The Whole Music Experience

Jeff Hamilton Trio Red Sparkle Capri Records February 2012 is already shaping up into a jazz month with Jeff Hamilton Trio leading the way.   The trio’s February release, Red Sparkle offers melodic jazz played seamlessly on piano (Tamir Hendelman), double bass (Christoph Luty) and kit drums (Jeff Hamilton).   While there are no Coltrane or Davis covers on this recording, anyone who enjoys listening to those artists will feel equally at home listening to Red Sparkle .   Certainly we are treated to jazz nostalgia with the classics Laura , Sleepin’ Bee , and Too Marvelous for Words .   And we are treated to a familiar rock song from ages ago, Stephen Bishop’s On and On , gone jazz of course. The album opens on an upbeat tempo with a Hamilton original Ain’t That A Peach and then drives harder on Thelonious Monk’s Bye Ya .   But these musicians aren’t going anywhere because they’ve just begun.   The musicians perform a heavily nuanced versi...

Ramilla Cody with Herman Cody Shi Kéyah Songs for the People Canyon Records Diné (Navajo) traditional vocalist Radmilla Cody brings us her fifth album, Shi Kéyah Songs for the People on Canyon Records.  Cody sings a cappella with a traditional drum accompanying her. She sings songs about war veterans, lost lovers, bluebirds ushering a new day, and the homeland in the Diné language.  Her uncle Herman Cody composed the songs and he makes a vocal appearance on A Gift to Us .  With a voice similar in timbre and emotional color to another Diné singer, Sharon Burch (especially on Native Food Song ), Cody offers her listeners an authentic Native music experience. I especially enjoy the cadence of Cody’s voice as it travels through the stories she presents here.  Beautiful Mother Earth reminds me of some of Iroquois vocalist Joanne Shenandoah’s chants, thought Cody sings in a more upbeat tempo than Shenandoah.  Similar to Shenandoah and Burch, Co...

photo by Patricia Herlevi I was unable to round up enough students for my class Exploring Music with Ecological Themes, but I still think it's important for us to connect to nature through sound vibration.  So I'm including a short list of practices you can learn to do on your own.  I feel as humans in the modern world we have lost contact with the natural world.  We have given animals human personalities, treated the earth as a resource rather than a living being, and have forgotten how to communicate musically with the natural world or to truly hear its music. Those are the reasons why I created the class.  Too bad only one student signed up for it. 1) Sit in a natural setting (yes, outdoors), and focus on birds singing or another nature-based sound.  Meditate on this sound for at least 10 minutes.  Follow your body's rhythms and pulses as you listen to this natural sound.  Do you start hearing a melody in it? Harmony? How do you feel?  ...

Los Gauchos De Roldán Button Accordion and Bandoneon Music From Northern Uruguay Smithsonian Folkways When we think of South American traditional music the regions that usually surface in our minds are Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and the Andes.  And each country in South America also provides music audiences with diverse music traditions differing per region, ethnic group makeup and history--Uruguay is no exception.  In the past I’ve heard harp music from Uruguay, as well as, milonga from the Pampas region, (a predecessor to Argentine tango). The jovial songs that appear on Los Gauchos (Uruguaian cowboys) De Roldán’s Folkways recording Button Accordion and Bandonoen Music from Northern Uruguay remind us that many folk music traditions are centered on folk and ballroom dances.  Lead by button accordion player Walter Roldán, the folkloric quartet is comprised of an accordion, a bandoneon (Luis Alberto Vidiella), and two acoustic guitars  (Bernardo ...

Explorers of Music via Nature During my years of listening to hundreds of recordings, including field recordings of indigenous musical traditions, I discovered a few musical traditions that still amaze me today.   While these traditions range from the didgeridoo ritualistic music from Australian aboriginals to the hula tradition of Native Hawaiians to folk songs of the Okinawan people of Japan, I’m focusing on three groups for this essay including the Wulu Bunun (Taiwan), the Saami (Nordic countries & Russia), and the Baka pygmies of the Congo/Cameroon and Gabon.   We enjoy a myriad of ways of connecting to the natural world through the sound vibration.   We whistle at birds, sing like birds, perform trance music (drums) that connect us to the heartbeat of the earth or we can perform a vocal tradition that connects us to people, places, and creatures, as in the case with the Saami’s spiritual chant, the yoik.   As modern human beings we often look at in...