Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Pandit Ravi Shankar, 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012

By now, I'm sure everyone has heard the sad news.



Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha

I wanted to share the story of how Ravi Shankar was responsible for my path in life.

At age 18, I was living on my own, and casting about for something to do in between trying to finish high school and bike couriering. I was self-taught on guitar and hand percussion, as drumkit was impossible at home, and doubly-so at my apartment in Kensington Market in Toronto.

I tuned my classical guitar D-A-D-G-B-E, and used the three low strings as drones, and played melody on the top three strings. I was not into harmony…chords just didn't click with me. I wanted melody against a drone. My neighbour Karen Nordquist heard me playing guitar, and suggested I might check out some Indian classical music, and sent me to Sam The Record Man with instructions to pick up a Ravi Shankar tape. I'd never heard of Ravi Shankar.

Well, I got there, found the world music section, the Indian music section and the Ravi Shankar section, which was row upon row of cassettes! I thought to myself 'holy! this dude has like 50 albums out!!'. Which one to get? I decided on a Deutsch Grammaphone compilation cassette that had traditional pieces on one side, and Indian-Japanese fusion on the other. (I still have the tape!)

I got it home, and listened to it:

Track 1: Raga Mohan Kauns [Homage to Mahatma Gandhi]

Cool! Very pretty!

Track 2: Raga Gara

Also cool! No idea what's going on! but it's cool!

Track 3: Tala Farodast (Alla Rakha tabla solo)

Cool. VERY cool. (recititation starts at around the 4 minute mark). OMG WHAT IS THIS INSTRUMENT!! WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE!!!!

{This is where I rip the cassette out of my tapedeck, run next door to Karen's place, slap it in her tape deck, hit play and say 'Karen…what is this instrument?!? I LOVE IT!!!'.}

and Karen said "Oh…that's tabla! My vocal teacher Art Levine studies tabla with a guy named Ritesh Das…I'll get you his number tomorrow"

aaaand, here we are, what…24 or so years later?

Ravi Shankar was always very supportive of tabla…his albums regularly featured dedicated tabla solos, so, even though he was a sitarist, he is very much responsible for my finding tabla.


I downloaded that album last night, and listened to it until 3am.

RIP Maestro, and thank you.

Here's the iTunes link to the tabla solo if anyone is interested: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/tala-farodast/id28455365?i=28455215

and here's an album that has all the tracks from that tape, and more: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/ravi-shankar-the-master/id357113462

Monday, December 3, 2012

4 New Videos!

Seasonal greetings dear readers!

I have 3 tabla related videos, and one non-tabla related video to share.
1. Tabla Reheading in 3min32sec
2. Live Performance of Ten Talas to a Disco Beat: Jhaptal w video in a movie theatre
3. ‪Sánta Claus and the Flecktones Conquer The Martians‬
4. Refrigerator Dance Madness 57

Ready? Here we go:

Tabla reheading in 3min32sec, with Tisra Tabla solo:



I posted this pic to the Book of Face, and a friend suggested that I videotape a reheading, and speed it up, and I thought that sounded like a capital idea! And here we are.

'guess what I get to do today?'

You've got your taking the head off part, your cleaning the drum part, your tying the head back on part, your putting the new synthetic strap in the first hole and not getting it twisted part, your trying to get the strap through the last bleeping hole part, your balancing the bottom ring part, your pulling once, twice, tuning, pulling thrice and finally fourth (frice?) with the Tabla Tool, then you got some knot-tying and some tuning, the old putting-the-pegs-in part (and the 2nd strap version of that), your tuning w tuner part, your putting the string under the kinar part, and, finally, you've got your final tuning and 'ka-chang!' part. On sam. Sans explosion.

NEXT!

Live Performance of Ten Talas to a Disco Beat: Jhaptal

(in a real life movie theatre with a GIANT screen! :D)



The gruuven-art-foto silhouette effect was sort of unintentional...

On Nov 29th I presented Nina Paley's insta-classic animated masterpiece Sita Sings the Blues at the Projection Booth movie theatre in Toronto. It was originally going to be just the movie. Then someone suggested a live performance might be sweet to open the show. Then I thought 'I have to play to that video!'. Then I saw the GIANT screen, and thought 'omg I have to make video for the WHOLE music set'. So...it was 10 Talas vid, then Freeplay Duo (Suba Sankaran and Dylan Bell) did a set of a cappella vocals with Abelton Live as a looping station, accompanied by CDN filmmaker Norman McLaren's optical-printer-ballet masterpiece 'Pas de Deux' (I video'd part of soundcheck), then the 3 of us came together as Autorickshaw Trio, accompanied by silent footage from my 'weird' videos (Tabla in Space!, Tabla-Matic Tuning Model 2161 and Refrigerator Dance Madness 57*)

I tried to set up the lights so that the musicians would be lit, but so that the light would not impinge on the screen. My bandmates Suba and Dylan were lit, but it turns out that lighting yourself without an outside eye is almost impossible, and I was in darkness, though the silhouette effect is pretty cool at times.



Fun evening, all told.

NEXT!

‪Sánta Claus and the Flecktones Conquer The Martians‬


WARNING: be patient! The 'Ancient-One of Mars' speech is 2 min long, but so worth it...you'll be happy you waited once the song starts. Trust me. BONUS: turning on Youtube's 'Automatic Closed Captioning' sends the weirdness into overdrive... O.o

what is this I don't even...apparently 'Jingle Bells' in Tuvan sounds like 'hotmail'?


Yeah. Again....don't ask too many questions, because I really have no idea what I'm doing, but there is some hilarious footage in here, incl a Tuvan Throat Singing Robot from 1940, Rudolph as you've never seen him before, some of the greatest costumes outside Bollywood. Here's the video description:

My 2012 seasonal gift to all.

Assembled using footage from 'Santa Claus Conquers The Martians' (1964) and a short clip of 'Leave It to Roll-Oh' (1940) set to an awesome version of 'Jingle Bells' by Béla Fleck and The Flecktones, from their 2008 album 'Jingle All The Way'.

I hope the respected Mr Fleck and his people don't mind...I cooked this meal with love...and it is probably the best Christmas album ever made, so you should all go-ho-ho out and buy it!!:
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/jingle-all-the-way/id323516134

Attributionalness: OH! and a tiny, explosive clip of Nina Paley's film 'Sita Sings the Blues' that I forgot to put in the film credits...sorry Nina! I blame that bottle of wine I drank while editing...

Whether you're Earthling or Martian, I wish you a Happy Christmahanakwanzika!, and a Fun & Creative New Year!

Ed Hanley
c/o Tala-Wallah Cathode Ray Science
P.O. Box π, Planum Boreum,
Mars
52kaidas.blogspot.com
 So.....yeah.

NEXT! errr... FINALLY!!!

*OH!!! I just realized that I never blogposted about:

Refrigerator Dance Madness 57!

Here it is:


Once again, the video description says it all (except that I made the music a very LONG time ago):

Gee whiz, I wish they still made extended commercials for appliances with dancing and wanton frolicking. Just...I don't even...(sputters)...c-c-customizable fridge panels? Fridge parties? Warp-fridges? Sideways ice-cube trays with LEVERS?!? I mean, COME ON! Can you imagine the commercials these folks would make for a modern blender???

Track available here: http://tala-wallah.bandcamp.com/track/ta-ta-bla-bla-bla
Go buy it for $1. Your fridge will thank you. Even if it doesn't have a warp-powered sideways-levered ice-cube delivery system.

Read up on tabla here: http://52kaidas.blogspot.com
Tabla is almost as cool as a warp fridge.

I originally wrote and recorded the music for a dance piece choreographed by Mitch Kirsch, a Cunningham dancer, so a randomly generated refrigerator theme is pretty much in the spirit, I think. AND...the rhythms are all made up of phrases of 5 and 7, so the discovery of a refrigerator dance video from 1957 was a pleasantly serendipitous happystance.

Ta-KaDhin- 5
Ta-Dhin-TaDhin- 7
See?

AND, the person I kept thinking about while making this video has 5 letters in her first name (Freya) and 7 in her last (Sargent). "oooooOOOoooo" Hi Freya! -waves-

Those music people you were hearing are:
Ed Hanley on tabla, voice and programming
Parmela Attariwala on viola and or violin
Debashis Sinha on riqq
Suba Sankaran on vocals

Those videos you were seeing are all from the Prelinger Archives, are public domain and were super fun to edit (err...what does this 'composite mode' do...duuuude no way!!).

off to search 'blender' in the Prelinger Archives.... (swoosh)

ok...the warp part isn't really in the original video. But it totally could have been.

aaaaaand that's all for now.

I have 2 more videos from Jhaptal to post and blog...stay tuned!
E