Quotable

[dwenius]

"The thing about India is...you know, in the west, we have this whole thing where Jesus was born and that's when everything important starts, and before that is ancient history, prehistory. But Indian culture goes back thousands of years before that, and for long stretches in that period, they didn't have any wars. So they had a lot of time to themselves, you know, to figure stuff out. And what did they do with it? The figured out music reeeeeally well. They figured out spirituality almost completely. And they did a pretty good job with sex and food, too."

Intriguing theory, although personally I'd respect Indian culture more if they had also figured out social structure and class politics somewhere in there.

Speaking of Indian music, though: Debashish Battacharya plays some insanely mesmerizing ragas on slide guitar on this album, while Ry Cooder and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt's deliver similarly wondrous slide playing on A Meeting by the River. One fun thing about the Cooder/Bhatt recording: their sons play all the percussion, Cooder's son on Djembe, and Bhatt's son tearing it up on tabla. This was apparently a spontaneous jam session, which just happened to be recorded because Cooder is no dummy, and travels with superb recording gear wherever he goes. They were going to produce/mix/master it, but upon hearing the tapes decided to just release it as is. It's impossibly lovely, if a bit short.

Comments

[wisn.livejournal.com]

> This was apparently a spontaneous jam session, which just happened to be recorded because Cooder is no dummy, and travels with superb recording gear wherever he goes. They were going to produce/mix/master it, but upon hearing the tapes decided to just release it as is.

Both were invited by the owner of Waterlily Acoustics, who has his own equipment, did the setup and recording (iirc, single-pair stereo mics plus an assload of heavy, fragile high-end tubed gear), but let the four of them jam unhindered -- everybody involved was an expert at their art. The reason why the album sounds so quiet is for the headroom: Waterlily used no compression. 'Stereophile' magazine had an account of the session which is, unfortch, not online, but was pretty clear about who phoned whom. Yeah, I used to read 'Stereophile'.

Waterlily has a few more fusion albums with Bhatt -- I've got the Bhatt/Fleck/Chen cd 'Tabula Rasa', which is another session of great artists, but they had to work a lot harder to find a groove and the CD nearly doesn't swing.

Off-topic, you might like this: Konono no. 1. Hardcore noise rock trance African Likembe music. They make their own electronics. I don't mean they add rheostats to a Speak'N'Spell, I mean they build their own mics and put 'em in wood housings and tie them to sticks. Check out the 'Video' link in the top frame.

[cda.livejournal.com]

"we have this whole thing where Jesus was born and that's when everything important starts, and before that is ancient history, prehistory."

What deep-thinking anthro maven are we quoting here, Britney Spears?

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

Well the key point was the intro to that comment, "In the West..." This is provable by looking at your calendar.