Digdig: Rene Lacaille and Bob Brozman: An amazing collaboration between American guitarist Bob Brozman, and Reunion accordionist, Rene Lecaille. Enjoy!
There are many ways of producing overtones in music. Anyone who vibrates air in a tube for a living produces overtones as their way of making music. THis includes brass players, didgeridoo, alpenhorn and so on. Buglers get their notes strictly from overtones, as they have no keys on their instruments. And of course, vocally, it is possible to produce overtomes as well, giving the eerie sounds of Tuuvan throat singing.
i love overtones because they remind me that there is so much more to the music than what is immediately audible. It is a good teaching that the ethereal lives in the mundane.
Today I stumbled on the site of the Swiss duet Stimmhorn and I found some amazing overtones. Have a listen for yourself.
My friend Viv McWaters sends this note from Australia:
“I’m just back from three days at the Port Fairy Folk Festival where I immersed myself in great music and bands and came away with lots of thoughts about how facilitators can learn a lot from musicians.
The stand out performer was Harry Manx – a Canadian Blues/folk performer who combines traditional blues, amazing slide guitar, mohan veena, mandolin and harmonica and vocals with traditional Indian music. He says on the CD notes “Mantras for Madmen”: ‘When the silence between the notes says as much as the notes themselves, like the gap between the breaths, it’s all good. The way I see it, Blues is like the earth and Indian music is like the heavens. What I do is find the balance between the two.”
I’d be happy if I could facilitate half as well as he performs – seamlessly collaborating with his harmonica player and percussionist; connecting with the audience; reading the mood; improvising when a guitar string breaks; changing the pace; being silent; and making everyone feel privileged to be alive and here, now. That’s what I aspire to be able to do when I facilitate.”
Yup, me too. Here’s Harry, a fellow Gulf Islander, hailing from Salt Spring Island to the south of us here.
From Vashti Bunyan:
once I had a child
he was wilder than moonlight
he could do it all
like he’d been here beforeonce I had a child
she was smiling like sunshine
she could see it all
like she’d been here beforethen I had a child
took his while like northern summer
and he knows it all
like he’s been here before
This song reminds me of my kids…
mp3: Vashti Bunyan – Here Before
Jockey Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo has died at age 62. Even people who are not fans of world music know the legacy of this man’s work. Jockey was the founder of LBM, although he took a backseat to his brother who sings the lead for the group.
According to a report on CBC today, he chose the name because “Ladysmith” was his home township, “Black” was for the colour of the strongest oxen, and “Mambazo” means to cut down with an axe, a reference to the fact that the group started out singing in contests and that it would lead its competition in shreds.
Here is a track to commermerate Jockey’s passing.