them, as did guitarist Kante Manfila (who both soon left the Rail Band to start Les Ambassadeurs), and singer Mory Kante (who assumed lead vocal responsibilities after Keita left). The Rail Band's music was Manding-influenced, latin-tinged, with with lightness and swing, and despite the modern instruments you can clearly hear the strains of the original Manding music. The idea of the original Rail Band stills survives to this day, though they now compete with disco's and video clubs and as a result they started playing only once a week.Rail Band is one of African pop music's most important bands, a sort of African answer to The Beatles or Rolling Stones. The parallels are not as unlikely as they may at first appear. Both the Beatles and Stones began by copying American prototypes, while in 1960s and 1970s Africa people copied Cuban music. After liberation, several African governments wished to do something to stimulate their own African culture and several of them - for example the Governments of Mali and Guinea - set about constructing state bands. Without coercing musicians to play only traditional music, they gave them instruments and put them on the state payrolls. Several of these bands came to play an important role in the blossoming of African music in the 1960s and 1970s, among other reasons because many artists for the first time had access to modern instruments such as electric guitar, keyboard and saxophone. Rail Band belongs to this tradition but stands in a unique position because of its closeness to the Malian railway. In 1970 the stationmaster in Bamako asked the Griot Tidiana Kone to put together a band that could play in the foyer of the railway hotel and drive the culture forward. In the beginning Rail Band played for hours, a cultural blend of pop songs and more traditional Malian songs with modern settings. Salif Keita came to the group in the early days as a singer and was with them for ages before breaking out and forming Les Ambassadeurs. Mory Kante started his career with Rail Band when he studied the kora in Bamako. One day Salif Keita arrived too late to play, so overtook Mory Kante as vocalist, and both worked for a while as singers. In the five years that Rail Band existed, they developed a special style and mixed calypso and Latin American music, jazz and big band sounds with their own, local traditions. The album "Rail Band" with Salif Keita & Mory Kante is a good collection of the classic songs from the legendary band. Much of the material is quite special Tand provides an atmosphere of jamming sessions, with songs lasting up to ten minutes. These songs have a unique authenticity, characterised by a newly created optimism that in many ways can be compared with The Beatles in Europe. It is also terribly interesting to hear the predecessors to the recent songs of Salif Keita, for example "Jurukan" that is an early version of the successful track "Mandjou", but here sounds more raw and rickety. The soul and atmosphere are not lacking here, anyway, and it's just like steppinginto the railway hotel in Bamako in 1971.
Ali Akhbar Khan- Water Lady- CD garden of Dreams
Karsh Kale- Realise- Distance- CD Realise
Karsh Kale (pronounced Kursh Kah-lay), born of Indian parents, and brought up in the US, has long played Indian classical music on the tabla. Currently, he leads one of New York's coolest ensembles, and his monthly spins at Paisley and Joe's Pub are some of the hottest tickets on the New York scene.
Schooled in drums and a fiend for electronics, Kale has infused the worlds of East and West so well that separation seems impossible. With his trademark electronic tabla sound, Kale weaves strands of Indian ragas through one of the most distinctive albums of electonica, his first solo album Realize. Approaching the songs in the way an Indian musician would, Kale looks at them as a repertoire that can be reinterpreted. Many of his songs utilize traditional Indian folk material that has been rearranged into a contemporary genre.
Kale has played alongside and worked with some of the world's top artists including Sting, Zakir Hussain, Baaba Maal, Herbie Hancock, Bill Laswell, and Ustad Sultan Khan (who is featured on Realize playing the sarangi and makes a rare vocal appearance on 'Satellite' and 'Light Up the Love').
Black Star Liner- CD Yemen Cutta Connection
Black Star Liner emerge in 1994 in Leeds on Chris Madden's Soundclash label with a remix of The Rootsman's Soundclashcityrockers EP. Black Star Liner put out their first EP on Soundclash in 1994 to media acclaim, grabbing NME single of the week with their debut 'Smoke the Prophets'.
The Rootsman features prominently on Black Star Liner's first Soundclash release, Smoke the Prophets, remixing Soft Sitar to brilliant effect with emphasis on the driving percussion, reluctant bass line and swirling chimes. Black Star Liner have repaid the remix duties with versions of Rougher Than a Lion and Pass the Chalice.
Black Star Liner's second Soundclash outing, High Turkish Influence, includes versions of Yemen Cutta Connection, to be reworked and renamed Killah Connection for appearance on the debut album Yemen Cutta Connection on EXP. The release also includes a coarser version of Ga Ga than appears later on the album and the track Distoten, perhaps Black Star Liner at their very finest in combining traditional eastern instrumentation and dub bass in a revived form. Distoten, unlike other early tracks, does not get reworked or re-released with the move to EXP.
Black Star Liner's move to Feargal Sharkey's EXP label produces a series of releases (Harmon Session Special EP, Jawz EP, Halaal Rock EP, Spanish Omega and Yemen Cutta Connection) and considerable promotion, only for EXP to later dissolve. The EXP recordings and reworkings add refined production to the Black Star Liner sound, sometimes complementing the tracks and at other times smoothing over welcome discordance, notably in the rougher Big Feet Bunker-produced Ga Ga. The first EXP release includes Yeboah's Jawz, a musical monument to ex-Leeds football player Tony Yeboah, and later to appear on the Halaal Rock EP. The track is deceptively simple, hiding detailed percussive treatment which adds to the fury and energy of the song. The Jawz EP also includes remixed versions of Harmon Session Special as Harmon Bomb Drop (one of Black Star Liner's finest moments!) and Anna Drone, in addition to the short loop edit Tuniasitol! The short dub edit style is revisited in Jazaad Rodeo!, a dismembered rumbling of vocal samples, percussion and bass. The debut album on EXP, Yemen Cutta Connection includes a number of reworked tracks, plus material previously unreleased - among these, Ottoman Empire Strikes Back, Hooba Hooba!, Inverse and None Stop to the Border. The album displays each of the darker, beautiful and humorous components of Black Star Liner's music and has found its way in to many journalists' recommendations of best albums of 1996. Black Star Liner's connections with EXP end with the Halaal Rock EP, notable for its beautifully-long and excellent remix by Dave Ball and Ingo Vaux of Duggie Dhol, a track co-written and featuring vocals by Cornershop's Tjinder Singh.
Signing to WEA in 1997, Black Star Liner release the Rock Freak EP, a collection of relatively short tracks signalling a progression in their music. Rock Freak is Hindu-Kraftwerk at its most perfect, with heavy beats, distorted guitar and vocoder. Inder Automatic beautifully crafts together indian percussion, dub bass and effect-laden guitar, with the later version to appear on Bengali Bantam Youth Experience! with added indian vocals. The country'n'eastern Low BMW and the percussive frenzy of Shoona round off a long-awaited return and first release on WEA.
Black Star Liner declare Halaal and Rock Freak dead in 1999 and re-emerge once again to bring us the Bengali Bantam Youth Experience! direct from the Ebonic Beat Bunker...
Dhol Foundation- Seven Heaven- CD Big Drum Small World
Papua New Guinea Stringbands with Bob Brozman- Songs of The Volcano
Bob Brozman is a guitarist like no other: an established and prolific recording artist, performer, producer, and author, Bob is a non-stop world traveler and tireless researcher in ethnomusicology. His work with musicians from around the world in the past several years has marked him as not only a virtuoso musician and slide guitarist, but also as a pioneer in finding a common thread among global musical cultures.
SONGS OF THE VOLCANO is Bob's latest release. This special CD/DVD package features the music that Bob recorded with 5 Papua New Guinea Stringbands, plus the accompanying documentary by filmmaker Phil Donnison.
World renowned guitarist Bob Brozman travelled to Papua New Guinea – one of the last places on the planet to have guitars arrive from afar – to capture a sound largely untainted by outside influences; a raw, unique sound developed in isolation. The energetic and distinctive blend of voice and instrument performed by the Rabaul community’s local stringbands reflects their unfailing optimism in the face of adversity, be it war or the volcanic eruptions that have destroyed the town twice in one century, making this album truly ‘Songs Of The Volcano’.
In addition to this extraordinary album, this package features a full length, behind the scenes DVD documentary of the making of the album.
Songs of the Volcano - The Music
One of the few accidental, yet beneficial, side-effects of colonialism has been guitars washing up on shores all over the world. Papua New Guinea is no exception. Home to a huge indigenous population speaking more than 800 languages, it lay largely undiscovered until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and hence is one of the last places on the planet to have guitars arrive from afar.
Rabaul, in Papua New Guinea’s far flung province of East New Britain, is a town which has had its share of hard times. In the same century it has been destroyed twice by massive volcanic cataclysms and once by a devastating war imposed on it by outsiders. The Tolai people of Rabaul have suffered greatly from these natural and manmade disasters and yet, somehow, have always managed to bounce back and keep their spirits high. One of the main contributing factors to their capacity for optimism is their music, an energetic and unique blend of voices and instruments performed by the community’s local stringbands.
Bob Brozman is a world expert and leading exponent of the National guitar. An ethnomusicologist fascinated by the global voyage taken by the guitar over the last 500 years, he has collaborated with local musicians all over the world.
To create Songs Of The Volcano, in his capacity as Adjunct Professor of Music at Sydney’s Macquarie University, Bob went with filmmaker Phil Donnison to five villages in East New Britain to perform with five different Tolai stringbands. The purpose of filming and recording the performances was partly to document this fragile music before it disappears, and partly to facilitate the musicians in Papua New Guinea where there is an astonishing lack of musical infrastructure.
Rabaul is the location where guitars first arrived in Papua New Guinea, and the music carries a fragile innocence and beauty reminiscent of what guitar music may have sounded like in Hawaii in 1860, or Mexico in 1830. Most music travelled throughout the Pacific Ocean on boats, with sailors leaving behind instruments and ideas to then percolate in isolation. Hence, the music on this album will seem at once exotic, yet somehow familiar. Even today, there is still very little mass media penetration in Papua New Guinea, though that is changing and makes the preservation of this raw and unique sound more necessary.
This album and accompanying film present the story of this creative collaboration, a joint effort between an indomitable group of island musicians and one of the world’s greatest guitarists. Unlike Bob’s other world music collaborations, where there is a blend of styles between Bob and another established artist, Songs Of The Volcano has Bob in a more supportive role, playing simply as a member of each band in their own style.
The creation of this project not only yielded some great friendships, an unforgettable story and some remarkable results, but will enable the musicians to continue their pursuit of a musical life.
The musicians on Songs Of The Volcano are the first recipients of instruments, strings and musical supplies from Bob’s ongoing Global Music Aid Foundation, which seeks to provide donated instruments and materials to musicians in developing countries.
Through the language of guitar, Bob's ongoing body of work is launching a new aesthetic called "World Blues." His musical influences draw on a host of tones and beats from Delta Blues, Hawaiian, West African, Indian, Okinawan, Caribbean, Gypsy and Django-style Jazz, to the most modern rhythms of hip-hop, sega, funk, ska, calypso, maloya, and world island music.
Harry Manx - Brick & Stone / Reuben's Train-CD Dog My Cat
Harry Manx’s debut CD, Dog My Cat,breaks significant new ground in the blues world. A virtual one-man-band, Manx draws the listener in with his mastery of the lap slide guitar, harmonica, banjo, and vocals. But what makes Harry Manx truly stand out is the fact that he also plays the Mohan veena – a 20-string Indian slide guitar. Manx spent five years in India studying under the creator of this guitar/sitar hybrid, V.M. Bhatt, who won a Grammy award with Ry Cooder in 1994 for their CD Meeting by the River.
Vishwa Mohan Bhatt- Dhun In Rag Pilu- CD Saradaman
Sheila Chandra- Is / Not A Word in The Sky-CD This Sentence is True
Gigi-Aynama- CD Gigi
Issa Bagayogo- Diarabi- CD Sya
Issa Bagayogo is one of the great, if tongue-twisting, names in world music. In fact, even in his homeland of Mali, they rarely use his last name; he's usually just called "Techno Issa". Issa topped the charts in 2002 with his groundbreaking Timbuktu, an album that spawned a host of imitators hoping to match his compelling blend of Malian roots music and Western dance technology. But no one's been able to pull it off as convincingly and as elegantly as Issa has. Now he's back to show how it's done. Tassoumakan (meaning "Voice of Fire") is Issa's third full-length album, and represents the maturing of an artist who has found a way to honor his country's great musical traditions while creating a truly global, modern sound.
Since the music of Mali is the source of much of the world's popular music (the blues, R&B, soul, rock, funk, hip-hop), Issa Bagayogo's recordings are like an introduction to a great-grandparent you didn't know was still alive. Working with the French producer/keyboardist Yves Wernert, Bagayogo shows that the musical traditions of Mali are perhaps stronger now than ever before, building on the rhythms and the spirit of Manding emperors and Wassoulou hunters of a millennium ago, and evolving into something contemporary and relevant for listeners whether they're in Timbuktu or Toledo.
Baaba Maal- CD Senegal- Jamma Jeningi
Music was an integral part of Baaba's childhood as he grew up on the banks of the river Senegal. Born to the Hal Pulaar people, (known to the English speaking world as Fulani) his mother used songs she composed herself to educate and instill in him the value of intelligent and thoughtful lyrics. Technically speaking, he was not destined to become the master musician he is today by virtue of the fact that he was not born into the caste of artists and communicators known as Griots. Through time, travel and education, his experiences have resulted in profound self awareness allowing him to deliver the message of empowerment, enlightenment, and peace.
His early edudcation in St. Louis (the original French colonial capital) lead him to win an art scholarship in Senegal's modern capital, Dakar. There he joined Asly Fouta, a group of seventy musicians. Thus began his study of local instruments which he was later expanded through an extensive tour of West Africa with longtime friend, Mansour Seck. Going from village to village, they tapped the oldest person in each location to learn about the history of the village, the country and the music. The final leg of his studies were completed at the Conservatoire des Beaux Arts in Paris. Following his return to Senegal, he formed his band Daande Lenol "Voice Of The People."
Complementing his comprehension of traditional music, he was also influenced by black American singers of the 1960's such as James Brown, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett. He later discovered Jamaican musicians such as Toots Hibbert, Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff when they toured Senegal in the mid 1970's which further broadened his musical expression.
Using his music as a vehicle to express his concerns and empower his people, Baaba Maal sings and speaks for Africa with unprecedented authority.
Salif Keita / More Kante CD- Rail Band - Tiedioucouya
Mory Kante, Salif Keita and Djelimady Tounkara and many other great musicians from Mali started as members of the Rail Band : One the most legendary names of African music.
The Rail Band was founded in 1970, in Mali, with the sponsorship of the railway administration and the Ministry of Information. The National Railway Company secured a permanent venue at the Buffet Bar in the Station Hotel in Bamako. The band was formed with the hope of safeguarding and developing Malian music. The general idea was that weary travelers would tumble into the Buffet Bar where the Rail Band would perform real Manding music. Singing in Bambara, a Manding language spoken not only in Mali, but also in Guinea, in Gambia, and parts of Senegal, the band adopted traditional kora and balafon songs and rhythms mixing in an Islamic-influenced vocal style to what was becoming modern urban pop music. Salif Keita began singing lead for the Rail Band at it's inception, when he was only twenty-one. Instruments and equipment were government-owned and band members were considered government employees. The Rail Band quickly became a sort of rite-of-passage for Malian musical talent. As mentioned, Salif Keita got his start with them, as did guitarist Kante Manfila (who both soon left the Rail Band to start Les Ambassadeurs), and singer Mory Kante (who assumed lead vocal responsibilities after Keita left). The Rail Band's music was Manding-influenced, latin-tinged, with with lightness and swing, and despite the modern instruments you can clearly hear the strains of the original Manding music. The idea of the original Rail Band stills survives to this day, though they now compete with disco's and video clubs and as a result they started playing only once a week.Rail Band is one of African pop music's most important bands, a sort of African answer to The Beatles or Rolling Stones. The parallels are not as unlikely as they may at first appear. Both the Beatles and Stones began by copying American prototypes, while in 1960s and 1970s Africa people copied Cuban music. After liberation, several African governments wished to do something to stimulate their own African culture and several of them - for example the Governments of Mali and Guinea - set about constructing state bands. Without coercing musicians to play only traditional music, they gave them instruments and put them on the state payrolls. Several of these bands came to play an important role in the blossoming of African music in the 1960s and 1970s, among other reasons because many artists for the first time had access to modern instruments such as electric guitar, keyboard and saxophone. Rail Band belongs to this tradition but stands in a unique position because of its closeness to the Malian railway. In 1970 the stationmaster in Bamako asked the Griot Tidiana Kone to put together a band that could play in the foyer of the railway hotel and drive the culture forward. In the beginning Rail Band played for hours, a cultural blend of pop songs and more traditional Malian songs with modern settings. Salif Keita came to the group in the early days as a singer and was with them for ages before breaking out and forming Les Ambassadeurs. Mory Kante started his career with Rail Band when he studied the kora in Bamako. One day Salif Keita arrived too late to play, so overtook Mory Kante as vocalist, and both worked for a while as singers. In the five years that Rail Band existed, they developed a special style and mixed calypso and Latin American music, jazz and big band sounds with their own, local traditions. The album "Rail Band" with Salif Keita & Mory Kante is a good collection of the classic songs from the legendary band. Much of the material is quite special Tand provides an atmosphere of jamming sessions, with songs lasting up to ten minutes. These songs have a unique authenticity, characterised by a newly created optimism that in many ways can be compared with The Beatles in Europe. It is also terribly interesting to hear the predecessors to the recent songs of Salif Keita, for example "Jurukan" that is an early version of the successful track "Mandjou", but here sounds more raw and rickety. The soul and atmosphere are not lacking here, anyway, and it's just like steppinginto the railway hotel in Bamako in 1971.
Ali Akhbar Khan- Water Lady- CD garden of Dreams
Karsh Kale- Realise- Distance- CD Realise
Karsh Kale (pronounced Kursh Kah-lay), born of Indian parents, and brought up in the US, has long played Indian classical music on the tabla. Currently, he leads one of New York's coolest ensembles, and his monthly spins at Paisley and Joe's Pub are some of the hottest tickets on the New York scene.
Schooled in drums and a fiend for electronics, Kale has infused the worlds of East and West so well that separation seems impossible. With his trademark electronic tabla sound, Kale weaves strands of Indian ragas through one of the most distinctive albums of electonica, his first solo album Realize. Approaching the songs in the way an Indian musician would, Kale looks at them as a repertoire that can be reinterpreted. Many of his songs utilize traditional Indian folk material that has been rearranged into a contemporary genre.
Kale has played alongside and worked with some of the world's top artists including Sting, Zakir Hussain, Baaba Maal, Herbie Hancock, Bill Laswell, and Ustad Sultan Khan (who is featured on Realize playing the sarangi and makes a rare vocal appearance on 'Satellite' and 'Light Up the Love').
Black Star Liner- CD Yemen Cutta Connection
Black Star Liner emerge in 1994 in Leeds on Chris Madden's Soundclash label with a remix of The Rootsman's Soundclashcityrockers EP. Black Star Liner put out their first EP on Soundclash in 1994 to media acclaim, grabbing NME single of the week with their debut 'Smoke the Prophets'.
The Rootsman features prominently on Black Star Liner's first Soundclash release, Smoke the Prophets, remixing Soft Sitar to brilliant effect with emphasis on the driving percussion, reluctant bass line and swirling chimes. Black Star Liner have repaid the remix duties with versions of Rougher Than a Lion and Pass the Chalice.
Black Star Liner's second Soundclash outing, High Turkish Influence, includes versions of Yemen Cutta Connection, to be reworked and renamed Killah Connection for appearance on the debut album Yemen Cutta Connection on EXP. The release also includes a coarser version of Ga Ga than appears later on the album and the track Distoten, perhaps Black Star Liner at their very finest in combining traditional eastern instrumentation and dub bass in a revived form. Distoten, unlike other early tracks, does not get reworked or re-released with the move to EXP.
Black Star Liner's move to Feargal Sharkey's EXP label produces a series of releases (Harmon Session Special EP, Jawz EP, Halaal Rock EP, Spanish Omega and Yemen Cutta Connection) and considerable promotion, only for EXP to later dissolve. The EXP recordings and reworkings add refined production to the Black Star Liner sound, sometimes complementing the tracks and at other times smoothing over welcome discordance, notably in the rougher Big Feet Bunker-produced Ga Ga. The first EXP release includes Yeboah's Jawz, a musical monument to ex-Leeds football player Tony Yeboah, and later to appear on the Halaal Rock EP. The track is deceptively simple, hiding detailed percussive treatment which adds to the fury and energy of the song. The Jawz EP also includes remixed versions of Harmon Session Special as Harmon Bomb Drop (one of Black Star Liner's finest moments!) and Anna Drone, in addition to the short loop edit Tuniasitol! The short dub edit style is revisited in Jazaad Rodeo!, a dismembered rumbling of vocal samples, percussion and bass. The debut album on EXP, Yemen Cutta Connection includes a number of reworked tracks, plus material previously unreleased - among these, Ottoman Empire Strikes Back, Hooba Hooba!, Inverse and None Stop to the Border. The album displays each of the darker, beautiful and humorous components of Black Star Liner's music and has found its way in to many journalists' recommendations of best albums of 1996. Black Star Liner's connections with EXP end with the Halaal Rock EP, notable for its beautifully-long and excellent remix by Dave Ball and Ingo Vaux of Duggie Dhol, a track co-written and featuring vocals by Cornershop's Tjinder Singh.
Signing to WEA in 1997, Black Star Liner release the Rock Freak EP, a collection of relatively short tracks signalling a progression in their music. Rock Freak is Hindu-Kraftwerk at its most perfect, with heavy beats, distorted guitar and vocoder. Inder Automatic beautifully crafts together indian percussion, dub bass and effect-laden guitar, with the later version to appear on Bengali Bantam Youth Experience! with added indian vocals. The country'n'eastern Low BMW and the percussive frenzy of Shoona round off a long-awaited return and first release on WEA.
Black Star Liner declare Halaal and Rock Freak dead in 1999 and re-emerge once again to bring us the Bengali Bantam Youth Experience! direct from the Ebonic Beat Bunker...
Dhol Foundation- Seven Heaven- CD Big Drum Small World
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
1 Giant Leap- Bombardmet info
From the 1 Giant Leap website here is the blurb about Bombardment, the first chapter of their new DVD What About Me screening on BBC 4.
Very apt for our first topic. 4 years in the making What About Me? has been a total bombardment of the senses. We took on such an ambitious concept with little idea of what would happen. Only a faith that if we stayed with it, it’d work out.
The backing track for this chapter was written one windy night in my van in Cadaques Spain. I had copied the riff from a sample of some Thai instrument. Sounded very different on my guitar, and as I played it to other musicians around the world it took on a whole new sound. Later on, Nigel (my constant support and musical genius) told me he thought I’d ripped it from knight Rider! I probably did without realising. Certainly doesn’t sound like that in the end.
The original lyrical concept for this track was to look at the issues of communication. As we started investigating and composing lyrics the idea of questioning the quality of our communication both with others but more importantly with ourselves, became our primary interest.
Featured countries
Egypt/Cairo Anwar Binale (Oud)
India, Shantinitkan Dev das & sons (Baul musicians)
Brazil, Sao Paulo Barbatuques & Comade Fulozhino
Turkey, Istanbul Whirling Dervis
South Africa, Cape Town Amapondo
USA, New York Bon cycle, Gabrielle Roth workshop
Very apt for our first topic. 4 years in the making What About Me? has been a total bombardment of the senses. We took on such an ambitious concept with little idea of what would happen. Only a faith that if we stayed with it, it’d work out.
The backing track for this chapter was written one windy night in my van in Cadaques Spain. I had copied the riff from a sample of some Thai instrument. Sounded very different on my guitar, and as I played it to other musicians around the world it took on a whole new sound. Later on, Nigel (my constant support and musical genius) told me he thought I’d ripped it from knight Rider! I probably did without realising. Certainly doesn’t sound like that in the end.
The original lyrical concept for this track was to look at the issues of communication. As we started investigating and composing lyrics the idea of questioning the quality of our communication both with others but more importantly with ourselves, became our primary interest.
Featured countries
Egypt/Cairo Anwar Binale (Oud)
India, Shantinitkan Dev das & sons (Baul musicians)
Brazil, Sao Paulo Barbatuques & Comade Fulozhino
Turkey, Istanbul Whirling Dervis
South Africa, Cape Town Amapondo
USA, New York Bon cycle, Gabrielle Roth workshop
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Powerspot Playlist 16 April 08
On the show tomorrow night musical treats and delights from the following:-
Daniel Lanois- CD Here Is What Is
Anoushka Shankar & Karsh Kale ao- CD Breathing Underwater
Lunasa- CD Other World
Meehan & Valley- CD Buille
Marcel Khalife- CD Taqasim
I interviewed Marcel Khalife last week at his home in Paris via a translator. As I only had a very brief time frame to speak with him the questions were of a general nature. if you would like to listen to or download the interview, please go here. I think it will be a memorable musical moment, so if in Sydney town, please go along to see this wonderful musician.
I'm also now doing a second show called The Spice of Life on Tuesday afternoons 1.30pm till 3pm, which will carry on from Powerspot but will incorporate other musical styles. Material is gratefully accepted.
GIG NEWS
Anouska Shankar Project- June 14 2008 Sydney Opera House
March's Uber System Charged! party at the Abercrombie was the biggest yet!
The next Uber at the Abercrombie event is nearing, this time a themed event!
The SYDNEY GYPSY & BALKAN BASH @ ABERCROMBIE
an Eastern European beats fest... across three rooms
SATURDAY 19th of April 2008 : 8 till late
check out http://www.uberlingua.com/gypsy
Featuring DJs VIT (Czech Republic), DJ Sveta (Russia), FSB (Bulgaria),
Aindrias de Staic (Galway, Ireland), bP (UL Melb), Mashy P, Ollo DJs & Dub
Chaman & LIVE ACTS Gypsy Dub Sound System & The Gyp-Rocks...
plus performers and dancers galore...
DJ Sveta is known for her work with Star F**kers and the Gay party scene,
yet her Russian genetic heritage calls from time to time and she'll be
dropping a set of all Ruski dancefloor tracks... V.I.T. is a Czech DJ who
promotes a monthly Czech and Slovak night in Sydney and Uber made contact
and offered him to join in the fun and the chance to fling out tracks
unheard in Australia from his language group. FSB is a first generation Uber
DJ who moved from the weekly club in Melbourne to live in Perth and work as
a Sound Engineer. His residencies in clubs on the dead sea cost of Bulgaria
are still talked about back home.
Aindrias de Staic is Irish Gaelic speaking Musician, Broadcaster and Theatre
actor from Galway. When he comes to Australia (this is his 3rd visit), Uber
Lingua forces him to DJ his vast selection of trans-gypsy music. Usually he
cant help but get out the fiddle. Representing the locals and pulling out
all the fave Gyp, Balkan, East and Northern European tracks are Mashy P, bP,
Ollo DJs and DubChaman...
Working the LIVE STAGE are renowned Electronic Gypsy minstrels The Gypsy Dub
Sound System. This four piece have been central to the growth of the Uber
Lingua movement in Sydney and feature members from Macedonia (Sam Golding -
Tuba, Trumpet) and Bulgaria (Veren Grigorov - Violin, Dancing) alongside a
skankin reggae guitarist (Dirk Krithoff) and band leader Trevor Brown on
Saxophone, clarinet & laptop programming...
Also playing their debut set are The Gyp-Rocks... featuring Mr Mantek from
seminal electro-balkan band Mama Voltash, working with the illustrious Raven
on dastardly string situations... a collision of hard edge beats and exotic
acoustics... should be fun as!... Also, Uber's rounding up a bunch of
performers & dancers for spontaneous moments so punters should stay alarmed
but not alert. This event will be technically configured differently to the
past 3 Uber-Abercrombie events...
The SYDNEY GYPSY & BALKAN BASH AT THE ABERCROMBIE HOTEL
100 Broadway, Ultimo (corner of Broadway and Abercrombie)
100 Broadway, Ultimo : SATURDAY 19th APRIL 8pm till late : $10 entry
more info: http://www.uberlingua.com/gypsy or see flier below
facebook http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=12409562482&ref=nf
Zimbabwe’s Thomas Mapfumo on tour!
Sat 19 April 8:00pm til late. A rare opportunity to hear in concert Zimbabwe’s Thomas Mapfumo and his full 10 piece band. Mapfumo is a cultural and political icon in Zimbabwe the country from which he is exiled due to his outspokenness against Prime Minister Robert Mugabe and his betrayal of the fight for independence. on at The Gaelic club, 64 Devonshire St, Surry Hills. Supporting act: Chris Gudu & DJ Scrim. Bookings: The Gaelic www.thegaelic.com
Soweto Gospel Choir
Sydney, Castle Hill, Revesby, Sutherland, Newcastle, Wollongong, North Coast, Albury, Canberra shows
MAY & JUNE The Soweto Gospel Choir was formed to celebrate the unique and inspirational power of African Gospel music. The 26-strong choir, under the direction of David Mulovhedzi and Beverly Bryer, draws on the best talent from the many churches in and around Soweto. The choir is dedicated to sharing the joy of faith through music with audiences around the world. Tour details at http://www.sowetogospelchoir.com/PERFORMANCES.html On Sun 4 May Coffs Harbour Ex-Services 02 6652 3888 www.cex.com.au
Daniel Lanois- CD Here Is What Is
Anoushka Shankar & Karsh Kale ao- CD Breathing Underwater
Lunasa- CD Other World
Meehan & Valley- CD Buille
Marcel Khalife- CD Taqasim
I interviewed Marcel Khalife last week at his home in Paris via a translator. As I only had a very brief time frame to speak with him the questions were of a general nature. if you would like to listen to or download the interview, please go here.
I'm also now doing a second show called The Spice of Life on Tuesday afternoons 1.30pm till 3pm, which will carry on from Powerspot but will incorporate other musical styles. Material is gratefully accepted.
GIG NEWS
Anouska Shankar Project- June 14 2008 Sydney Opera House
March's Uber System Charged! party at the Abercrombie was the biggest yet!
The next Uber at the Abercrombie event is nearing, this time a themed event!
The SYDNEY GYPSY & BALKAN BASH @ ABERCROMBIE
an Eastern European beats fest... across three rooms
SATURDAY 19th of April 2008 : 8 till late
check out http://www.uberlingua.com/gypsy
Featuring DJs VIT (Czech Republic), DJ Sveta (Russia), FSB (Bulgaria),
Aindrias de Staic (Galway, Ireland), bP (UL Melb), Mashy P, Ollo DJs & Dub
Chaman & LIVE ACTS Gypsy Dub Sound System & The Gyp-Rocks...
plus performers and dancers galore...
DJ Sveta is known for her work with Star F**kers and the Gay party scene,
yet her Russian genetic heritage calls from time to time and she'll be
dropping a set of all Ruski dancefloor tracks... V.I.T. is a Czech DJ who
promotes a monthly Czech and Slovak night in Sydney and Uber made contact
and offered him to join in the fun and the chance to fling out tracks
unheard in Australia from his language group. FSB is a first generation Uber
DJ who moved from the weekly club in Melbourne to live in Perth and work as
a Sound Engineer. His residencies in clubs on the dead sea cost of Bulgaria
are still talked about back home.
Aindrias de Staic is Irish Gaelic speaking Musician, Broadcaster and Theatre
actor from Galway. When he comes to Australia (this is his 3rd visit), Uber
Lingua forces him to DJ his vast selection of trans-gypsy music. Usually he
cant help but get out the fiddle. Representing the locals and pulling out
all the fave Gyp, Balkan, East and Northern European tracks are Mashy P, bP,
Ollo DJs and DubChaman...
Working the LIVE STAGE are renowned Electronic Gypsy minstrels The Gypsy Dub
Sound System. This four piece have been central to the growth of the Uber
Lingua movement in Sydney and feature members from Macedonia (Sam Golding -
Tuba, Trumpet) and Bulgaria (Veren Grigorov - Violin, Dancing) alongside a
skankin reggae guitarist (Dirk Krithoff) and band leader Trevor Brown on
Saxophone, clarinet & laptop programming...
Also playing their debut set are The Gyp-Rocks... featuring Mr Mantek from
seminal electro-balkan band Mama Voltash, working with the illustrious Raven
on dastardly string situations... a collision of hard edge beats and exotic
acoustics... should be fun as!... Also, Uber's rounding up a bunch of
performers & dancers for spontaneous moments so punters should stay alarmed
but not alert. This event will be technically configured differently to the
past 3 Uber-Abercrombie events...
The SYDNEY GYPSY & BALKAN BASH AT THE ABERCROMBIE HOTEL
100 Broadway, Ultimo (corner of Broadway and Abercrombie)
100 Broadway, Ultimo : SATURDAY 19th APRIL 8pm till late : $10 entry
more info: http://www.uberlingua.com/gypsy or see flier below
facebook http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=12409562482&ref=nf
Zimbabwe’s Thomas Mapfumo on tour!
Sat 19 April 8:00pm til late. A rare opportunity to hear in concert Zimbabwe’s Thomas Mapfumo and his full 10 piece band. Mapfumo is a cultural and political icon in Zimbabwe the country from which he is exiled due to his outspokenness against Prime Minister Robert Mugabe and his betrayal of the fight for independence. on at The Gaelic club, 64 Devonshire St, Surry Hills. Supporting act: Chris Gudu & DJ Scrim. Bookings: The Gaelic www.thegaelic.com
Soweto Gospel Choir
Sydney, Castle Hill, Revesby, Sutherland, Newcastle, Wollongong, North Coast, Albury, Canberra shows
MAY & JUNE The Soweto Gospel Choir was formed to celebrate the unique and inspirational power of African Gospel music. The 26-strong choir, under the direction of David Mulovhedzi and Beverly Bryer, draws on the best talent from the many churches in and around Soweto. The choir is dedicated to sharing the joy of faith through music with audiences around the world. Tour details at http://www.sowetogospelchoir.com/PERFORMANCES.html
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
PLAYLIST 26 MARCH 08
Dear All
On tonight's show you either heard or missed the following:-
Zakhir Hussain with John McLaughlin- CD Making Music
DJ Bruno LT- CD Promo Uber (Lingua Sound) System Charged- see below for gig information (http://www.zonar.net/uberlingua/syd/)
Karsh Kale- CD Liberation
Shafqat Ali Khan- Sufi Songs (http://shafqatalikhan.calabashmusic.com/)
V/A- Songs of Krishna (http://songsofkrishna.calabashmusic.com/)
Kim Sanders- CD You Can't Get There From Here-see below for gig information (http://kimsanders.customer.netspace.net.au/)
Jon Hassell & Farafina- CD Flash of the Spirit
NILS PETTER MOLVAER- CD REMIXED
BILL LASWELL - CD CITY OF LIGHT
Charles Lloyd- CD Notes from Big Sur
Regards
Hans Stoeve
Powerspot (not just a world music show)
2SER FM
listen online @ www.2ser.com
Wednesday Nights 1900-2030
Sydney Australia
Blogging at www.globalgroove.blogspot.com
'Some people never go crazy, what truly horrible lives they must live'-Charles Bukowski
UBER SYSTEM CHARGED!
Saturday March 29 at the Abercrombie Hotel.
After the jam packed UBER SYSTEM REMIXED! party back in early February, the third installment continues the cross cultural infused party energy that Uber Lingua events are well known for in Sydney and across Australia.
UBER SYSTEM CHARGED! features Cuban reggaeton performer Pochoman, Chinese-Malaysian dancer and vocalist WeiZen, Brasilian batucada percussion troop Timbalada, Local Gypsy-Jazz maestro Trevor Brown, Ghanaian Hip Hop producer MC Gee, Argentinian Cumbia performer MC Hernan and grass roots breaker and MC Morganics... Alongside DJs Bruno LT (Rio de Janeiro), Mashy P, Jack Shit, Luke Snarl (Sub Bass Snarl), Bentley (Drop), Sven Simulacrum, Stu Buchanan (Fat Planet) and from the Melbourne crew sakamoiz and bP. In house developed video material by Melbourne based VJ, SDzeit will also be screened.
Saturday March 29th : 7pm till very late (be early for 'earth hour acoustic set)
Abercrombie Hotel : 100 Broadway, Ultimo
$10 entry
tickets on the door
first 100 people get an UL mixtape
half price entry for V festival ticket holders
Kim Sanders & Friends next gig will be a Turkish-oriented Return to Australia gig on Sunday afternoon March 30.
Joining Kim at The Harp in Tempe will be Llew Kiek (baglama and bouzouki), Steve Elphick (bass) and Bobby Singh (tabla).
1 pm, Sunday March 30
The Harp Hotel
900 Princes Highway, Tempe
Tickets on the door: $20/15 conc
Kids are welcome, and meals are available
Info 9559 6300 or www.theharp.com.au
***
In concert with Davood A.Tabrizi, Kim Sanders, Damian Wright and special guest Ivy Ireland, Thomas Jack of Hearts performs Rumi and the Boy at the Old School in Darlington on March 29.
The programme includes Slam Poetry interpretations of the 13th Century Sufi mystic.
Saturday 29 March
The Old School Hall, University of Sydney
(behind Seymour Centre)
$15 recommended donation
myspace.com/thomasjackofhearts
"Angel" CD Launch - Joseph Tawadros Quartet - Matt McMahon (piano), Dimitri Vouras (clarinet), James Tawadros (bendir, req' )
St Stephens Church, 189 Church St, Newtown
(http://www.josephtawadros.com)
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
26 September 07
Dear All
Please come along to these events if in Sydney. These will be wonderful events not too often experienced in this city of ours.
Sangeet Australia presents
extra special guests from India
Dhrupad Vocalists The Gundecha Brothers
September 30th Performance starts 7:30pm
Pre-concert talk from Dr Adrian McNeil 'About Dhrupad Music'
Tom Mann Theatre
136 Chalmers St
Surry Hills
Nr Central Station.
$30/25con
Tickets at the door from 6pm.
Snacks avail. Disabled access available.
KIM SANDERS & FRIENDS LAST GIG OF THE YEAR
Kim Sanders & Friends will perform their last concert in Australia for the year when they play at St Luke’s Hall, Enmore on Sunday afternoon, October 7.
Kim has just returned from Indonesia where he performed as a soloist at the Solo International Ethnic Music Festival. “I had a ball in Solo. I know a lot of musicians over there now, and we usually manage to get some interesting collaborations happening as well as doing our own stuff. This time I had a great jam with Sundanese percussionist Gilang Ramadhan. And the opening parade was fantastic – literally millions in the streets – Solo came to a standstill. I rode in a cart drawn by two oxen. Very stylish. Elton and Mick only get the stretch limo – hah!”
The gig also marks the return of tabla-player Bobby Singh to the band. He has been touring in the US with percussion trio Circle of Rhythm.
“The gig will be a good warm-up for us for the recording of our new CD in October. It’s been delayed for more than two years, for various reasons, so we’re really busting to get into the studio. After that, I’m off to study and perform in Turkey for three months. It’s a great life if you don’t weaken!”
The gig will feature the band’s eclectic mix of Balkan Gypsy thrash tunes, serene Sufi meditations, Afro-flamenco grooves and strange uncategorizable originals.
Kim Sanders: mey, kaval, gaida, ney, tenor sax, aardvark
Sandy Evans: soprano and tenor saxes
Steve Elphick: double bass
Bobby Singh: tabla
2 pm, Sunday October 7
St Luke’s Hall,
11 Stanmore Rd,
Enmore (opposite 7/11 store)
$20/15 concession
OK, on the show tonight, some firm favorites make a return.
Kim Sanders- CD Trance'N' Dancin'
Gundecha Brothers- CD Ancestral Voices
Various Artists- CD: The Rough Guide To Arabesque
Beyrouth Ecœurée - Clotaire K
Dourbiha - Momo
Emmanuel Jal and Abdel Gadir Salim, CD: Ceasefire
Cesaria Evora- CD: Best of
Jah Wobble- CD: Mu
Various Artists- CD Congotronics No 2 Buzz 'N' Rumble From The Urb'N' Jungle
Konono No1 - Live From Couleur Café
State of Bengal Vs Paban das Baul, Tana Tani
(Realworld)
Moner Manush
Tal Rosh
Peter Dickson & Juan Martinez- CD Falsettas
Marcel Khalife- CD Caress (www,calabashmusic.com)
Rokia TraoreBowmboi (Label Bleu)
Regards
Hans Stoeve
Powerspot (not just a world music show)
2SER FM
listen online @ www.2ser.com
Wednesday Nights 1900-2030
Sydney Australia
Blogging at www.globalgroove.blogspot.com
'Some people never go crazy, what truly horrible lives they must live'-Charles Bukowski
Please come along to these events if in Sydney. These will be wonderful events not too often experienced in this city of ours.
Sangeet Australia presents
extra special guests from India
Dhrupad Vocalists The Gundecha Brothers
September 30th Performance starts 7:30pm
Pre-concert talk from Dr Adrian McNeil 'About Dhrupad Music'
Tom Mann Theatre
136 Chalmers St
Surry Hills
Nr Central Station.
$30/25con
Tickets at the door from 6pm.
Snacks avail. Disabled access available.
KIM SANDERS & FRIENDS LAST GIG OF THE YEAR
Kim Sanders & Friends will perform their last concert in Australia for the year when they play at St Luke’s Hall, Enmore on Sunday afternoon, October 7.
Kim has just returned from Indonesia where he performed as a soloist at the Solo International Ethnic Music Festival. “I had a ball in Solo. I know a lot of musicians over there now, and we usually manage to get some interesting collaborations happening as well as doing our own stuff. This time I had a great jam with Sundanese percussionist Gilang Ramadhan. And the opening parade was fantastic – literally millions in the streets – Solo came to a standstill. I rode in a cart drawn by two oxen. Very stylish. Elton and Mick only get the stretch limo – hah!”
The gig also marks the return of tabla-player Bobby Singh to the band. He has been touring in the US with percussion trio Circle of Rhythm.
“The gig will be a good warm-up for us for the recording of our new CD in October. It’s been delayed for more than two years, for various reasons, so we’re really busting to get into the studio. After that, I’m off to study and perform in Turkey for three months. It’s a great life if you don’t weaken!”
The gig will feature the band’s eclectic mix of Balkan Gypsy thrash tunes, serene Sufi meditations, Afro-flamenco grooves and strange uncategorizable originals.
Kim Sanders: mey, kaval, gaida, ney, tenor sax, aardvark
Sandy Evans: soprano and tenor saxes
Steve Elphick: double bass
Bobby Singh: tabla
2 pm, Sunday October 7
St Luke’s Hall,
11 Stanmore Rd,
Enmore (opposite 7/11 store)
$20/15 concession
OK, on the show tonight, some firm favorites make a return.
Kim Sanders- CD Trance'N' Dancin'
Gundecha Brothers- CD Ancestral Voices
Various Artists- CD: The Rough Guide To Arabesque
Beyrouth Ecœurée - Clotaire K
Dourbiha - Momo
Emmanuel Jal and Abdel Gadir Salim, CD: Ceasefire
Cesaria Evora- CD: Best of
Jah Wobble- CD: Mu
Various Artists- CD Congotronics No 2 Buzz 'N' Rumble From The Urb'N' Jungle
Konono No1 - Live From Couleur Café
State of Bengal Vs Paban das Baul, Tana Tani
(Realworld)
Moner Manush
Tal Rosh
Peter Dickson & Juan Martinez- CD Falsettas
Marcel Khalife- CD Caress (www,calabashmusic.com)
Rokia TraoreBowmboi (Label Bleu)
Regards
Hans Stoeve
Powerspot (not just a world music show)
2SER FM
listen online @ www.2ser.com
Wednesday Nights 1900-2030
Sydney Australia
Blogging at www.globalgroove.blogspot.com
'Some people never go crazy, what truly horrible lives they must live'-Charles Bukowski
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Powerspot 12 September 07
On the show tomorrow night, musical treats from the following.
Bob Brozman- CD Lumiere (Riverboat)
Martyn Bennett- CD Bothy Culture (Rykodisc)
Tony Gorman & Bobby Singh- CD As Wide As The Sky (Birdland)
(the interview with Bobby Singh can be replayed and downloaded from the blog)
Tinariwen- Aman Iman- Water is Life (Filter Music)
Tony Gorman and Bobby Singh will be performing a limited number of performances to promote this release. I would urge those that have the ability to go along and see these musicians perform to do so.
Important dates to keep in mind are as follows.
Thursday September 13th: Sydney 6pm
With special guests The Martenitsa Choir directed by Mara Kiek Stone Gallery on Oxford (Paddington Uniting Church) at the site of the Paddington Markets 395 Oxford St Paddington Wheelchair access. Free car parking: 24-28 Gordon Street Church car park. $15/$12 concession Bookings through Moshtix Enquiries : Birdland phone 02 9267 6881 www.birdland.com.au birdland@birdland.com.au
Sunday 16th September: Newcastle 2pm Royal Exchange, 32 Bolton St Ph (02) 4929 4969 $15 with a $12 concession
Saturday 22nd September: Katoomba 7.30pm With special guests Crowd Around St Hilda’s Anglican Church, 68 Katoomba St (next to the Commonwealth Bank) Ph (02) 4782 4081 (02) 47593937 $12 adults $10 concession
Sunday 23rd September: Manly 7pm Manly Art Gallery & Museum, West Esplanade Reserve Presented as part of the 2007 Manly Arts Festival www.manlyartsfestival.com.au Ph (02) 9976 1421 $10 General $7 Concessions
Leigh Cline & Nikolas Michailidis- Al Asha Bi Daha- Traditional Songs of the Eastern Black Sea 9Scimitar Records)
Pin Rada- The Melbourne / Istanbul Sessions (Telluric Music)-not yet released.
Friday, August 24, 2007
The Gundecha Bros 30-09-07 Sydney
This is to give a few of you who may be interested some advance notice of the next very special concert put on by Sangeet Australia,so you can put it in your diaries.
Sangeet Australia presents
extra special guests from India
Dhrupad Vocalists The Gundecha Brothers
September 30th Performance starts 7:30pm
Pre-concert talk from Dr Adrian McNeil 'About Dhrupad Music'
Tom Mann Theatre
136 Chalmers St
Surry Hills
Nr Central Station.
$30/25con
Tickets at the door from 6pm.
Snacks avail. Disabled access available.
Powerspot Bob Marley special
He’s been described as the most important musical figure of the 20th century. His influence just keeps growing ever since his passing. He is a hero to many native peoples around the world, Maoris, Hopi Indians, the Aboriginal people, a figure who transcended music, and became a symbol of freedom.
The BBC has voted One Love as the song of the century, whilst Time Magazine voted Exodus as the album of the century. Through his music, Marley taught you not to judge people by the colour of their skin more by what they do. The music sang about the reality of life, of the plight of suffering; one of the strengths of marley’s music is that as long as suffering exists his music will continue and give strength to those listening. Marley’s music is as such one of the more enduring music of our time in my opinion.
The aim tonight is not to cover the entire history and spectrum of Bob Marley’s life. That would take more than a 90 minute show. I will assume people listening tonight will be across Bob’s work in some shape way or form, however I’ll loosely cover off the period up to his getting together with Island Records. For a more comprehensive look at Bob Marley's life, I recommend you go to www.bobmarley.com
Marley would have been 62 years old this year. Even though Marley’s work only really covers a period of 20 years, his music has very much become a part of our everyday lives. It has been used in countless commercials, still gets regular airplay on commercial and alternative radio, and due to the fact his work was so insightful and spiritually aware, made it difficult for other reggae stars to be equally noticed. Marley was in a league of his own.
Considered to be the first true superstar of the so called third world, Marley’s music was shaped by the street culture of Jamaica of the 1950’s and 1960’s . Slavery had only been abolished 100 years earlier, and, the people were coming to terms with recent independence and emerging national identity.
A sense of African heritage and cultural awareness were further raised by people such as Marcus Garvey who advocated a new black African state. Freed from the domination of white rulers, Garvey as part of the dream to reunite the black population started the Black Star Line, a shipping company which in theory was going to ship all the black population from America and the Caribbean back to Africa.
In 1930 Ras Tafari Makonnen became the new Emperor of Ethiopia, He took on a new name- Haile Selassie. The followers of Marcus Garvey took Selassie to be the man who would deliver the Negro people, as had been prophesised by Marcus Garvey earlier. This was to be the start of the Rastafarian religion. Rastafarians speak out against; poverty, oppression and inequality.....not just religious ideas but global problems. The prime basic belief of the Rastafarians is that Haile Sellassie is the living God for the black race. The Lion of Judah represents Haile Sellassie, the Conqueror. It represents the King of Kings as a lion is the king of all beasts. The dreadlocks on a Rasta's head are symbolic of the Lion of Judah.
Into this period of time and social consciousness came Robert Nestor Marley born in 1945, fifteen years after Haile Selassie took power. In the 50’s and 60’s Kingston Jamaica, despite all it’s poverty and hardship, was the place to be for many people. People would squat in shanty towns such as Trench town which was built over a ditch running the sewage out of the town. Trench town would of course be made famous through the music and songs of Bob Marley. He moved there with his mother in the late 50’s growing up listening to amongst other things American radio, hearing artists such as Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield, Brook Benton as well as The Drifters. From a young age, Marley grew increasingly interested in music, forming a friendship with Bunny Livingstone aka Bunny Wailer, as well as the famous singer Joe Higgs who would be a mentor and teacher to his band. It was around this time that he befriended another musical icon- Peter Macintosh aka Peter Tosh. This was to be version 1 of the Wailing Wailers.
An introduction to Clement Dodd of Studio 1 fame in 1963 led to a record deal. Bob’s firsts single was Simmer Down, it’s reference to violence being a diatribe against competing producers of dances in dance halls and social events due to the competitive nature of the industry. With marley, you often needed to read the music between the lines. Reggae was very much what was called the poor man’s newspaper, in that if something was happening the word or the message would be spread through the music. If people couldn’t read, they could always listen to the music which would keep them informed of what was happening.
Marley went on to record music identifying other topical themes appealing to the Rude Boys, the street rebels of Kingston Jamaica, Over the next few years Marley cut some thirty singles for Clement Dodd before breaking up the band citing financial hardships. Earlier releases for Marley were more aimed at the dance halls and the tempo in general was more upbeat.
By the mid 60’s Bob Marley was identifying closer and closer to the ideals and beliefs of the Rastafarians, his songs starting to reflect a new spiritual outlook and social awareness, something that would remain in his music for the rest of his life. In Marley’s case, he would be strongly influenced by the Rasta beliefs such as:
*the use of ganja or ‘erbs to be closer to God…thus the references to I and I. Herbs made Marley think, made him more sensitive to what was around him. It was done for as Marley would say headucation.
*Africa being paradise,
*Selassie being the living god.
At a time when Jamaica was still relatively new to independence, this was a real slap in the face for the government of the day. He was seen as a threat. He in turn mistrusted the politicians. He called them Crime Ministers who sit in the house of thieves
Marley would reform The Wailers and teamed up with Lee Perry, producing some of the biggest hits such as Soul Rebel, 400 Years and Small Axe, songs which were to define the future of reggae.
Marley’s big break really came when he partnered up with Chris Blackwell from Island Records in the early 70’s. Blackwell had been promoting reggae music since the 50’s, as well as promoting rock bands such as Traffic and King Crimson. By aligning himself with Blackwell he was very much guaranteeing himself success, as Blackwell had the means to promote Marley to a greater audience.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Powerspot Playlist 15 August 2007
On the show tonight night, musical treats and delights from the following:
Deepak Ram- CD Flute for Thought- Between Thoughts (mp3 from www.calabashmusic.com)
Marcel Khalife- CD Caress-Caress (mp3 from www.calabashmusic.com)
Azam Ali- CD Elysium For The Brave- Endless Reverie / I Am A Stranger in this Life (mp3 from www.calabashmusic.com)
Azam is internationally recognized for her work with Vas, the critically acclaimed, best selling, world music duo she co-founded in 1996 with percussionist Greg Ellis. From 1997- 2004 Vas released four albums on the Narada label. Their music, which they described as "alternative world," focused mainly on the ancient
relationship between the drum and voice. Their distinct cinematic sound blended influences of Indian, Persian, Western and other musical styles into a unique configuration that transcended categorization and cultural specificity. Though in their early days Vas drew many comparisons to Dead Can Dance, they patiently surpassed that comparison with each album they released, earning them their place in the musical hierarchy of bands whose innovation set a standard for others to aspire to.
In 2002 Azam released her first self produced highly successful solo album, Portals of Grace, which featured her singing renditions of ancient Western European medieval songs.
Azam's distinctive voice can also be heard on myriad film and television scores among which include “Matrix Revolutions,” “Godsend,” “Papparazi,” the upcoming major motion picture 300, Children of Dune, Earthsea, Dawn of the Dead, Alias, and The Agency.
Elysium for the Brave, Azam's second solo album, signals a new turn in her musical evolution. The album, her most ambitious work to date, brings together musicians from varied musical backgrounds performing in diverse permutations. Singing predominantly in English for the first time, the songs are based on lyrics written by Azam herself and reveal a poetic lyricism heard only in glimpses of her previous works.
Duoud- CD Sakat - Youm Aland / Mal Aytani-(mp3's from www.calabashmusic.com)
For their second record, the electro-traditional combo Duoud explores Yemen ancestral musical traditions i
Smadj and Mehdi Haddab, children of the Parisian musical turmoil of the 90’s, have chosen the oud, just like one chooses one’s favorite pastry: with an accepted greed, without fear nor complex. For a long time, the oriental-electronic producer and the Ekova magician-member have satisfied their need to play in their favorite bars or in the intimacy of a party among friends. With this very simplicity they decided to record the fruit of their night drifting under the project name DuOud. Respectfully insolent with the instrument tradition, alternating “classical” Arab tunes and personal compositions, warmth of the acoustic instrument and electronic saturation, the two companions even invited some colleagues to share their joy (particularly the Bum Cello’s “fireworks makers”).
Jan Garbarek- Anouar Brahem- Ustad Shaukat Hussain- CD Madar- Sull Lull
Simon Shaheen & Vishwa Mohan Bhatt- CD Saltanah- Rag Vasant Mukhari
Dino Saluzzi- CD Cafe De La Musique- Introduccion y Milonga del Ausente (ECM 1616)
Deepak Ram- CD Flute for Thought- Between Thoughts (mp3 from www.calabashmusic.com)
Marcel Khalife- CD Caress-Caress (mp3 from www.calabashmusic.com)
Azam Ali- CD Elysium For The Brave- Endless Reverie / I Am A Stranger in this Life (mp3 from www.calabashmusic.com)
Azam is internationally recognized for her work with Vas, the critically acclaimed, best selling, world music duo she co-founded in 1996 with percussionist Greg Ellis. From 1997- 2004 Vas released four albums on the Narada label. Their music, which they described as "alternative world," focused mainly on the ancient
relationship between the drum and voice. Their distinct cinematic sound blended influences of Indian, Persian, Western and other musical styles into a unique configuration that transcended categorization and cultural specificity. Though in their early days Vas drew many comparisons to Dead Can Dance, they patiently surpassed that comparison with each album they released, earning them their place in the musical hierarchy of bands whose innovation set a standard for others to aspire to.
In 2002 Azam released her first self produced highly successful solo album, Portals of Grace, which featured her singing renditions of ancient Western European medieval songs.
Azam's distinctive voice can also be heard on myriad film and television scores among which include “Matrix Revolutions,” “Godsend,” “Papparazi,” the upcoming major motion picture 300, Children of Dune, Earthsea, Dawn of the Dead, Alias, and The Agency.
Elysium for the Brave, Azam's second solo album, signals a new turn in her musical evolution. The album, her most ambitious work to date, brings together musicians from varied musical backgrounds performing in diverse permutations. Singing predominantly in English for the first time, the songs are based on lyrics written by Azam herself and reveal a poetic lyricism heard only in glimpses of her previous works.
Duoud- CD Sakat - Youm Aland / Mal Aytani-(mp3's from www.calabashmusic.com)
For their second record, the electro-traditional combo Duoud explores Yemen ancestral musical traditions i
Smadj and Mehdi Haddab, children of the Parisian musical turmoil of the 90’s, have chosen the oud, just like one chooses one’s favorite pastry: with an accepted greed, without fear nor complex. For a long time, the oriental-electronic producer and the Ekova magician-member have satisfied their need to play in their favorite bars or in the intimacy of a party among friends. With this very simplicity they decided to record the fruit of their night drifting under the project name DuOud. Respectfully insolent with the instrument tradition, alternating “classical” Arab tunes and personal compositions, warmth of the acoustic instrument and electronic saturation, the two companions even invited some colleagues to share their joy (particularly the Bum Cello’s “fireworks makers”).
Jan Garbarek- Anouar Brahem- Ustad Shaukat Hussain- CD Madar- Sull Lull
Simon Shaheen & Vishwa Mohan Bhatt- CD Saltanah- Rag Vasant Mukhari
Dino Saluzzi- CD Cafe De La Musique- Introduccion y Milonga del Ausente (ECM 1616)
Bob Dylan at The Entertainment Centre-a review
I once asked Daniel Lanois what he thought about when people praised him for resurrecting the careers of musicians such as Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris. He very humbly replied that great musicians will always be great musicians, no matter what they are going through. If you have greatness inside you, it will come out sooner or later. After the interview I started listening to Bob Dylan's music again, and my interest was further re-fueled when I saw the documentary put out by Martin Scorcese some years back.
I was never a 'die-hard' Bob Dylan fan, and to this day still believe that the best Dylan tunes are the ones covered by others, possibly because these singers made me aware of who Bob Dylan is. John Martyn springs to mind, singing Don't Think Twice, on the brilliant London Conversation album, one of many fine albums put out by Martyn over many years.
So I find myself at The Entertainment Centre last night with my friend Chris Vitek taking in the Bob Dylan experience. I went out of respect for Dylan's music, knowing here was one of the great creative musical visionaries of my time. The show didn't 'rock my world', however I'm glad I experienced it. The Dylan I heard was very much performing a kind of southern Texan, rockabilly style country music. Most of the show saw Dylan behind his keyboards, only playing guitar on three tracks. He also didn't play too much harmonica, which I would have liked to have heard more of. The band was comprised of a double bass player by the name of Tony Garnier, as well as a pedal steel player by the name of Donnie Herron, who also played lap steel guitar and violin.Dylan seemed to cover off most of the tracks off his most recent release Modern Times, as well as favorites such as Highway 61 Revisited (an almost rockabilly version), When The Deal Goes Down, as well as Thunder On The Mountain, and to finish the show a great version of All Along The Watchtower.
After the show I drove home listening to Masterpieces, playing Dylan singing All Along The Watchtower over and over again. I'm glad I heard him sing live just once, and even though I sat about 100 feet away from the stage, you could sense that greatness that is Bob Dylan
Friday, August 10, 2007
Just because it's digital doesn't mean it's good
MP3 music - it's better than it sounds
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Whether you know it or not, that compact disc you just copied to your
MP3 player is only partially there.
With the CD on its way out and computer files taking over as the
primary means of hearing recorded music, the artificial audio of MP3s
is quickly becoming the primary way people listen to music. Apple
already has sold 100 million iPods, and more than a billion MP3 files
are traded every month through the Internet.
[ MP3: Just because it's digital, doesn't mean it sounds good.]
But the music contained in these computer files represents less than
10 percent of the original music on the CDs. In its journey from CD
to MP3 player, the music has been compressed by eliminating data that
computer analysis deems redundant, squeezed down until it fits
through the Internet pipeline.
When even the full files on the CDs contain less than half the
information stored to studio hard drives during recording, these
compressed MP3s represent a minuscule fraction of the actual
recording. For purists, it's the dark ages of recorded sound.
"You can get used to awful," says record producer Phil Ramone. "You
can appreciate nothing. We've done it with fast food."
Ramone, who has recorded everyone from Frank Sinatra to the Rolling
Stones, was a musical prodigy who graduated from Juilliard at 16. He
won the first of his nine Grammys in 1965 for the classic album "Getz/
Gilberto." He is not alone in the upper ranks of his profession in
decrying the state of audio, even though millions of dollars have
been spent building high-tech digital recording studios.
"We're pretty happy with what we send out," says engineer Al Schmitt,
winner of 15 Grammys for records by artists from Henry Mancini to
Diana Krall. "What happens after that, we have no control over that
anymore."
These studio professionals bring their experience and expensive,
modern technology to bear on their work; they're scrupulous and
fastidious. Then they hear their work played back on an iPod through
a pair of plastic earbuds. Ask Ramone how it feels to hear his work
on MP3s, and he doesn't mince words.
"It's painful," he says.
MP3s have won the war of the formats because of technology, not
because of their audio quality. "It's like hearing through a screen
door," says neuroscientist Daniel Levitin of McGill University,
author of "This Is Your Brain on Music." "There are lines between me
and what I want to see."
But what is the price of inferior audio quality? Can poor audio touch
the heart as deeply as better sound? John Meyer, who designs and
builds some of the world's best speakers at his Meyer Sound Labs in
Berkeley, doesn't think so.
"It turns you into an observer," Meyer says. "It forces the brain to
work harder to solve it all the time. Any compression system is based
on the idea you can throw data away, and that's proved tricky because
we don't know how the brain works."
It could be that MP3s actually reach the receptors in our brains in
entirely different ways than analog phonograph records. The
difference could be as fundamental as which brain hemisphere the
music engages.
"Poorer-fidelity music stimulates the brain in different ways," says
Dr. Robert Sweetow, head of UCSF audiology department. "With
different neurons, perhaps lesser neurons, stimulated, there are
fewer cortical neurons connected back to the limbic system, where the
emotions are stored."
But Sweetow also notes that music with lyrics may act entirely
differently on a cerebral level than instrumental music. "The words
trigger the emotion," he says. "But those words aren't necessarily
affected by fidelity."
Certainly '50s and '60s teens got the message of the old rock 'n'
roll records through cheap plastic transistor radios. Levitin
remembers hearing Sly and the Family Stone's "Hot Fun in the
Summertime" on just such a portable radio, an ancient ancestor of the
iPod.
"It was crap, but it sounded great," he says. "All the essential
stuff comes through that inch-and-a-half speaker."
Levitin also says that Enrico Caruso and Billie Holiday can probably
move him more than Michael Bolton or Mariah Carey under any fidelity.
"If the power of the narrative of the movie isn't there," he says
metaphorically, "there's only so far cinematography can take you."
Most of today's pop records are already compressed before they leave
the studio in the first place, so the process may matter less to
artists like Maroon 5 or Justin Timberlake. Other kinds of music, in
which subtlety, detail and shaded tonalities are important, may
suffer more harm at the hands of the algorithms.
"When you listen to a world-class symphony or a good jazz record,"
says Schmitt, "and you hear all the nuance in the voices, the fingers
touching the string on the bass, the key striking the string on the
piano, that's just a wonderful sensation."
How much the audio quality is affected by the MP3 process depends on
the compression strategy, the encoder used, the playback equipment,
computer speed and many other steps along the way. Experts agree,
however, that the audio quality of most MP3s is somewhere around FM
radio. The best digital audio, even with increased sampling rates and
higher bit rates, still falls short of the natural quality of now-
obsolete analog tape recording.
EMI Records announced earlier this year the introduction of higher-
priced downloads at a slightly higher bit rate, although the
difference will be difficult to detect. "It's probably
indistinguishable to even a great set of ears," says Levitin.
How good MP3s sound obviously also depends greatly on the playback
system. But most MP3s are heard through cheap computer speakers,
plastic iPod docking stations or, worse yet, those audio abominations
called earbuds.
The ease of distribution means that MP3s are turning up everywhere,
even places where they probably shouldn't. Schmitt, who has won the
award more times than anyone else, is incredulous that the National
Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences posts MP3s of nominees for the
best engineering Grammy. "As if you could tell anything from that,"
he sneers.
For digital audio to substantially improve, several major
technological hurdles will have to be cleared. The files will have to
be stored at higher sampling rates and higher bit rates. Computing
power will have to grow. New playback machines will have to be
introduced ( Ramone thinks high-definition television is the model
for something that could be "HD audio"). If the Internet is going to
be the main delivery system for music in the future, as appears to be
the case, Internet bandwidth will also be a factor.
"The Internet is in charge now," says Ramone, "and it has all kinds
of wobbles. You have wires hanging out of windows and things like
that. That's just the way things have to be because the Internet is
in transition."
Meanwhile, most music listeners don't know what they're missing. They
listen to MP3s on shiny chrome machines and plastic earpieces, and
what they hear is what they get. But what's being lost is not
replaced by the convenience.
In effect, sound reproduction is caught in a technological wrinkle
that may take years to straighten out. "This is a transition phase,"
says McGill's Levitin. "It's having an effect on the culture, no
question, but it's temporary. ... (But) it may be around for a while."
A glossary of digital audio terms:
A glossary of terms that describe different types of digital audio :
MP3: What has become a generic name for compressed audio files was
originally taken from a set of video and audio compression standards
known as MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group). . There are many
codecs, or compression programs (Apple converts CDs to an AAC file on
iPods), but most reduce the file to about 6 percent of its original
size.
WAV: The standard computer audio file stores data at 44,100 samples
per second, 16 bits per sample (although recording studios are
commonly equipped with 24-bit technology). WAV files are uncompressed
and written to compact discs in Red Book audio, which adapts the file
for compact disc players.
AIFF: Most professional audio is saved in these large files that use
about 10 megabytes for every minute of stereo audio.
FLAC: This codec, favored by Grateful Dead tape traders, stands for
Free Lossless Audio Code. It reduces storage space by 30 to 50
percent, but without compression. A full audio CD can be burned from
the file, unlike from MP3s.
- Joel Selvin
E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/08/DDEJR7KN11.DTL
This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
SectionsDatebook96HoursCommentaryFoodSportsNewsBay
AreaHome&GardenBusiness
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Whether you know it or not, that compact disc you just copied to your
MP3 player is only partially there.
With the CD on its way out and computer files taking over as the
primary means of hearing recorded music, the artificial audio of MP3s
is quickly becoming the primary way people listen to music. Apple
already has sold 100 million iPods, and more than a billion MP3 files
are traded every month through the Internet.
[ MP3: Just because it's digital, doesn't mean it sounds good.]
But the music contained in these computer files represents less than
10 percent of the original music on the CDs. In its journey from CD
to MP3 player, the music has been compressed by eliminating data that
computer analysis deems redundant, squeezed down until it fits
through the Internet pipeline.
When even the full files on the CDs contain less than half the
information stored to studio hard drives during recording, these
compressed MP3s represent a minuscule fraction of the actual
recording. For purists, it's the dark ages of recorded sound.
"You can get used to awful," says record producer Phil Ramone. "You
can appreciate nothing. We've done it with fast food."
Ramone, who has recorded everyone from Frank Sinatra to the Rolling
Stones, was a musical prodigy who graduated from Juilliard at 16. He
won the first of his nine Grammys in 1965 for the classic album "Getz/
Gilberto." He is not alone in the upper ranks of his profession in
decrying the state of audio, even though millions of dollars have
been spent building high-tech digital recording studios.
"We're pretty happy with what we send out," says engineer Al Schmitt,
winner of 15 Grammys for records by artists from Henry Mancini to
Diana Krall. "What happens after that, we have no control over that
anymore."
These studio professionals bring their experience and expensive,
modern technology to bear on their work; they're scrupulous and
fastidious. Then they hear their work played back on an iPod through
a pair of plastic earbuds. Ask Ramone how it feels to hear his work
on MP3s, and he doesn't mince words.
"It's painful," he says.
MP3s have won the war of the formats because of technology, not
because of their audio quality. "It's like hearing through a screen
door," says neuroscientist Daniel Levitin of McGill University,
author of "This Is Your Brain on Music." "There are lines between me
and what I want to see."
But what is the price of inferior audio quality? Can poor audio touch
the heart as deeply as better sound? John Meyer, who designs and
builds some of the world's best speakers at his Meyer Sound Labs in
Berkeley, doesn't think so.
"It turns you into an observer," Meyer says. "It forces the brain to
work harder to solve it all the time. Any compression system is based
on the idea you can throw data away, and that's proved tricky because
we don't know how the brain works."
It could be that MP3s actually reach the receptors in our brains in
entirely different ways than analog phonograph records. The
difference could be as fundamental as which brain hemisphere the
music engages.
"Poorer-fidelity music stimulates the brain in different ways," says
Dr. Robert Sweetow, head of UCSF audiology department. "With
different neurons, perhaps lesser neurons, stimulated, there are
fewer cortical neurons connected back to the limbic system, where the
emotions are stored."
But Sweetow also notes that music with lyrics may act entirely
differently on a cerebral level than instrumental music. "The words
trigger the emotion," he says. "But those words aren't necessarily
affected by fidelity."
Certainly '50s and '60s teens got the message of the old rock 'n'
roll records through cheap plastic transistor radios. Levitin
remembers hearing Sly and the Family Stone's "Hot Fun in the
Summertime" on just such a portable radio, an ancient ancestor of the
iPod.
"It was crap, but it sounded great," he says. "All the essential
stuff comes through that inch-and-a-half speaker."
Levitin also says that Enrico Caruso and Billie Holiday can probably
move him more than Michael Bolton or Mariah Carey under any fidelity.
"If the power of the narrative of the movie isn't there," he says
metaphorically, "there's only so far cinematography can take you."
Most of today's pop records are already compressed before they leave
the studio in the first place, so the process may matter less to
artists like Maroon 5 or Justin Timberlake. Other kinds of music, in
which subtlety, detail and shaded tonalities are important, may
suffer more harm at the hands of the algorithms.
"When you listen to a world-class symphony or a good jazz record,"
says Schmitt, "and you hear all the nuance in the voices, the fingers
touching the string on the bass, the key striking the string on the
piano, that's just a wonderful sensation."
How much the audio quality is affected by the MP3 process depends on
the compression strategy, the encoder used, the playback equipment,
computer speed and many other steps along the way. Experts agree,
however, that the audio quality of most MP3s is somewhere around FM
radio. The best digital audio, even with increased sampling rates and
higher bit rates, still falls short of the natural quality of now-
obsolete analog tape recording.
EMI Records announced earlier this year the introduction of higher-
priced downloads at a slightly higher bit rate, although the
difference will be difficult to detect. "It's probably
indistinguishable to even a great set of ears," says Levitin.
How good MP3s sound obviously also depends greatly on the playback
system. But most MP3s are heard through cheap computer speakers,
plastic iPod docking stations or, worse yet, those audio abominations
called earbuds.
The ease of distribution means that MP3s are turning up everywhere,
even places where they probably shouldn't. Schmitt, who has won the
award more times than anyone else, is incredulous that the National
Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences posts MP3s of nominees for the
best engineering Grammy. "As if you could tell anything from that,"
he sneers.
For digital audio to substantially improve, several major
technological hurdles will have to be cleared. The files will have to
be stored at higher sampling rates and higher bit rates. Computing
power will have to grow. New playback machines will have to be
introduced ( Ramone thinks high-definition television is the model
for something that could be "HD audio"). If the Internet is going to
be the main delivery system for music in the future, as appears to be
the case, Internet bandwidth will also be a factor.
"The Internet is in charge now," says Ramone, "and it has all kinds
of wobbles. You have wires hanging out of windows and things like
that. That's just the way things have to be because the Internet is
in transition."
Meanwhile, most music listeners don't know what they're missing. They
listen to MP3s on shiny chrome machines and plastic earpieces, and
what they hear is what they get. But what's being lost is not
replaced by the convenience.
In effect, sound reproduction is caught in a technological wrinkle
that may take years to straighten out. "This is a transition phase,"
says McGill's Levitin. "It's having an effect on the culture, no
question, but it's temporary. ... (But) it may be around for a while."
A glossary of digital audio terms:
A glossary of terms that describe different types of digital audio :
MP3: What has become a generic name for compressed audio files was
originally taken from a set of video and audio compression standards
known as MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group). . There are many
codecs, or compression programs (Apple converts CDs to an AAC file on
iPods), but most reduce the file to about 6 percent of its original
size.
WAV: The standard computer audio file stores data at 44,100 samples
per second, 16 bits per sample (although recording studios are
commonly equipped with 24-bit technology). WAV files are uncompressed
and written to compact discs in Red Book audio, which adapts the file
for compact disc players.
AIFF: Most professional audio is saved in these large files that use
about 10 megabytes for every minute of stereo audio.
FLAC: This codec, favored by Grateful Dead tape traders, stands for
Free Lossless Audio Code. It reduces storage space by 30 to 50
percent, but without compression. A full audio CD can be burned from
the file, unlike from MP3s.
- Joel Selvin
E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/08/DDEJR7KN11.DTL
This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
SectionsDatebook96HoursCommentaryFoodSportsNewsBay
AreaHome&GardenBusiness
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Powerspot Playlist 8 August 07
Last night's program as follows.
Kim Sanders- CD Trance'n'Dancing'
Kim Sanders- You Can't Get There from Here
1 Giant Leap- Audio / Music from the DVD 1 Giant Leap
Dhafer Youssef- Music from the DVD Live @ The Spitz
Adrian McNeil & Aneesh Pradhan- Raga Bhasant Bhukari (www.underscorerecords.com)
Kim Sanders- CD Trance'n'Dancing'
Kim Sanders- You Can't Get There from Here
1 Giant Leap- Audio / Music from the DVD 1 Giant Leap
Dhafer Youssef- Music from the DVD Live @ The Spitz
Adrian McNeil & Aneesh Pradhan- Raga Bhasant Bhukari (www.underscorerecords.com)
Monday, August 06, 2007
Kim Sanders upcoming show 19 August 07
Musical gypsy Kim Sanders has just returned from Indonesia to present a programme of Turkish music at St Luke's Hall, Enmore on Sunday August 19.
The concert will feature Turkish-born baglama-player Ozkan Bayar, now living in Australia. I'm really looking forward to playing with Ozkan he's really hot! said Kim yesterday. He's played with some heavy dudes in Turkey. He's a monster on baglama, and also plays bouzouki and a vary rare and exotic hybrid instrument called the cumlama. I like hybrids I play one myself!? Kim's hybrid is the Bulgarian/Turkish/Australian bass bagpipe he calls The Aardvark.
Kim has studied, performed and recorded extensively in Turkey since 1984. He has worked with Zulfu Livanelli, Anadolu Fener, Birol Topaloglu and the Istanbul State Modern Folk Music Ensemble.
The ensemble will be completed by Kim?s long-time collaborator percussionist Peter Kennard, who was featured on Kim?s latest CD Trance'n'Dancin.
The programme will include Turkish Classical and Sufi music and folk music from various regions of Turkey.
In Indonesia, they're very interested in Turkish music, because of the historical connection with the Middle East, says Kim. Especially so in Aceh. I went there to do a series of World Music workshops with a group of musicians co-ordinated by Ben Pasaribu from the Ethnomusicology Department at Medan University. The aim was to encourage local Achenese musos to play music again, now that the houses and infrastructure are mostly rebuilt after the tsunami. We heard some terrible stories, but the workshops went really well, and the jam session on the final night was a knockout! Hopefully we contributed in some small way to the healing of hearts and minds.
Kim also performed at the Malacca Straits Jazz Festival and at the inauguration of the new chief of Koto Gadang in Sumatra. My vegetarian daughter Phoebe was grossed out by the freshly-severed buffalo-head in prime position next to the Chief but they sure loved the gaida! Kim will return to Indonesia in September for the Solo International Ethnic Music Festival and to Turkey in November for further study and performances.
Kim Sanders: ney, kaval, mey, gaida, aardvark
Ozkan Bayar: baglama, cura, cumlama, bouzouki
Peter Kennard : dhaf, daire, darabukka, davul, percussion
2 pm, Sunday Aug 19
St Luke?s Hall,
11 Stanmore Rd,
Enmore (opposite 7/11 store)
$20/15 concession
St Luke's Hall is a semi-accoustic venue, so you won't be deafened by a moronically loud sound-system!
Light refreshments available, and parking onsite.
Be early seating is limited!
For interviews, photographs, more info, to order CDs: kimzgaida@hotmail.com
See www.netspace.com.au/~kimsanders
This concert is supported by Kinetic Energy Theatre Company.
BELLINGEN GLOBAL CARNIVAL 2007 line up
BELLINGEN GLOBAL CARNIVAL 2007
September 28th-30th - Bellingen Showground
The full line-up for this year's Bellingen Global Carnival has been announced and it includes:
International -
* Kora (New Zealand)
* Sharon Shannon Band (Ireland)
* Shasha Marley (Ghana)
* The Gyuto Monks (Tibet)
National -
* Afrodizziact featuring Jali Buba Kuyateh
* Alan Posselt & Jay Dabgar
* Chukale
* Diafrix
* Echoes of Polynesia
* Hey Amigos
* Jalsa Creole featuring Aniele
* Johnnie Aseron
* Joseph Tawadros' The Oud, The Bad & The Ugly
* Klezmer Connexion
* Labjacd
* Lolo Lavino
* Mihirangi
* San Lazaro
* Skorba
* The Cafe of the Gate of Salvation
* The View From Madeleine's Couch
* Tjupurru
* Tommee
Local/Regional -
* Alter-Native
* Baja
* Bellinger River District Pipe Band
* Christie & The Rhythm Family
* Old Spice Boys
* Rafiki Connection
* Salsa Crazy
DJs -
* Balkan Beats (Systa BB & DJ Delay)
* DJ Gemma
* Uberlingua crew (bP, Mashy P, Aysu Fevziye Cogur, Presyse Rifraf, sakamoiz, Potato Master, Stuart Buchanan, VJ Sdzeit,
Pataphysics, Mr. Fish, MC Wire)
* Jembe crew (James Locksmith, Mark Walton, DJ Elroy, DJ Frenzie, DJ Katch, Garrido)
Plus Circus acts, Kid's Festival and much more.
Full details and ticket information available at:
http://www.globalcarnival.com
September 28th-30th - Bellingen Showground
The full line-up for this year's Bellingen Global Carnival has been announced and it includes:
International -
* Kora (New Zealand)
* Sharon Shannon Band (Ireland)
* Shasha Marley (Ghana)
* The Gyuto Monks (Tibet)
National -
* Afrodizziact featuring Jali Buba Kuyateh
* Alan Posselt & Jay Dabgar
* Chukale
* Diafrix
* Echoes of Polynesia
* Hey Amigos
* Jalsa Creole featuring Aniele
* Johnnie Aseron
* Joseph Tawadros' The Oud, The Bad & The Ugly
* Klezmer Connexion
* Labjacd
* Lolo Lavino
* Mihirangi
* San Lazaro
* Skorba
* The Cafe of the Gate of Salvation
* The View From Madeleine's Couch
* Tjupurru
* Tommee
Local/Regional -
* Alter-Native
* Baja
* Bellinger River District Pipe Band
* Christie & The Rhythm Family
* Old Spice Boys
* Rafiki Connection
* Salsa Crazy
DJs -
* Balkan Beats (Systa BB & DJ Delay)
* DJ Gemma
* Uberlingua crew (bP, Mashy P, Aysu Fevziye Cogur, Presyse Rifraf, sakamoiz, Potato Master, Stuart Buchanan, VJ Sdzeit,
Pataphysics, Mr. Fish, MC Wire)
* Jembe crew (James Locksmith, Mark Walton, DJ Elroy, DJ Frenzie, DJ Katch, Garrido)
Plus Circus acts, Kid's Festival and much more.
Full details and ticket information available at:
http://www.globalcarnival.com
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Playlist 1 August 07
A pinch and a punch. Where has the year gone? August already. The weather is warming up during the days, giving almost a false sense of spring. Night time it's still bitterly cold, heater on full bore. probably not doing much to improve the environment with all those carbon emissions but...
On the show tomorrow night, musical contributions from the following. I am also hoping to have an advance copy of the collaboration between sarod master Adrian McNeill and tabla master Aneesh Pradhan, who will be performing 4 August 07 at the very small and intimate Dickson Street Space in newtown. A Must See Event. Please do come along. It's an early morning performance starting at 1130 and going for approximately two hours. This will truly be a wonderful musical collaboration and moment.
Kiran Ahluwalia-(www.calabashmusic.com)
The ghazal, Kiran's specialty, is a song form that comes from the Indian subcontinent. It exists somewhere between the classical and popular tradition. Ghazals begin life as poems and with the addition of music, become songs. They have an unbroken 700 year tradition and that tradition is alive and well in the South Asian literary diaspora across North America. These new original poems written in Urdu and Punjabi by a variety of Indian poets, combined with Kiran's music, make an original contribution to the ghazal tradition, perhaps the first recorded ghazals to be entirely created in North America.
Kiran Ahluwalia is a performer of vocal music. More precisely she is a performer of two distinct styles of vocal music from the Indian subcontinent, now India and Pakistan. Kiran sings ghazals and Punjabi folk songs. The word ghazal is an Arabic word that means "to talk to women". Given that men have traditionally spoken to women a great deal about love; the name attached itself to a form of poetic sung verse that originated in Persia about 1000 years ago and reached India around 400 years later.
Smadj-CD Take It and Drive
Smadj is the moniker adopted by musician and composer Jean-Pierre Smadja.
Smadj was born in Tunisia, but raised in Paris from an early age. His work is the product of a musical upbringing that has embraced influences from all over the world.
Smadj took up the guitar as a teenager, and he soon began to develop his own style of playing. By his early twenties he was featuring regularly at jazz clubs in and around the city, whilst gaining a reputation as a sound engineer through the mobile studio he had set up.
As the sound of electronic music spread throughout Paris during the early 90's Smadj began to feel constrained by his chosen genre. His first reaction was to start to fuse jazz with the North African sound of his birthplace. The name he gave to the project was Tatoom, which combined a number of musicians. Their world-groove sound caught the attention of label Moby Dick, which released Tatoom presents Tatoom in 1996. The group split up shortly, due to the departure of the singer.
During the mid-nineties Smadj had also collaborated as a session guitarist with a number of high-profile musicians, such as Tony Allen (Fela's drummer). At the same time Smadj met Sofi Hellborg, a Swedish saxophonist, who had experience of playing with African artists such as the Afro-Jazz musician Manu Dibango. Together they began to improvise live over DJ sets, fusing jazz and breakbeats. Smadj started to sample and program beats himself, as an accompaniment for his guitar, and the pair released their first EP, Bon Voyage, in 1997 with label Freerange UK.
One of the many people who Smadj had been impressing with his music was Robert Trunz, owner of MELT2000. In 1998 Robert signed him to do a full album, Equilibriste. The title means 'tight-rope walker', which is a reference to the boundary he treads on the album between nu-beats and jazz. He spent much of '99 gigging around France and England to promote it.
As Smadj's musical horizons broadened he had also been developing his mastery of a new instrument, the oud - an Arabic incarnation of the Lute comprising six pairs of strings. His second album for MELT2000, New Deal, was the first work to feature him on the instrument, and it marked a departure into more experimental and diverse territory. The album represented the sound many African, Arabic and Indian cultures, set against the environmental noise of Paris and New York.
Soon after the release of New Deal, Smadj was introduced to Mehdi Haddab, the famous oud player. Smadj found in Mehdi a tutor and partner. The two began jamming together, soon performing in front of close friends. It was not long, though, before Smadj was drawn by his fascination with technology towards combining the sound of the oud with his beloved Apple Mac. The idea of processing the oud with effects more closely associated with dance music was truly unique and the high level of musicianship shared by the two artists was bound to yield similarly original results. Soon the pair formed DuOud. The act was quickly picked up by Label Bleu, responsible for releasing their album Wild Serenade to critical acclaim. DuOud have toured the world, performing at prestigious locations such as London's ICA. In 2003 they were nominated for Best Newcomer at the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music.
Smadj's latest work, Take It And Drive is a collection of new music, featuring a number of artists with whom he has recently collaborated. Amongst those featured on the album are vocalist Rokia Traore, Mercury Award winner Talvin Singh and Mehdi Haddab himself.
Pat Metheny - Offramp
This 1982 recording by the Pat Metheny Group represented a crossroads for the guitarist, a creative expansion from his original concept in terms of acoustic and electric instrumentation, folksy roots material and modern jazz influences, American and third world sources. Having thus marked out the territory for a decade's worth of experimentation and growth, the Metheny Group cemented its standing on the cutting edge of contemporary jazz with Offramp. Lyle Mays' harmonica-like synth theme, Metheny's soaring, vocalized synth-guitar lead, some rich orchestral touches, and an easygoing blend of backbeat and chord changes made "Are You Going with Me?" one of Metheny's most enduring arrangements. Still, for every gentle, alluring set piece, such as the tangolike "Au Lait" or the rural vistas of "James," there was a visceral, emotive free-for-all like the title track, where Metheny unleashed wild, wailing synth guitar elisions over a loose, abstract pulse--anticipating the energy of the guitarist's collaboration with free jazz guru Ornette Coleman some four years hence on Song X.
Mariza-Transparente
Mariza began singing Fado as a child, before she could read. Her father sketched out little cartoon stories to help her remember the lyrics. At the age of five, she would join in the spontaneous singing in her parentsâ?? restaurant in Mouraria, one of Lisbon's most traditional neighborhoods.
Mariza was born in Mozambique, but her family moved to Portugal when she was a baby, giving her plenty of time to get immersed directly in the Fado Housesâ where singing is part of everyday life.
Mariza walks the fine line necessary to both genuinely carry the tradition and bring it freshness for today. Her performance style captures the raw emotion that characterizes the genre, but with her own personal twist.
Egberto Gismonti
The Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Egberto Gismonti drew his inspiration for this music from time he spent with the Xingu Indians in the Amazon, and it's intended to invoke both their spirit and the experience of the jungle. Gismonti assembled some remarkable musicians for this 1977 recording--guitarist Ralph Towner, percussionists Nana Vasconcelos and Collin Walcott, and saxophonist Jan Garbarek--but he uses them sparingly. The opening "Palacio de Pinturas" is a gorgeous duet between Gismonti's 8-string and Towner's 12-string guitars, a music so tonally rich that it suggests multiple geographic sources. "Raga," with Walcott on tabla, is more specific, with Gismonti's rapid-fire runs suggesting a sitar, but his use of percussive harmonics is a new element. The long final track is a remarkably varied suite. It begins with a light trio that has Garbarek's only appearance--a keening, soprano-saxophone solo--and includes "Sapain" for an ensemble of blown bottles with voices and wooden flute. Gismonti's fascination with shifting instrumental colors creates consistently interesting music, combining traditions and sources into a novel musical
Jan Garbarek (born March 4, 1947) is a Norwegian tenor and soprano saxophonist active in the jazz, classical, and world music genres. His daughter Anja Garbarek is also a musician.
Garbarek's sound is one of the hallmarks of the ECM record label, which has released virtually all of his recordings. His style incorporates a sharp-edged tone, long, keening, sustained notes strongly reminiscent of Islamic prayer calls, and generous use of silence. He began his recording career in the late 1960s, notably featuring on recordings by the American jazz composer George Russell (such as Othello Ballet Suite and Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature). If he had initially appeared as a devotee of Albert Ayler and Peter Brötzmann, by 1973 he had turned his back on the harsh dissonances of avant-garde jazz, retaining only his tone from his previous approach.
As a composer, Garbarek tends to draw heavily from Scandinavian folk melodies, a legacy of his Ayler influence. He is also a pioneer of ambient jazz composition, most notably on his 1976 album Dis. This textural approach, which rejects traditional notions of thematic improvisation (best exemplified by Sonny Rollins) in favor of a style described by critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton as "sculptural in its impact," has been critically divisive. Garbarek's more meandering recordings are often labeled as New Age music, a style generally scorned by more orthodox jazz musicians and listeners, or spiritual ancestors thereof.
After recording a string of unheralded avant-garde albums, Garbarek rose to international prominence in the mid-1970s playing post-bop jazz, both as a leader and as a member of Keith Jarrett's successful "European Quartet." He achieved considerable commercial success in Europe with Dis, a meditative collaboration with guitarist Ralph Towner that featured the distinctive sound of a wind harp on several tracks. (Selections from Dis have been used as incidental music in several feature films and documentaries.) In the 1980s, Garbarek's music began to incorporate synthesizers and elements of world music. In 1993, during the Gregorian chant craze, his album Officium, a collaboration with early music vocal performers the Hilliard Ensemble, became one of ECM's biggest-selling albums of all time, reaching the pop charts in several European countries. (Its sequel, Mnemosyne, followed in 1999.) In 2005, his album In Praise of Dreams was nominated for a Grammy.
In addition to the selections from Dis, Garbarek has also composed music for several other European films, including French and Norwegian films. Also his song 'Rites' was used in the American film The Insider.
[edit]
Pepe Habichuela-A Mandeli
The first solo work by the brilliant guitarist in which he is accompanied by Carles Benavent on bass, and Rubem Dantas and Antonio Carmona on percussion. He was the first flamenco artist to be accompanied by Benavent and Dantas, and he was also the first to record with the Nuevos Medios record label, which also gambled on the new generation of the Habichuelas: Ketama.
He is the son of the Gypsy T'io josé Habichuela El Viejo (Granada 1910-1986), who founded this legacy of guitarists of whom Pepe (born 1944) is one of three brothers, all gifted guitarists. Pepe's son Juan continues the family tradition as founding member of Ketama, the foremost flamenco cross-over rock band. The rumba from Habichuela's first solo recording is an extraordinarily complex work, aknowledged here by Faucher who explains he has made choices as 'the original was impossible to extract as it is on the disc'. The introduction also explains that the works on recordings are like 'snapshots...which reproduce the pieces as they are played on that particular day and only at that particular time'. It appears the transcriber has worked closely with the composer and introduced three modifications which are clearly noted. It is in the introductory pages where this publication disappoints: the eulogy to Pepe Habichuela is in a tortuous Spanish style with sentences five lines long, i.e. an entire paragraph without drawing breath! The English is patently the result of inadequat translation. Surely the author would not actually want to say this: 'The artist well understands that he will only be safe by calling and putting the dance and the marvellous character's mischievousness a compás, and only in stripping them of grace and duende, making them slide their hands to pass it on to us'. From the Spanish I can deduce that he wishes to suggest the artist steals the grace and duende from past figures and allows it to flow through his own hands that we might witness it. To suggest that Pepe Habichuela strips anything of grace and duende is bordering on the libellous! These introductory words by Francisco Almazán are in Spanish and English only. The explanatory notes on 'sound and technique' are by Alain Faucher, the English is more felicitous than the translations of Almazán's Spanish and gives great insight into Pepe's unique technique. There are those who declare flamenco cannot be written down. This is patently untrue. However, like all music, noy every nuance can be accurately written in black and white. To my mind, the greatest fault of tab notation is the failure to notate the rythm. The extraordinarily improvised nature of Habichuela's rythm makes this some of the most difficult music to accurately notate. Without the recordings to hand I feel it would be extremely hard to get the correct nuances and subtle interplay of accompanying role/melodic exposition/rythmic interlude.
Everything is written here, and the result is a collection of some of the most beautiful, original and profoundly jondo solo flamenco guitar pieces ever recorded. Emma Martinez (Classical Guitar)
Amadou and Mariam
- from the liner notes "Tje Ni Moussou"
African music's recent history has been written on recycled paper, with a pen dipped in the ink of savvy resourcefulness. The biographical vicissitudes of The Bembaya Jazz, The Ambassadeurs, and the Rail Band of Bamako contain enough burlesque episodes for a sitcom, featuring indelicate managers, venal witchdoctors an piracy experts. In this hazardous context, the itinerary of Amadou and Mariam seems full of no-fuss heroics. Take the first hurdle in their long obstacle course: after meeting at the Institute for the Young Blind of Mali, they have to obtain approval for a marriage deemed unreasonable by their parents; the youngsters were the only ones to see the chances of a blind couple being successful.
In those days of military dictatorship, a musical vocation caused those with the most obvious gifts to converge on the hotels, where the house-bands, in exchange for civil-service salary, played to a clientele composed of government brass and foreign citizens, distilling the latest pop tunes and other fashionable music from Cuba in residential ballrooms. At the end of the Sixties, Amadou Bagayoko cut his teeth as a guitarist in the Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako, a versatile group later joined by Salif Keita. He refined his guitar technique, causing his fluid playing to sparkle, and thanks to a bridge or two that spanned the musical continents, cultivated a sense of versatility - the opposite of a scattering - that was to become the emergence of the radiant Bambara blues that has brought their recent productions to full bloom.
Mariam Doumbia sang, often accompanied by Amadou, and when the couple finally decided on a common career, their chances of success in Mali were so high that... they chose to emigrate to the Ivory Coast. Their success there took them by surprise.
Separated from their three children, they recorded a series of cassettes produced the Nigerian Aliyu Maikano Adamu; clothed by a single electric guitar, these recordings contain the initial versions of "Dounia", "A Chacun Son Probleme", and "Mon Amour, Ma Cherie". These songs returned some seven years later to grace the album "Sou Ni Tile", which broadened their horizon and caused the universality of African music to coincide with the resources of modern technology. "Tje Ni Mousso" ("Man And Woman") in bambara, added nuances of sound and rhythmical inflections to the already rich spectrum of their previous work, and caused other essences and perfumes to flow in from the four corners of the globe - the Portuguese cavaquihno, the violin of Bengal, jazz piano - towards the epicenter that is Africa, the land of a thousand dances.
Amadou and Miriam seem to hear their own music through the filter that made them marvel when they were adolescents: the pop of the Seventies, electric blues, reggae, Cuba... Without ever conceiving of it as a project, without even really thinking about it, man and woman caused their distant offspring, those who cradle was the Dark Continent, to come home. And this opening onto the world, this sense of hospitality, recharged the music of West Africa with a vital energy, and secured it in the maternal role that founded its identity.
This record gives "world music" a sense, a function, and a center of gravity that previous misuse of the term had hidden, damaging its reputation. The phrase invites us to a double understanding which can be found again in the use of words distilling counsel and recommendations, as happens in village meetings where the old exchange words with the young: and this manner of keeping a watchful eye, of preaching respect, patience and tolerance, finally causes little local virtues to unfold in a universal wisdom. With simple words, Amadou and Mariam relate the superiority of harmony over discord.
The amusing paradox carried by the songs of this blind couple from Mali is that they also have the power to return sight to those who think they can already see.
On the show tomorrow night, musical contributions from the following. I am also hoping to have an advance copy of the collaboration between sarod master Adrian McNeill and tabla master Aneesh Pradhan, who will be performing 4 August 07 at the very small and intimate Dickson Street Space in newtown. A Must See Event. Please do come along. It's an early morning performance starting at 1130 and going for approximately two hours. This will truly be a wonderful musical collaboration and moment.
Kiran Ahluwalia-(www.calabashmusic.com)
The ghazal, Kiran's specialty, is a song form that comes from the Indian subcontinent. It exists somewhere between the classical and popular tradition. Ghazals begin life as poems and with the addition of music, become songs. They have an unbroken 700 year tradition and that tradition is alive and well in the South Asian literary diaspora across North America. These new original poems written in Urdu and Punjabi by a variety of Indian poets, combined with Kiran's music, make an original contribution to the ghazal tradition, perhaps the first recorded ghazals to be entirely created in North America.
Kiran Ahluwalia is a performer of vocal music. More precisely she is a performer of two distinct styles of vocal music from the Indian subcontinent, now India and Pakistan. Kiran sings ghazals and Punjabi folk songs. The word ghazal is an Arabic word that means "to talk to women". Given that men have traditionally spoken to women a great deal about love; the name attached itself to a form of poetic sung verse that originated in Persia about 1000 years ago and reached India around 400 years later.
Smadj-CD Take It and Drive
Smadj is the moniker adopted by musician and composer Jean-Pierre Smadja.
Smadj was born in Tunisia, but raised in Paris from an early age. His work is the product of a musical upbringing that has embraced influences from all over the world.
Smadj took up the guitar as a teenager, and he soon began to develop his own style of playing. By his early twenties he was featuring regularly at jazz clubs in and around the city, whilst gaining a reputation as a sound engineer through the mobile studio he had set up.
As the sound of electronic music spread throughout Paris during the early 90's Smadj began to feel constrained by his chosen genre. His first reaction was to start to fuse jazz with the North African sound of his birthplace. The name he gave to the project was Tatoom, which combined a number of musicians. Their world-groove sound caught the attention of label Moby Dick, which released Tatoom presents Tatoom in 1996. The group split up shortly, due to the departure of the singer.
During the mid-nineties Smadj had also collaborated as a session guitarist with a number of high-profile musicians, such as Tony Allen (Fela's drummer). At the same time Smadj met Sofi Hellborg, a Swedish saxophonist, who had experience of playing with African artists such as the Afro-Jazz musician Manu Dibango. Together they began to improvise live over DJ sets, fusing jazz and breakbeats. Smadj started to sample and program beats himself, as an accompaniment for his guitar, and the pair released their first EP, Bon Voyage, in 1997 with label Freerange UK.
One of the many people who Smadj had been impressing with his music was Robert Trunz, owner of MELT2000. In 1998 Robert signed him to do a full album, Equilibriste. The title means 'tight-rope walker', which is a reference to the boundary he treads on the album between nu-beats and jazz. He spent much of '99 gigging around France and England to promote it.
As Smadj's musical horizons broadened he had also been developing his mastery of a new instrument, the oud - an Arabic incarnation of the Lute comprising six pairs of strings. His second album for MELT2000, New Deal, was the first work to feature him on the instrument, and it marked a departure into more experimental and diverse territory. The album represented the sound many African, Arabic and Indian cultures, set against the environmental noise of Paris and New York.
Soon after the release of New Deal, Smadj was introduced to Mehdi Haddab, the famous oud player. Smadj found in Mehdi a tutor and partner. The two began jamming together, soon performing in front of close friends. It was not long, though, before Smadj was drawn by his fascination with technology towards combining the sound of the oud with his beloved Apple Mac. The idea of processing the oud with effects more closely associated with dance music was truly unique and the high level of musicianship shared by the two artists was bound to yield similarly original results. Soon the pair formed DuOud. The act was quickly picked up by Label Bleu, responsible for releasing their album Wild Serenade to critical acclaim. DuOud have toured the world, performing at prestigious locations such as London's ICA. In 2003 they were nominated for Best Newcomer at the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music.
Smadj's latest work, Take It And Drive is a collection of new music, featuring a number of artists with whom he has recently collaborated. Amongst those featured on the album are vocalist Rokia Traore, Mercury Award winner Talvin Singh and Mehdi Haddab himself.
Pat Metheny - Offramp
This 1982 recording by the Pat Metheny Group represented a crossroads for the guitarist, a creative expansion from his original concept in terms of acoustic and electric instrumentation, folksy roots material and modern jazz influences, American and third world sources. Having thus marked out the territory for a decade's worth of experimentation and growth, the Metheny Group cemented its standing on the cutting edge of contemporary jazz with Offramp. Lyle Mays' harmonica-like synth theme, Metheny's soaring, vocalized synth-guitar lead, some rich orchestral touches, and an easygoing blend of backbeat and chord changes made "Are You Going with Me?" one of Metheny's most enduring arrangements. Still, for every gentle, alluring set piece, such as the tangolike "Au Lait" or the rural vistas of "James," there was a visceral, emotive free-for-all like the title track, where Metheny unleashed wild, wailing synth guitar elisions over a loose, abstract pulse--anticipating the energy of the guitarist's collaboration with free jazz guru Ornette Coleman some four years hence on Song X.
Mariza-Transparente
Mariza began singing Fado as a child, before she could read. Her father sketched out little cartoon stories to help her remember the lyrics. At the age of five, she would join in the spontaneous singing in her parentsâ?? restaurant in Mouraria, one of Lisbon's most traditional neighborhoods.
Mariza was born in Mozambique, but her family moved to Portugal when she was a baby, giving her plenty of time to get immersed directly in the Fado Housesâ where singing is part of everyday life.
Mariza walks the fine line necessary to both genuinely carry the tradition and bring it freshness for today. Her performance style captures the raw emotion that characterizes the genre, but with her own personal twist.
Egberto Gismonti
The Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Egberto Gismonti drew his inspiration for this music from time he spent with the Xingu Indians in the Amazon, and it's intended to invoke both their spirit and the experience of the jungle. Gismonti assembled some remarkable musicians for this 1977 recording--guitarist Ralph Towner, percussionists Nana Vasconcelos and Collin Walcott, and saxophonist Jan Garbarek--but he uses them sparingly. The opening "Palacio de Pinturas" is a gorgeous duet between Gismonti's 8-string and Towner's 12-string guitars, a music so tonally rich that it suggests multiple geographic sources. "Raga," with Walcott on tabla, is more specific, with Gismonti's rapid-fire runs suggesting a sitar, but his use of percussive harmonics is a new element. The long final track is a remarkably varied suite. It begins with a light trio that has Garbarek's only appearance--a keening, soprano-saxophone solo--and includes "Sapain" for an ensemble of blown bottles with voices and wooden flute. Gismonti's fascination with shifting instrumental colors creates consistently interesting music, combining traditions and sources into a novel musical
Jan Garbarek (born March 4, 1947) is a Norwegian tenor and soprano saxophonist active in the jazz, classical, and world music genres. His daughter Anja Garbarek is also a musician.
Garbarek's sound is one of the hallmarks of the ECM record label, which has released virtually all of his recordings. His style incorporates a sharp-edged tone, long, keening, sustained notes strongly reminiscent of Islamic prayer calls, and generous use of silence. He began his recording career in the late 1960s, notably featuring on recordings by the American jazz composer George Russell (such as Othello Ballet Suite and Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature). If he had initially appeared as a devotee of Albert Ayler and Peter Brötzmann, by 1973 he had turned his back on the harsh dissonances of avant-garde jazz, retaining only his tone from his previous approach.
As a composer, Garbarek tends to draw heavily from Scandinavian folk melodies, a legacy of his Ayler influence. He is also a pioneer of ambient jazz composition, most notably on his 1976 album Dis. This textural approach, which rejects traditional notions of thematic improvisation (best exemplified by Sonny Rollins) in favor of a style described by critics Richard Cook and Brian Morton as "sculptural in its impact," has been critically divisive. Garbarek's more meandering recordings are often labeled as New Age music, a style generally scorned by more orthodox jazz musicians and listeners, or spiritual ancestors thereof.
After recording a string of unheralded avant-garde albums, Garbarek rose to international prominence in the mid-1970s playing post-bop jazz, both as a leader and as a member of Keith Jarrett's successful "European Quartet." He achieved considerable commercial success in Europe with Dis, a meditative collaboration with guitarist Ralph Towner that featured the distinctive sound of a wind harp on several tracks. (Selections from Dis have been used as incidental music in several feature films and documentaries.) In the 1980s, Garbarek's music began to incorporate synthesizers and elements of world music. In 1993, during the Gregorian chant craze, his album Officium, a collaboration with early music vocal performers the Hilliard Ensemble, became one of ECM's biggest-selling albums of all time, reaching the pop charts in several European countries. (Its sequel, Mnemosyne, followed in 1999.) In 2005, his album In Praise of Dreams was nominated for a Grammy.
In addition to the selections from Dis, Garbarek has also composed music for several other European films, including French and Norwegian films. Also his song 'Rites' was used in the American film The Insider.
[edit]
Pepe Habichuela-A Mandeli
The first solo work by the brilliant guitarist in which he is accompanied by Carles Benavent on bass, and Rubem Dantas and Antonio Carmona on percussion. He was the first flamenco artist to be accompanied by Benavent and Dantas, and he was also the first to record with the Nuevos Medios record label, which also gambled on the new generation of the Habichuelas: Ketama.
He is the son of the Gypsy T'io josé Habichuela El Viejo (Granada 1910-1986), who founded this legacy of guitarists of whom Pepe (born 1944) is one of three brothers, all gifted guitarists. Pepe's son Juan continues the family tradition as founding member of Ketama, the foremost flamenco cross-over rock band. The rumba from Habichuela's first solo recording is an extraordinarily complex work, aknowledged here by Faucher who explains he has made choices as 'the original was impossible to extract as it is on the disc'. The introduction also explains that the works on recordings are like 'snapshots...which reproduce the pieces as they are played on that particular day and only at that particular time'. It appears the transcriber has worked closely with the composer and introduced three modifications which are clearly noted. It is in the introductory pages where this publication disappoints: the eulogy to Pepe Habichuela is in a tortuous Spanish style with sentences five lines long, i.e. an entire paragraph without drawing breath! The English is patently the result of inadequat translation. Surely the author would not actually want to say this: 'The artist well understands that he will only be safe by calling and putting the dance and the marvellous character's mischievousness a compás, and only in stripping them of grace and duende, making them slide their hands to pass it on to us'. From the Spanish I can deduce that he wishes to suggest the artist steals the grace and duende from past figures and allows it to flow through his own hands that we might witness it. To suggest that Pepe Habichuela strips anything of grace and duende is bordering on the libellous! These introductory words by Francisco Almazán are in Spanish and English only. The explanatory notes on 'sound and technique' are by Alain Faucher, the English is more felicitous than the translations of Almazán's Spanish and gives great insight into Pepe's unique technique. There are those who declare flamenco cannot be written down. This is patently untrue. However, like all music, noy every nuance can be accurately written in black and white. To my mind, the greatest fault of tab notation is the failure to notate the rythm. The extraordinarily improvised nature of Habichuela's rythm makes this some of the most difficult music to accurately notate. Without the recordings to hand I feel it would be extremely hard to get the correct nuances and subtle interplay of accompanying role/melodic exposition/rythmic interlude.
Everything is written here, and the result is a collection of some of the most beautiful, original and profoundly jondo solo flamenco guitar pieces ever recorded. Emma Martinez (Classical Guitar)
Amadou and Mariam
- from the liner notes "Tje Ni Moussou"
African music's recent history has been written on recycled paper, with a pen dipped in the ink of savvy resourcefulness. The biographical vicissitudes of The Bembaya Jazz, The Ambassadeurs, and the Rail Band of Bamako contain enough burlesque episodes for a sitcom, featuring indelicate managers, venal witchdoctors an piracy experts. In this hazardous context, the itinerary of Amadou and Mariam seems full of no-fuss heroics. Take the first hurdle in their long obstacle course: after meeting at the Institute for the Young Blind of Mali, they have to obtain approval for a marriage deemed unreasonable by their parents; the youngsters were the only ones to see the chances of a blind couple being successful.
In those days of military dictatorship, a musical vocation caused those with the most obvious gifts to converge on the hotels, where the house-bands, in exchange for civil-service salary, played to a clientele composed of government brass and foreign citizens, distilling the latest pop tunes and other fashionable music from Cuba in residential ballrooms. At the end of the Sixties, Amadou Bagayoko cut his teeth as a guitarist in the Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako, a versatile group later joined by Salif Keita. He refined his guitar technique, causing his fluid playing to sparkle, and thanks to a bridge or two that spanned the musical continents, cultivated a sense of versatility - the opposite of a scattering - that was to become the emergence of the radiant Bambara blues that has brought their recent productions to full bloom.
Mariam Doumbia sang, often accompanied by Amadou, and when the couple finally decided on a common career, their chances of success in Mali were so high that... they chose to emigrate to the Ivory Coast. Their success there took them by surprise.
Separated from their three children, they recorded a series of cassettes produced the Nigerian Aliyu Maikano Adamu; clothed by a single electric guitar, these recordings contain the initial versions of "Dounia", "A Chacun Son Probleme", and "Mon Amour, Ma Cherie". These songs returned some seven years later to grace the album "Sou Ni Tile", which broadened their horizon and caused the universality of African music to coincide with the resources of modern technology. "Tje Ni Mousso" ("Man And Woman") in bambara, added nuances of sound and rhythmical inflections to the already rich spectrum of their previous work, and caused other essences and perfumes to flow in from the four corners of the globe - the Portuguese cavaquihno, the violin of Bengal, jazz piano - towards the epicenter that is Africa, the land of a thousand dances.
Amadou and Miriam seem to hear their own music through the filter that made them marvel when they were adolescents: the pop of the Seventies, electric blues, reggae, Cuba... Without ever conceiving of it as a project, without even really thinking about it, man and woman caused their distant offspring, those who cradle was the Dark Continent, to come home. And this opening onto the world, this sense of hospitality, recharged the music of West Africa with a vital energy, and secured it in the maternal role that founded its identity.
This record gives "world music" a sense, a function, and a center of gravity that previous misuse of the term had hidden, damaging its reputation. The phrase invites us to a double understanding which can be found again in the use of words distilling counsel and recommendations, as happens in village meetings where the old exchange words with the young: and this manner of keeping a watchful eye, of preaching respect, patience and tolerance, finally causes little local virtues to unfold in a universal wisdom. With simple words, Amadou and Mariam relate the superiority of harmony over discord.
The amusing paradox carried by the songs of this blind couple from Mali is that they also have the power to return sight to those who think they can already see.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Playlist 25 July 07
On the show tonight, music by Aneesh Pradhan, tabla master currently out here touring with Shuba Mugdal, see previous post. Aneesh is a phenomenal tabla player and needs to be seen to be believed. If you get a chance to see him perform with Adrian McNeill please go, it will be amazing.
Other music by the following artists.
Monsieur Camembert- CD famous Blue Cheeses
Natacha Atlas- CD Best of
Gigi- CD Gold & Wax
Richard Horowitz & Sussan Deyhim- CD Majoun
Souad Massi- CD Deb (Heartbroken)
Susheela Rahman- CD Music for Crocodiles
Daude Neguinha- Cd Te Amo
Yungchen Lhamo- CD Ama
Sheila Chandra- CD This Sentence Is True
Happy listening and feel to give me some feedback.
Other music by the following artists.
Monsieur Camembert- CD famous Blue Cheeses
Natacha Atlas- CD Best of
Gigi- CD Gold & Wax
Richard Horowitz & Sussan Deyhim- CD Majoun
Souad Massi- CD Deb (Heartbroken)
Susheela Rahman- CD Music for Crocodiles
Daude Neguinha- Cd Te Amo
Yungchen Lhamo- CD Ama
Sheila Chandra- CD This Sentence Is True
Happy listening and feel to give me some feedback.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Aneesh Pradhan / Shubha Mugdal touring
Event information from Sangeet Australia: Supporting Hindustani Music
Two amazng events!
Dearest Patrons,
This month Australia welcomes the great and revered vocalist Shubha Mudgal. This renowned woman is an absolute must-see who needs little introduction. She is traveling with her ensemble the scintillating tabliya Aneesh Pradhan and on harmonium the very talented Sudhir Nayak. This is Hindustani music at its best from some of its finest and most honourable ambassadors.
Two Sydney dates to remember -
21st July A vocal concert of Shubha Mudgal this weekend to launch her DVD that was made at Sydney's Fox Studios in Sydney on her last tour
4th August Adrian McNeil and Aneesh Pradhan in an instrumental soiree to launch their new CD Raga Basant Mukhari.
Both released on www.underscorerecords.com
Full details below - Hope to see you there.
DON'T MISS THIS WEEKEND!
ashish kalmath presents
SHUBHA MUDGAL
LIVE IN CONCERT
ANEESH PRADHAN TABLA
SUDHIR NAYAK HARMONIUM
World Premier launch and release of her inaugural classical music DVD film
In Sydney 7pm Saturday 21 July
Sir John Clancy Auditorium
UNSW High Street Randwick Gate no.9
In Melbourne 7pm 29 July
BMW Edge Auditorium Federation Square
Flinders St Melbourne
Bookings Ticketmaster 136100
more info www.asheeshkalmath.com
AND ON 4th AUGUST -
Sangeet Australia:
Supporting Hindustani Music
proudly presents ‘The Mehfil Series’
Extra super special guest from Mumbai the remarkable tabliya Aneesh Pradhan
To release their recent recording
an acoustic morning raga program with
Adrian McNeil sarod and Aneesh Pradhan tabla
Acoustic. Intimate. Breathtaking.
Raga Basant Mukhari: morning ragas released on Underscore Records www.underscorerecords.com
Saturday 4th August 11:30am
The Dickson Space 35-39 Dickson St. Newtown
Enter off King St. Close to Newtown Station or by 422 bus.
Snacks available. Performance approx. two hours with interval.
Disabled access available. Come early to avoid disappointment.
Tickets at the door $20/$15con
more info: 0416 352 900 or join our mailing list.
www.sangeetaustralia.org
About Aneesh Pradhan: Aneesh studied tabla under Pandit Nikhil Ghosh, one of the great tabla players of the 20th century. The rigorous training that he received from this maestro over many years profoundly guided Aneesh into the outstanding soloist and sensitive accompanist whom he is respected and admired as today. Based in Mumbai he is a highly sought after artist, both in India and abroad, where he tours extensively. He who has performed alongside practically all of the greatest figures in Hindustani music over the last few years.
Concert tours have taken him round the world to Europe, the USA, Japan, South Africa and South-East Asia. He has played at the Melbourne Festival and at the World of Music Festival in Brisbane, has taught at the University of New England in Australia. He was awarded a doctorate in history at the University of Mumbai with a treatise on Hindustani music in Bombay in the late 19th century. In 1999 he received the coveted Aditya Birla Kalakiran Award. Aneesh is also a noted composer of film soundtracks, as well as contemporary and fusion music and has collaborated with famous Ensemble Moderne in Cologne and the Asian Fantasy Orchestra in Japan. To top this off he is also the co-founder, along with Shubha Mudgal, of underscore records.
About Adrian McNeil: Adrian is a remarkable Australian musician who has studied Hindustani music and specifically the Sarod under the strict precepts of the Guru-Shishya Parampara (teacher student tradition) training method under the late Pandit Ashok Roy of the Maihar Gharana for some 25 years. Most recently he has undertaken study under Dr. Ashok Ranade and Prof. Sachindranath Roy. His studies have frequently led him to India where he has lived and also written an exemplary text 'The Sarod: A Cultural History'. Currently Adrian is a Lecturer at Macquarie University where he is an ethnomusicologist in the Department of Contemporary Music Studies. He continues to be one of the most accomplished artists in Hindustani Music in Australia and is committed to further performance and research in this field. He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Sangeet Australia and a powerful performer with regular concerts and recordings made in India.
About Underscore Records: A wonderful Delhi based record company with an extensive range of fine Indian music on the website www.underscorerecords.com from all the best artists. This artist-owned label is the undertaking of husband and wife team Aneesh Pradhan and Shubha Mudgal. One of their primary concerns is the ethical treatment of artists and their rights. They continue to grow and gain favour with the community of Indian musicians for whom they are champions. We recommend you make your purchases from this reliable and knowledgeable site wherever possible.
About Sangeet Australia: Formed in 2004 we are an artist-run, grass-roots organisation focused on fostering greater understanding and appreciation of this classical tradition of music from India . We produce a monthly series of high-quality acoustic soirees and various other activities, including larger concerts and workshops, supporting both local and international musicians. To contact us regarding sponsorship, to volunteer, offers of in-kind support, media enquiries, to join our mailing list, bookings, media enquiries or for more information call m. 0416 352 900 or
email: pavane_oliveiro@yahoo.com.au
Forthcoming Sangeet Australia event: The Gundecha Brothers - Dhrupad vocalists www.dhrupad.org Last weekend September. Details to be announced. Those interested in workshops/classes or sponsorship contact me now!
Join our mailing list for more details or send this email to your friends.
Our events appeal to the discerning music lover and those who seek a fulfilling engagement with the arts.
Thank you to those who have recently written with ideas and offers of help. Forgive my delay in replying but I will get around to all of you and thank each one of you for your thoughts and efforts. I will be in touch shortly.
Kindest regards,
Pavane Oliveiro
Director
and
Dr. Adrian McNeil
Artistic Director
Sangeet Australia:
Supporting Hindustani Music
m. 0416 352 900
Two amazng events!
Dearest Patrons,
This month Australia welcomes the great and revered vocalist Shubha Mudgal. This renowned woman is an absolute must-see who needs little introduction. She is traveling with her ensemble the scintillating tabliya Aneesh Pradhan and on harmonium the very talented Sudhir Nayak. This is Hindustani music at its best from some of its finest and most honourable ambassadors.
Two Sydney dates to remember -
21st July A vocal concert of Shubha Mudgal this weekend to launch her DVD that was made at Sydney's Fox Studios in Sydney on her last tour
4th August Adrian McNeil and Aneesh Pradhan in an instrumental soiree to launch their new CD Raga Basant Mukhari.
Both released on www.underscorerecords.com
Full details below - Hope to see you there.
DON'T MISS THIS WEEKEND!
ashish kalmath presents
SHUBHA MUDGAL
LIVE IN CONCERT
ANEESH PRADHAN TABLA
SUDHIR NAYAK HARMONIUM
World Premier launch and release of her inaugural classical music DVD film
In Sydney 7pm Saturday 21 July
Sir John Clancy Auditorium
UNSW High Street Randwick Gate no.9
In Melbourne 7pm 29 July
BMW Edge Auditorium Federation Square
Flinders St Melbourne
Bookings Ticketmaster 136100
more info www.asheeshkalmath.com
AND ON 4th AUGUST -
Sangeet Australia:
Supporting Hindustani Music
proudly presents ‘The Mehfil Series’
Extra super special guest from Mumbai the remarkable tabliya Aneesh Pradhan
To release their recent recording
an acoustic morning raga program with
Adrian McNeil sarod and Aneesh Pradhan tabla
Acoustic. Intimate. Breathtaking.
Raga Basant Mukhari: morning ragas released on Underscore Records www.underscorerecords.com
Saturday 4th August 11:30am
The Dickson Space 35-39 Dickson St. Newtown
Enter off King St. Close to Newtown Station or by 422 bus.
Snacks available. Performance approx. two hours with interval.
Disabled access available. Come early to avoid disappointment.
Tickets at the door $20/$15con
more info: 0416 352 900 or join our mailing list.
www.sangeetaustralia.org
About Aneesh Pradhan: Aneesh studied tabla under Pandit Nikhil Ghosh, one of the great tabla players of the 20th century. The rigorous training that he received from this maestro over many years profoundly guided Aneesh into the outstanding soloist and sensitive accompanist whom he is respected and admired as today. Based in Mumbai he is a highly sought after artist, both in India and abroad, where he tours extensively. He who has performed alongside practically all of the greatest figures in Hindustani music over the last few years.
Concert tours have taken him round the world to Europe, the USA, Japan, South Africa and South-East Asia. He has played at the Melbourne Festival and at the World of Music Festival in Brisbane, has taught at the University of New England in Australia. He was awarded a doctorate in history at the University of Mumbai with a treatise on Hindustani music in Bombay in the late 19th century. In 1999 he received the coveted Aditya Birla Kalakiran Award. Aneesh is also a noted composer of film soundtracks, as well as contemporary and fusion music and has collaborated with famous Ensemble Moderne in Cologne and the Asian Fantasy Orchestra in Japan. To top this off he is also the co-founder, along with Shubha Mudgal, of underscore records.
About Adrian McNeil: Adrian is a remarkable Australian musician who has studied Hindustani music and specifically the Sarod under the strict precepts of the Guru-Shishya Parampara (teacher student tradition) training method under the late Pandit Ashok Roy of the Maihar Gharana for some 25 years. Most recently he has undertaken study under Dr. Ashok Ranade and Prof. Sachindranath Roy. His studies have frequently led him to India where he has lived and also written an exemplary text 'The Sarod: A Cultural History'. Currently Adrian is a Lecturer at Macquarie University where he is an ethnomusicologist in the Department of Contemporary Music Studies. He continues to be one of the most accomplished artists in Hindustani Music in Australia and is committed to further performance and research in this field. He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Sangeet Australia and a powerful performer with regular concerts and recordings made in India.
About Underscore Records: A wonderful Delhi based record company with an extensive range of fine Indian music on the website www.underscorerecords.com from all the best artists. This artist-owned label is the undertaking of husband and wife team Aneesh Pradhan and Shubha Mudgal. One of their primary concerns is the ethical treatment of artists and their rights. They continue to grow and gain favour with the community of Indian musicians for whom they are champions. We recommend you make your purchases from this reliable and knowledgeable site wherever possible.
About Sangeet Australia: Formed in 2004 we are an artist-run, grass-roots organisation focused on fostering greater understanding and appreciation of this classical tradition of music from India . We produce a monthly series of high-quality acoustic soirees and various other activities, including larger concerts and workshops, supporting both local and international musicians. To contact us regarding sponsorship, to volunteer, offers of in-kind support, media enquiries, to join our mailing list, bookings, media enquiries or for more information call m. 0416 352 900 or
email: pavane_oliveiro@yahoo.com.au
Forthcoming Sangeet Australia event: The Gundecha Brothers - Dhrupad vocalists www.dhrupad.org Last weekend September. Details to be announced. Those interested in workshops/classes or sponsorship contact me now!
Join our mailing list for more details or send this email to your friends.
Our events appeal to the discerning music lover and those who seek a fulfilling engagement with the arts.
Thank you to those who have recently written with ideas and offers of help. Forgive my delay in replying but I will get around to all of you and thank each one of you for your thoughts and efforts. I will be in touch shortly.
Kindest regards,
Pavane Oliveiro
Director
and
Dr. Adrian McNeil
Artistic Director
Sangeet Australia:
Supporting Hindustani Music
m. 0416 352 900
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Peter Freeman on the show
I ran an interview with Peter Freeman tonight. Who? Well I don't blame you for probably saying that as he likes to stay behind the scenes and not be noticed. He's worked with people such as John Cale, L Shankar, Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz and for the last 17 years has been the bass player and sound manipulator behind Jon Hassell. The interview is downloadable over in the interview section. If you want to know more about Peter or get in touch with him he has a presence on myspace.com
Happy listening...Hans
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