Music:India Summer Series

Greetings!

Concert news:

I'm presenting a 4-part concert series at Musideum this summer in Toronto called Music:India

photo David Courtney

July 8th is tabla solo night, and I'm planning 4 mid-size solos in Rupak, Jhaptal, Chartal Ki Sawari and Tintal. (7, 10, 11 and 16 beats). Esraj wizard Rattan Bhamrah is accompanying, and I think we will do one solo with Tar-Shennai, which is SO COOL: an esraj with an old-style mechanical gramophone amplifier and horn attached: Haunting sound. Here's a playlist of the Jhaptal solo we did at Musideum in August 2012:
 http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY0sWm3RaqGt62n_kggWshR0bnjh3LwwG

spooky-wallah!

July 29th is North/South dreamteam night: Vocalist Suba Sankaran (Autorickshaw vocalist and the daughter of mrdangam maestro Trichy Sankaran), sitarist Christopher Dicran Hale, bass veena player Justin Gray and I will present an evening of classical/hybrid/fusion. This will be the first time we've all played together, but I've no doubt it's going to be a lovely combination. Here's a playlist of vids I've done with each person separately:




August 1st I'm accompanying sitarist Rajib Karmakar in an evening of classical music. He's a fantastic player, and I'm really looking forward to this.



August 29th is mad experimentation night! remix/electronics/abelton wizard Matt Miller and I will be doing...I'm not sure what, exactly. I will be playing tabla, and he will be doing things to my tabla. That's all I know. I don't have a video for this, but here, this is appropriate:

and HEY!

This blog just crossed 100,000 pageviews! ok ok, I know view-counting is tacky and doesn't mean much when Skynet ..I mean Google.. has a brazillion bots crawling the web poking around your TCP ports, but hey, when I started this blog in 2009 I never thought it would reach 1000 views, let alone 100,000, so, yay! TIME FOR TABLA CAKE!

This...!  is a tabla cake. Just look at it. TABLA CAKE!

PS: i just updated the Live Videos and Artsy Videos  pages w new videos.

Short tintal solo & concert announcements

Hello

I played a short (~25 min) tabla solo yesterday in Toronto (well, Brampton) at the Hindustani Sangeet Society's "Music Fest 2014 - Showcasing the Gwalior Gharana" gig.

(video re-upped w better audio... board mix comes in at 1:42. Thanks to Hardeep Chana for the board mix)



That's the amazing and intuitive Rattan Bhamrah on esraj, playing a lehara in Misra Maand.

The organizer, Vinayak Phatak specifically requested that I play tabla that I learned from Pt. Suresh Talwalkar. I also accompanied Vinayak-ji on his vocal performance, playing the unusual talas Jhoomra and Tilwada.

Nothing new here, repertoire-wise...all three of these pieces have appeared on this blog before.
Peshkar/Kaida/Rela: http://52kaidas.blogspot.ca/2013/03/cycles-collaborative-multimedia.html
Tisra kaida in the Subrata De video: http://52kaidas.blogspot.ca/2014/04/hola-couple-videos-and-concert.html
and the final kaida in my stop-motion video: http://52kaidas.blogspot.ca/2013/02/animated-kaida-tablavision-residency.html

I played a couple more pieces, but they're not ready for primetime yet...

BUT!

I have a tabla solo concert coming up on July 8th at Musideum where I'll take another stab at them. I'm planning 4 talas at this show: rupak, jhaptal, chartal ki sawari and tintal. Let's see if that all fits in my mouth O.o
Listing: http://musideumconcerts.com/styles/page1.html#ed1

On July 29th I'm bringing together a dream team for another gig at Musideum:
Suba Sankaran (voice), Chris Hale (sitar), Justin Gray (bass veena) and I will be presenting an evening of Indian classical music and not-exactly-Indian-classical music.
Listing: http://musideumconcerts.com/styles/page1.html#ed2

Here's a playlist of duets I've done with these 3 stellar musicians separately. I can't WAIT to bring them together.



ok, all for now, thanks for reading/watching/listening!
E

pic from the gig yesterday, by Manraj Singh Pannu

Packed for the gig: have baby powder, will travel.

Double post: Heavy Metal Tabla in Chartal Ki Sawari and 30 min Jhaptal solo video

Well, it's not really heavy metal, but it's definitely not traditional...or is it?

Let's see. Traditional tala? check. Lehara? check. Theka? check. Mukra? Gat? Parans? final Charkradar tihai? checkcheckcheckcheck. Recitation? check. Screaming guitar solo? err....ummm...

Yup, passes the tradition test for me, with the one exception of the sounds, which begs the question...what makes traditional music traditional? Is it the content, vocabulary and grammar? or is it the instruments? pure sounds only? the people who play it? the time or place it is performed? what?

I bent the tabla tradition as much as I could here, and it didn't break.

So, what do we have:
The tala is Chartal ki Sawari, an 11 beat tala:

Dhin terekite Dhin Na Thun Na Kat Ta Dhin..Na..Dhin..Na..

The sawari (lit 'ride') at the end (last 3 beats) is what makes this tala so awesome. Count 'em: Tkt Tkt Tkt Tkt. You can geek-out a bit and count the tala as 3 groups of 4, with the last 4 squeezed into 3 beats:
1...2...3...4...
1...2...3...4...
1..2..3..4..

All the tabla material was taught by Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri in a workshop in Toronto. I'm worried he may disown me after this track, but it had to be done, and as I said, I don't think I've broken the tradition at all.

All the material Swapanji taught us in the workshop followed the sawari beautifully, so, rather than just being material in 11 beats, it is all definitely material in Chartal Ki Sawari. An important, but subtle, distinction.

Material: (in order of appearance)
Mukra (gerenage terekite dhagethrekethunnakena...no recitation)
Gat (takatakataka dheneghene takatakataka dheneghene...)
Paran (Dha KreDha ne Dha Dha kiteDhet Ta...)
Paran (Din Din nanakitetetaka...)
Paran (Takite Dha-ne Dha- Ge di gerenage...)
Paran (TakaterekiteTaka teteketagedighene...)
Paran (dhetedhetedhagetete kredhetetetagetete...no recitation)
Tihai (from a kaida)

I derived the bass-synth lehara from a Jaunpuri gat that sitarist Chris Hale plays...and in fact, I play the same tihai in the video (end of kaida that starts at 0.44) and at the end of the track above. It's a little obscured by drumkit-guitar chaos above though. Here:

Personell:
Ben Riley-drums
Rich Brown-bass
Justin Abedin-guitar
and I played played tabla, vox, recorded, edited, mixed etc
Mastered by Andy Krehm

OK OK THAT'S IT ! Enough hanky-pankying around with this fusion-con-fusion business!!

Here's a Jhaptal solo I played recently. Informal setting, major tabla geekage in the room:

This is a rehash/shorter version of the big Jhaptal solo I played last year, but covers peshkar, kaidas, kaida rela, a sort of palta theka-rela hybrid, parans, thukra and chakradar. Material from my teachers Pt Suresh Talwalkar, Pt Swapan Chaudhuri, Pt Anindo Chaterjee and Sri Subhajyoti Guha, who very generously organized this concert. Thanks Subho!! It should be noted: Rattan and I didn't rehearse at all, and in fact, he arrived at the hall 5 min before we started playing.

Pics:

 

And this concludes this latest post. Thanks for reading, listening and watching. Please post your irate comments about the Chartal Ki Sawari piece below, but you should probably buy the track first ;)

'Cycles' Collaborative Multimedia Creation Laboratory

I'm 4 days into a month-long creation process at an art gallery in Toronto.

Because this is a tabla blog here, I can geek out on what I'm trying to do, but first....here's the first video from the project, a Tintal Peshkar with esraj accompaniment by the amazing Rattan Bhamrah:

Cycles: Part 1 from Ed Hanley on Vimeo.

So...first the project, then what's going on tabla-wise in that video.

The project (which has its own website here: http://www.cycles-film.com/ ) kind of fell into my lap. The folks who book the gallery approached me to see if I would be interested in doing a show. I balked initially, as I'm a musician (and yes, photo and video are also creative languages for me) but I had no idea what I'd do for a 'visual art' show. But I though about it a bit, and thought it might be cool to record a tabla solo, 52 Kaidas style (i.e. in discreet chunks) and crowd-source the accompaniment by recording and sampling anyone who came into the gallery. Then of course, I'd have to shoot music videos for each piece, and THEN, I knew I'd have to stitch it all together into a film.

Did i mention they approached me in mid-February, and the slot they wanted me to fill started March 1st? Yeah. So...I'm still kind of forming the idea of the whole thing as I go.

Much like a Kaida, there are rules, and the fact that there are rules is actually freeing, rather than restricting.

The rules are:
1. record all the parts of a tabla solo (peshkar, kaidas, kaida relas, relas, parans, thukras, chakradars etc) but in different talas (I'm planning Tintal, Jhaptal, Chartal Ki Sawari and Rupak but who knows)

Larry, Udu-ing.

2. Everything has to be created and recorded in the space....audio, video, photos, paintings, dance, you name it (this is one place where it's completely open ended). If someone wants to come down and vocalize bird sounds while they dance around in a feathered suit, I will record it, and I will integrate it into the piece. (tastefully, of course)

3. It has to be all inclusive: if you can clap your hands once, I can sample that clap, and work it into a piece. If you can pluck one note on a guitar, you're in the piece. If you have a FACE, I will take your picture, and you will be in the piece. Open to everyone. 

4. I have to be there, ready for anything, every single day for the entire month of March. And I need to work fast. I cannot agonize over tinytiny details...this project is about raw creation, not crystalline studio perfection. I think that exercising creativity and problem solving skills is important, so this is like a month-long creative boot-camp for me.

5. Ummmm..errr... I'm sure there are more rules, but it's late, and i can't remember. The project website has it all on there already. If you're a Torontonian, stop by. It's a new adventure everyday!

OK! Tabla-time!

I just LOVE this composition!

I learned this from Pandit Suresh Talwalkar in Pune. It's a really lovely arrangement: Peshkar, flowing into a Kaida, flowing into a Rela.

Tihais popping off everywhere, really cool vocabulary, tricky rhythmic phrasing, you name it. And slooooow tempo. I kind of rush through it (and I'm glad I did...the video is over 8 minutes long, which is about 7:45 seconds too long for most of internet-enabled humanity, sadly) but I could hang out on each section for 10 minutes easily.

I'm playing a low D tabla made by Mukta Das, and a baya that he reheaded...a Benares shell that weighs a LOT, very bottom-heavy, and stable.

This is probably (but not definitely) the most traditional presentation of tabla solo material I'll be doing in this project. I'm going to be sampling random strangers, so...there could be tuba, musical saw, gosh...even bongos!

Oh...that video is downloadable! (I'll also upload it to YouTube this evening)

This blog post here talks about how it was made...

I'll cross-post significant videos and recordings here. I recorded a Jhaptal Palta Theka on March 2nd, and now just have to build to accompaniment from whoever turns up, and I have some interesting tabla material planned.

thanks for reading, and head over to Cycles!

OH!

I almost forgot:

This Cycles project is not to be confused with THIS Cycles album, by another Canadian tabla player (high-five!) by the name of Shawn Mativetsky, which you should totally check out. Very cool stuff.