rosswriting.com / the Music Page - The Warblehead Union

    Other Musical Points of Interest
       on the Web


    While we're on the subject, it's probably appropriate to point to some influences, favorite artists and ideas about music that have really gotten our attention over the years, and to offer some inviting linkability to them.

    Here's just a few to get us started...  

    Hazrat Inayat Khan

    John Schaefer's radio show “New Sounds

    Steve Reich

    Mickey Hart

    Josef Zawinul & Weather Report

    John Coltrane


      To begin, a perennial favorite...

      On Music, from "The Sufi Message Of Hazrat Inayat Khan"

      A small book's worth of transcribed speeches about music given by Inayat Khan, an Indian Sufi vina player and later teacher early in the previous century. Some of the deepest and most beautiful writing about the nature of music that we've ever come across.

      "As to what we call music in everyday language, to me architecture is music, gardening is music, farming is music, painting is music, poetry is music. In all the occupations of life where beauty has been the inspiration, where the divine wine has been poured out, there is music. But among all the different arts, the art of music has been specially considered divine, because it is the exact miniature of the law working through the whole universe."


      "The ancient singers used to experience the effect of their spiritual practices upon themselves first. They used to sing one note for about half an hour and observe the effect of the same note upon all the different centers of their own body. They noted what life current is produced, how it opened the intuitive facilities, how it created enthusiasm, how it gave added energy, how it soothed and how it healed. So for them it was not a theory, it was an experience."

      More favorite excerpts


      “New Sounds” on radio

      John Schaefer, on his radio show “New Sounds,” the long-running series on WNYC in New York, has given voice to a wide range of musical artists with an equally wide range of interests. (Schaefer also authored a great book by the same name, a very useful reference for the world of music outside pop.)

      The common thread of all the wildly divergent music he plays is the extra-ordinary level of imagination.  Last week, for instance, he had on successive nights Mickey Hart, Indonesian gamelan, music of mad instrument inventor Harry Partch, Trilok Gurtu, and California ambient synth guys.

      New Sounds airs daily at 11PM Eastern time on 93.9 FM in the New York City area, and,

      www.wnyc.org/shows/newsounds

      You can listen to it live, or download archived shows (if you’re willing to deal with RealAudio – no other option's offered.)

      From www.wnyc.org :

      “New Sounds provides a place for your left and right brain to unwind at the end of day. Host John Schaefer combs recent recordings for one of the most educational and enchanting hours on radio. For 20 years, he's been finding the melody in the rainforest and the rhythm in an orchestra of tin cans. The program offers new ways to hear the ancient language of song. With guest musicians from David Byrne to Meredith Monk to Ravi Shankar, Tune in for the next wave or the most ancient forms of music.”


      Steve Reich

      Love this guy's music... heavenly cycles of sound.

      SteveReich.com

      -- the composer's site

      Steve Reich Page

      -- a fan's Steve Reich homepage
      www.slis.keio.ac.jp/~ohba/srhome.html

      Recommended Recordings --

      • Sextett/Six Marimbas
      • Four Sections/Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, & Organ
      • Music for 18 Musicians

      • ("...18 Musicians" is his early magnum opus, a solid hour of beautiful, intricately interconnected, slowly evolving themes that will either drive you insane or lift you into another world.)

      Mickey Hart

      And his...
      "Bringing together the two most elemental instruments of human communication -- the Drum and the Voice."


      Planet Drum

      "From the Diga Rhythm Band to Planet Drum, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart has done a lot for world fusion music by creating opportunities for master musicians from around the world to play together."

      The Mickey Hart catalog on Rykodisc's Ryko.com


      Josef Zawinul

      A good, long 1998 interview with the composer/ keyboardist and cofounder of Weather Report.

      members.ozemail.com.au/~bjhardy/zawinul.html

      "Heavy Weather", one of their greatest


      John Coltrane (official site)

      What can you really say about John Coltrane? All you can really do is hear him.

      (Except maybe to say, if you haven't yet given him a good listen, look for the early 60's recordings, originally on Impulse Records. They all feature what's known as the classic Coltrane Quartet, with McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, and Jimmy Garrison.

       

       

       

       

       


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