Archives: August 2005
Wed Aug 31, 2005
are you ready for this?
Bollywood and Bhangra have been a very recent obsession for me and little daughter Sofi, but thats a whole other story (I may start blogging on it, because theres been some beautiful bonding moments with her that are worth sharing). But its inspired me to do something very very different...
Im envisioning a rock/improv/jazz/funk/bhangra/middle Eastern/Bollywood covers project: somewhere between Tabla Beat Science meets Bally Sagoo meets AR Rahman meets Page/Plant "No Quarter" project meets my previous improv trio meets Qawwali. ...I hear it all working in my head and am already organizing early material for it. Its aim is for a very high energy positve interfaith experience, but edgy and loud and fun!.
Finding a singer in the area who can work in Hindi/Punjabi is proving difficult, however. Jefferson may know of a singer in ALb, and Ive put the word out to my Sikh firends up the road, but no bites yet.
I have some very preliminary ideas already down. The loops are courtesy of Bally Sagoo sagloops CD, and the rest is done into the computer via the fretless electric , the drone box, and the cheap keyboard for the bass line.
The lead guitar work as such may sound a little cheesy but its meant more for what Id envision the vocal line to approximate rather than out and out soloing, though I do take off a bit towards the end of the tracks.
1. Raag Marwa If Isaac Hayes learned to work with this more mysterious of ragas, it may sound something like this. After a short alap, it moves into a wacka-wacka retro guitar and an ethereal recurring floating line to frame the main guitar work. I layered two drum loops on this, one of Sagoo's and another of my own creation.
Raag Marwa, playlist format
Raag Marwa, download
2. Curtis Mayfield visits the Punjab A straight ahead Bhangra loop and some heavy alt/post-grunge guitar are the backbone for an almost Iommi-esque leadline - but the dig the funky wah rhythm guitar part as well:
Bhangra Demo 1, playlist format
Bhangra Demo 1, download
These two, coupled with the Blood In the Sand sample posted elsewhere, should make for a very interesting band. Im working on more tracks layering the oud and sarod, Ill post those when theyre ready.
Share your thoughts!
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Outpost and onward
Blessings all, hope veryone's well!
Sorry for the delay, but lets bring everyone up to speed, quickly:
The oupost gig was a rousing success - ill have a full photo gallery up soon, but here are a few more for the moment:
the only mishap on the gig really was doing the radio spot that afternoon when the high MA string busted in the middle of the song - and imbedded itself in my hand! A fallout from this was that the new string slipped during the first piece on the actual gig...
Other than that, it went fine, and I may have some mp3s up soon from it.
Wehave some new songs, and we're excited to recrod for real later this fall, though Jeff had to go up to Maine for a couple of weeks. In the interim, Ill hold fort at Annapurna on friday nights, so do come see me there.
Its interesting to do solo work, which Ive not done much of , but its a very good and different disipline, and its going over very well.
In the interim, Ive been developing a new project, which Ill detail in the next post!
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