Hey, just wondering what people think of Irish Indian cross over. Im looking to find a really good tabla player and sitar player to play some music with.
Here's a wicked (7 minute long) video I just found of a bodhrán/tabla duel (John Joe Kelly/Parvinder Bharat), followed by the Michael McGoldrick band playing tunes with them both.
(It cuts off though, unfortunately)
[just wondering what people think of Irish Indian cross over]
i'm for it......)
like indian/pakistani, and middle-eastern music, irish (or a major root of it) is essentially a) modal; and b) melodic, as in, single-melody-line......
these similarities are probably not coincidental, but genealogical.......the pre-church, pre-renaissance, modal-melodic roots of celtic and other european genres such as eastern-european, derive from india/pakistan and the middle east.....celtic and other european genres certainly also have OTHER strains and OTHER contributories as well, but the "east" is definitely in there.
let's hear it for irish music on harmonium, and indian ragas on concertina and accordion, mmmm-mmmm, good.
I am most certainly not for it. Generations have spent countless millions of hours honing and refining their music until it is as near to perfect as a human being can achieve, and you want to change it? You don't have the right.
Don't have the right? Any musician has the right to do whatsoever with the music they play. It's not exactly trying to permanently change the genre(s). It could just be down to having fun - and if it does create enjoyment then there is a point.
I didn't notice the trad police descending on Irvine and Spillane after their Balkan adventure - or Sheila Chandra being castigated for abuse of rights after 'weaving her ancestral voices'. OK, if you don't like fusion, fair enough, but it doesn't mean you can dictate to others in that regard.
The results will be both hideous and inexcusable. My brother did this about 30 years ago, taking his tabla to sessions, some people still aren't speaking to him, quite understandably.
Afro Celt - a great act on a festival stage where you can hear it pumped out through a powerful sound system. But any connection to the kind of music that this site is about is pretty tenuous.
"But any connection to the kind of music that this site is about is pretty tenuous."
This site is about what you make it. Lately we have a Chinese poster asking about Scottish fiddle music. We have a Swedish hambo submitted in the tunes section. So on, so forth.
The connection with the ACSS album I linked to and Irish traditional music might be the players.
Ciarán Tourish, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh , Liam O'Flynn, Emer Mayock - all traditional musicians - and Iarla O Lionáird, well respected sean-nós singer. You can detect more than a hint of the traditional upbringing of the musicians on this album.
The result is a "crossover" of styles with more contemporary influences - but the connection with "the kind of music that this site is about" is more than tenuous - it's rather obvious.
Oh, and Prof - yes Martin Nolan and Khanda (I did think it might have been the Nolan Sisters you were hinting at) - a fine example of doing the "unthinkable".
i sing all kinds of songs, they just pop out of my head. depending on whatever group i've been hanging out with musically, it often tends to itm. but most musicians, local friends or famous people from far away, have listened to or dabbled in or mastered other kinds of music. i imagine there might be purists who only go for one style/form; but when i'm just going about my life and music pops up in my head, it's liable to come from anywhere. i would think it odd if a 21st century person had strict blinders on, tunnel vision is so hard to maintain.
"Generations have spent countless millions of hours honing and refining their music until it is as near to perfect as a human being can achieve, and you want to change it? You don't have the right."
-One of the most extreme and close-minded things I've read on this website in a long time. Traditional music is not based on mindlessly replicating past performances. Otherwise Michael Coleman would have just copied note for note what had gone before, and not developed his music to the emotional and expressive height it reached.
You might HATE his idea, but it's completely ludicrous to suggest he doesn't have the 'right.' I'm fairly sure musicians in the past didn't toil 'countless' hours just to keep the music going identically to 300 years ago, that was never the point of traditional music. It fulfills an expressive need, and if this lad has a curiosity to fill why doesn't he have 'the right?' Should he sacrifice his creativity or musical needs for the needs of a generation of musicians who had their opportunity to express themselves? My flute and fiddle playing is quite 'conservative' and 'traditional', even though I have a background in jazz saxophone as well. It is my right to decide to stay fairly 'traditional', just as it is someone else right to experiment.
Rant of the day over... Except, to add. I love the tone of the tabla, and would be interesting in hearing more about the crossover. Both the bodhran and tabla have a great variety of pitches, so now that I think about it, the tabla probably suits traditional music more so than some bongos and congas I've heard banged away in the odd crazy session.
Interesting. To my, admittedly ignorant, ears they sound like Indian music played on Irish or Scottish instruments. I don't hear influence the other way..
I'm not sure that the use of exotic instruments means a "crossover" of styles, otherwise the bouzouki would mean "Greek/Irish crossover" and we could argue all night about what "crossover" the fiddle, accordion, or guitar might represent.
It would not be easy to make such a thing work artistically. You will need knowledgeable collaborators and you will need to work hard to come up with something that isn't shallow and gimmicky. Or is that the point, in order to appeal to a broad, musically illiterate audience? If the latter is the case, don't bother asking anyone on this board about your idea. We are not your target audience!
Robin Williamson really *did*, I think, weave Celtic, Anglo-American and Eastern musical elements into a workable fusion back with The Incredible String Band 40+ years ago, and presumably has gone on doing so ever since. But as far as I can tell the focus of his Eastern music researches at that time was actually Arab (or whatever) music from Morocco, where he took some time out in the Sixties. He brought back a gimri which later got eaten by rats. I am a bit of an ISB anorak so I know these things. I don't like all Williamson's songs or share all his expressed sentiments, but do admire his achievements as a musician and musical pioneer, give or take his early essays at fiddling Irish tunes. (He was very good indeed, IMO, on his other instruments.)
His musical partner Mike Heron played a nice sitar in along with all this, as this or that preposterous epic set off whiffling through the tulgey wood for ten, twelve, fifteen minutes. But I don't feel they were self-consciously trying to marry particular cultures, or be acknowledged by any particular culture. They were just exploring new territory with time, information, connections, instruments and spare cash available, rather suddenly, more freely than to the generations before them. They were in the right place in the right time just where they were.
Did he? Apart from the occasional exotic instrument, all that old Incredible String Band stuff just sounded very English to me. I used to love it. Saw them several times back in the day.
When I was at Leeds College of Music the South Asian music teacher who played the sitar, regularly went down to play at the Irish sessions. It's not the instrument that makes the music it's how it is played. In my experience Irish people love diversity and creativity in their music. What a wonderful combination Irish and Indian music.
ha, well, i wasn't endorsing taking the tabla to irish sessions....i was endorsing personal artistic projects, of the kind some of the worshipped traditional players engage in, separately from their pure-drop adventures......
There is actually a lot of scholarly evidence to suggest an Irish/Indian parallel, and not just in music. Do some research, you guys might find it interesting.
"If you answer the riddle you'll never begin; there's no answer to the riddle, but the whole song itself was a dream from start to finish, the dream I had put to music, so it has the same logic that the dream has, which is not much logic. There are bits and pieces about early memories in Edinburgh and so forth, but it's a collage song with bits of this dream, bits of early childhood, and it's basically the fact that I consider that-life is pretty much an unanswerable riddle, with not really much of an answer to it some of the times. I think that's its magic. Anyway that's what that song says."
Williamson, Heron came from Edinburgh, of course...
It must be impossible to grow up in Edinburgh without developing eyebrow-raising talents, verbal usages and personal characteristics. I think this is because Edinburgh is so over-the-top portentous and bonkers. At 58, I've yet to meet anyone from Edinburgh who could be described as normal.
It depends on what you call "normal". I can't say that David McKletchie's talents are eyebrow-raising. Mr Campin might think otherwise, however, as the two of them seem to be pals.
But not really fair on three quarters of 'em to just credit Ross with it.
And one linked too above that someone referred to as "Scottish musicians playing an Indian tune" was a tune written by Nigel. He used to live on Hawthorn Place.
Irish Indian Cross over
Irish Indian Cross over
Hey, just wondering what people think of Irish Indian cross over. Im looking to find a really good tabla player and sitar player to play some music with.
Has any one on here done it
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by FastEddie
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
Here's a wicked (7 minute long) video I just found of a bodhrán/tabla duel (John Joe Kelly/Parvinder Bharat), followed by the Michael McGoldrick band playing tunes with them both.
(It cuts off though, unfortunately)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpOfmFdaEl0
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Joe CSS
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
I played with a tabla player and Nepalese flute player. It worked well.
I believe Tomás Lynch worked with a sitar player in his London days.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Weejie
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
[just wondering what people think of Irish Indian cross over]
i'm for it......)
like indian/pakistani, and middle-eastern music, irish (or a major root of it) is essentially a) modal; and b) melodic, as in, single-melody-line......
these similarities are probably not coincidental, but genealogical.......the pre-church, pre-renaissance, modal-melodic roots of celtic and other european genres such as eastern-european, derive from india/pakistan and the middle east.....celtic and other european genres certainly also have OTHER strains and OTHER contributories as well, but the "east" is definitely in there.
let's hear it for irish music on harmonium, and indian ragas on concertina and accordion, mmmm-mmmm, good.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by ceemonster
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
I am most certainly not for it. Generations have spent countless millions of hours honing and refining their music until it is as near to perfect as a human being can achieve, and you want to change it? You don't have the right.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by gam
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
Don't have the right? Any musician has the right to do whatsoever with the music they play. It's not exactly trying to permanently change the genre(s). It could just be down to having fun - and if it does create enjoyment then there is a point.
I didn't notice the trad police descending on Irvine and Spillane after their Balkan adventure - or Sheila Chandra being castigated for abuse of rights after 'weaving her ancestral voices'. OK, if you don't like fusion, fair enough, but it doesn't mean you can dictate to others in that regard.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Weejie
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
The results will be both hideous and inexcusable. My brother did this about 30 years ago, taking his tabla to sessions, some people still aren't speaking to him, quite understandably.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Bernie 29
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
Joe, I think you meant to say "it cuts off, though unfortunately not before they started".
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Bernie 29
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
What was the name of the band again that Martin Nolan was in? They did that whole thing about ten years ago, films on the tellie and all.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Prof. Prlwytzkofski
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
How about this for a line-up:
N'Faly Kouyate (vocals, kora, balafon); Demba "Shadowman" Barry (vocals, dancer); Iarla O Lionáird, Robert Plant (vocals); James McNally (whistling, harmonica, accordion, piano, harmonium, keyboards, bodhran, programming, keyboard programming, drum programming); Simon Emmerson (guitar, bouzouki, mandolin, programming, drum programming); Nigel Eaton (hurdy-gurdy); Nawazish Ali Khan (violin); Ciarán Tourish, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh (fiddle); Rosie Wetters (cello); Emer Mayock (flute, Uilleann pipe); Liam O'Flynn (Uilleann pipe); Martin Russell (keyboards, programming); Moussa Sissikho (drums, djembe); Johnny Kalsi (drums, tabla, percussion); Sunil Kalyan (tabla); Peter Lockett, Hossam Ramzy (percussion); Ron Aslan, Chuck Norman (programming); Joel "The Octopus" Mass (keyboard programming).
http://realworldrecords.com/catalogue/volume-3-further-in-time/
Well, not my cup of tea, but I'm only too glad people are doing this kind of thing. It kind of says "up yours" to the puritans!
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Weejie
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
Afro Celt - a great act on a festival stage where you can hear it pumped out through a powerful sound system. But any connection to the kind of music that this site is about is pretty tenuous.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by johndsamuels
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
"But any connection to the kind of music that this site is about is pretty tenuous."
This site is about what you make it. Lately we have a Chinese poster asking about Scottish fiddle music. We have a Swedish hambo submitted in the tunes section. So on, so forth.
The connection with the ACSS album I linked to and Irish traditional music might be the players.
Ciarán Tourish, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh , Liam O'Flynn, Emer Mayock - all traditional musicians - and Iarla O Lionáird, well respected sean-nós singer. You can detect more than a hint of the traditional upbringing of the musicians on this album.
The result is a "crossover" of styles with more contemporary influences - but the connection with "the kind of music that this site is about" is more than tenuous - it's rather obvious.
Oh, and Prof - yes Martin Nolan and Khanda (I did think it might have been the Nolan Sisters you were hinting at) - a fine example of doing the "unthinkable".
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Weejie
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
i sing all kinds of songs, they just pop out of my head. depending on whatever group i've been hanging out with musically, it often tends to itm. but most musicians, local friends or famous people from far away, have listened to or dabbled in or mastered other kinds of music. i imagine there might be purists who only go for one style/form; but when i'm just going about my life and music pops up in my head, it's liable to come from anywhere. i would think it odd if a 21st century person had strict blinders on, tunnel vision is so hard to maintain.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by full measure
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
"Generations have spent countless millions of hours honing and refining their music until it is as near to perfect as a human being can achieve, and you want to change it? You don't have the right."
-One of the most extreme and close-minded things I've read on this website in a long time. Traditional music is not based on mindlessly replicating past performances. Otherwise Michael Coleman would have just copied note for note what had gone before, and not developed his music to the emotional and expressive height it reached.
You might HATE his idea, but it's completely ludicrous to suggest he doesn't have the 'right.' I'm fairly sure musicians in the past didn't toil 'countless' hours just to keep the music going identically to 300 years ago, that was never the point of traditional music. It fulfills an expressive need, and if this lad has a curiosity to fill why doesn't he have 'the right?' Should he sacrifice his creativity or musical needs for the needs of a generation of musicians who had their opportunity to express themselves? My flute and fiddle playing is quite 'conservative' and 'traditional', even though I have a background in jazz saxophone as well. It is my right to decide to stay fairly 'traditional', just as it is someone else right to experiment.
Rant of the day over... Except, to add. I love the tone of the tabla, and would be interesting in hearing more about the crossover. Both the bodhran and tabla have a great variety of pitches, so now that I think about it, the tabla probably suits traditional music more so than some bongos and congas I've heard banged away in the odd crazy session.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by jcawley
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
dito re: "extreme and close-minded".
Check out this Scottish/Indian crossover http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUBBCXt-qAQ
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by TheCat
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
Not forgetting Vijay Kangutkar and Sean O'Rourke (Vijay has been involved in other crossover projects)
http://www.musicinscotland.com/acatalog/The_Keltz.html:
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Weejie
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq1Z3CzeZJ4
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Weejie
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
Interesting. To my, admittedly ignorant, ears they sound like Indian music played on Irish or Scottish instruments. I don't hear influence the other way..
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by curamach
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
I'm not sure that the use of exotic instruments means a "crossover" of styles, otherwise the bouzouki would mean "Greek/Irish crossover" and we could argue all night about what "crossover" the fiddle, accordion, or guitar might represent.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Bren
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
It would not be easy to make such a thing work artistically. You will need knowledgeable collaborators and you will need to work hard to come up with something that isn't shallow and gimmicky. Or is that the point, in order to appeal to a broad, musically illiterate audience? If the latter is the case, don't bother asking anyone on this board about your idea. We are not your target audience!
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Seosamh Ui Sinan
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
Robin Williamson really *did*, I think, weave Celtic, Anglo-American and Eastern musical elements into a workable fusion back with The Incredible String Band 40+ years ago, and presumably has gone on doing so ever since. But as far as I can tell the focus of his Eastern music researches at that time was actually Arab (or whatever) music from Morocco, where he took some time out in the Sixties. He brought back a gimri which later got eaten by rats. I am a bit of an ISB anorak so I know these things. I don't like all Williamson's songs or share all his expressed sentiments, but do admire his achievements as a musician and musical pioneer, give or take his early essays at fiddling Irish tunes. (He was very good indeed, IMO, on his other instruments.)
His musical partner Mike Heron played a nice sitar in along with all this, as this or that preposterous epic set off whiffling through the tulgey wood for ten, twelve, fifteen minutes. But I don't feel they were self-consciously trying to marry particular cultures, or be acknowledged by any particular culture. They were just exploring new territory with time, information, connections, instruments and spare cash available, rather suddenly, more freely than to the generations before them. They were in the right place in the right time just where they were.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by nicholas
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
Did he? Apart from the occasional exotic instrument, all that old Incredible String Band stuff just sounded very English to me. I used to love it. Saw them several times back in the day.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by ethical blend
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
Well, the ISB may or may not have had an "English" sound, but Heron and Williamson are both Scots.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by Weejie
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
I know. Always was a puzzle ...
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by ethical blend
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
When I was at Leeds College of Music the South Asian music teacher who played the sitar, regularly went down to play at the Irish sessions. It's not the instrument that makes the music it's how it is played. In my experience Irish people love diversity and creativity in their music. What a wonderful combination Irish and Indian music.
# Posted on October 23rd 2011 by chrislynn
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
ha, well, i wasn't endorsing taking the tabla to irish sessions....i was endorsing personal artistic projects, of the kind some of the worshipped traditional players engage in, separately from their pure-drop adventures......
# Posted on October 24th 2011 by ceemonster
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
An early project by Steph Geremia called Tireile has a couple of Irish/Indian tracks.
# Posted on October 24th 2011 by mcswiss
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
ceemonster was probably thinking of this sort of thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNGefEJXeMA
Africa not Idia but along those lines anyhow.
# Posted on October 24th 2011 by Prof. Prlwytzkofski
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
There is actually a lot of scholarly evidence to suggest an Irish/Indian parallel, and not just in music. Do some research, you guys might find it interesting.
# Posted on October 24th 2011 by Fiddlechick7
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
And here I thought this would be a short thread!
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
# Posted on October 25th 2011 by AlBrown
Indian Irish Cross over
"If you answer the riddle you'll never begin; there's no answer to the riddle, but the whole song itself was a dream from start to finish, the dream I had put to music, so it has the same logic that the dream has, which is not much logic. There are bits and pieces about early memories in Edinburgh and so forth, but it's a collage song with bits of this dream, bits of early childhood, and it's basically the fact that I consider that-life is pretty much an unanswerable riddle, with not really much of an answer to it some of the times. I think that's its magic. Anyway that's what that song says."
Robin Williamson, interviewed by Ken Hunt (1979)
# Posted on October 25th 2011 by Batgirl has left the GPL ;)
Williamson, Heron came from Edinburgh, of course...
It must be impossible to grow up in Edinburgh without developing eyebrow-raising talents, verbal usages and personal characteristics. I think this is because Edinburgh is so over-the-top portentous and bonkers. At 58, I've yet to meet anyone from Edinburgh who could be described as normal.
# Posted on October 25th 2011 by nicholas
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
Don't get me wrong, I think Edinburgh is a magnificent, exhilarating place!
# Posted on October 25th 2011 by nicholas
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
It depends on what you call "normal". I can't say that David McKletchie's talents are eyebrow-raising. Mr Campin might think otherwise, however, as the two of them seem to be pals.
# Posted on October 25th 2011 by Weejie
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
For Scottish/Indian, there is a lovely version of MacCrimmon Will Never Return by Sheila Chandra: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgeJsR7iuA
It would raise my eyebrows if anybody discovered any discernible talent in Mr McKKKletchie.
Who was the Scottish piper who was playing with an Indian tabla player a while back? Donald Lindsay?
# Posted on October 26th 2011 by Jack Campin
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
Slight fault with your link, Jack:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgeJsR7iugA
This too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfN58h4zZ7o&feature=related
# Posted on October 26th 2011 by Weejie
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
There was a CD released recently called "India/Alba" which was by Ross Ainslie, recorded in India with Indian musicians.
# Posted on October 26th 2011 by Kenny
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
"There was a CD released recently called "India/Alba" which was by Ross Ainslie, recorded in India with Indian musicians."
That'll be the set up that TheCat linked to above.
# Posted on October 26th 2011 by Weejie
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
The very boys.
# Posted on October 26th 2011 by Kenny
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
But not really fair on three quarters of 'em to just credit Ross with it.
And one linked too above that someone referred to as "Scottish musicians playing an Indian tune" was a tune written by Nigel. He used to live on Hawthorn Place.
# Posted on October 26th 2011 by ...
Re: Irish Indian Cross over
And they've done a couple of CDs to date and very good they both are.
# Posted on October 26th 2011 by ...