A Tribute to Ustad Alla Rakha
13. 8. 2007 | Categories: Articles,Live reviews
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London 22 July 2007
[by Ken Hunt, London] Transformative is probably the most appropriate word to describe the influential Northern Indian rhythmist, composer and teacher, Alla Rakha Qureshi, and how his music affected people. Ustad in the concert's title is the Muslim counterpart of Hinduism´s more familiar words pandit and guru. Certainly, Alla Rakha educated many, many people. The default-standard tale is that the West turned on to Indian music through the sitar. There is no denying the inherent truth, if hackneyed, of that proposition. But it was never the whole story, never the truth, the whole truth. For many people, the neon, flashing sign over the entrance to appreciating Hindustani music didn't come with Ravi Shankar or Ali Akbar Khan, the Beatles, the [...]
15-29 July 2007, Krems, Austria
Krems is a beautiful and peaceful town on the river Danube in Austria, known for its Riesling wines and - in past years - also for the Glatt und Verkehrt festival. The name literally means a knitting style that changes between two types of stitches, the "smooth" and "inverted". This is actually a good definition of the programming, which includes some well known local traditions in an unusual setting, like the Indian guitarist extraordinaire Amit Chatterjee performing with the Austrian yodelers Broadlahn, an idea which dates back to times when Amit was a regular member of Joe Zawinul's syndicate.
Or imagine a "voices triangle" from three very different corners of world. The Norwegian yoiker Inga Juuso stands on the left, an Alpine trio with Gretl Steiner, [...]
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Stephen Stills who put down this session on 26 April 1968 was hardly between jobs - even if he was between Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash. On the album's skimpy notes, Stills writes, "I was at a Judy Collins session in New York in 1968, and when she was finished, I peeled off a few hundreds for the engineer so I could make a tape of my new songs." Which Judy Collins session? Not the Who Knows Where The Time Goes surely, because it would be churlish beyond belief not to be explicit about that.
1968 was the year that Judy Collins put out Who Knows Where The Time Goes, one of the finest albums she ever made. Stills contributed acoustic and electric guitar or electric bass to all but one of its nine tracks. He was in the company of a handpicked [...]
Rudolstadt, Germany, 6-8 July 2007
[by Ken Hunt, London] As far as Germany is concerned, the sovereignty of TFF Rudolstadt must now be taken more or less as a given. It is a model of how to revitalise a local economy too. The 2007 festival reasserted such contentions many times over. Like nearly every festival I've ever attended, the knack lay in out-balancing longueurs with high points. That said, this year TFF RU unwound a new strand of adventurousness with part of its US-themed programming. Philip Glass' setting of Allen Ginsberg's poetry, Hydrogen Jukebox (in a performance from Ensemble Creativ), the Degenerate Art Ensemble and, most notably, Laurie Anderson raised the bar in that respect.
Over its life the festival has gone from the socialist showcase and display of left-leaning [...]
Music International Exposure,
March 2007
Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Israel
In the world-music-jargon of melting-pots and cultural crossroads Israel holds a prominent place. This March, the Israeli ministery of culture invited several dozens of festival organisers and journalists for a marathon series of showcases in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Surprisingly, the opening night was focused on klezmer, a style considered by many Israelis to be a dying phenomenon of past - along with the yiddish language. Yet it was refreshing to hear this originally East European music being revived by local young players. Contrary to their western parallels, the opening band Oy Division replaced shyness and caution of ethno-researchers by raw confidence and feeling. "Sephardic-kabalistic" Ensemble Iona moved even [...]
Transparente uses a richer accompaniment then the traditional fado setup. Which musicians will you bring on tour?
Transparente is closer to what I've been looking for as my sound, my Fado.
My main goal is to pass to the live performances the general sonority of this record so I'll be adding to the traditional Fado combo (Portuguese guitar, classic guitar and acoustic bass), cello and percussion.
Luis Guerreiro on Portuguese Guitar, Antonio Neto on classical guitar, Vasco Sousa on acoustic bass, Paulo Moreira on Cello and Joao Pedro Ruela on percussion.
Where Fado was born? Only in Lisboa or are there Brasilian influences?
Fado's history is kind of mysterious. Some theories says that the Portuguese sailors and the African slaves are in its base; According to some musicologists, Fado's [...]
[by Ken Hunt, London] The Grateful Dead were a band that polarised opinion. How you took them over the course of their 30-year lifespan probably got entrenched. Mind you, given the band's archival revelations, the present tense 'take' still seems pertinent, even all these years after their linchpin Jerry Garcia's death in August 1995 and the band's subsequent folding that year.
Their Three From The Vault captures the band playing on the second date of a string of concerts at the Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, New York State. The date was 19 February 1971 and the band had just undergone another of its periodic personnel changes. The night before they had been six. This night was their first gig without their second drummer. Mickey Hart would return to the fold in October 1974, having [...]
