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A meeting by the River....

Sayas here on Audiogon recommended a to me a CD called "A Meeting by the River" featuring Ry Cooder on Bottlenect Guitar and V.M. Bhatt on Vina. I found this recording to be facinating. It's a real cross cultural dialogue through music. Ry plays a bluesy riff and Bhatt compliments it with blues a la vina. Then Bhatt plays a raga and Ry plays that bottleneck like a Vina...complete with drone chord. There is even interesting cross dialogue between Joaquim Cooder, backing his father on dumbek and Bhatt's tabla player. The result culiminates in the incredible track "Ganges Delta Blues." This is really a fanstastic piece and magical playing. My hat off to Sayas and I would like to know if any of you have similar suggestions...not necessarily Indian-American dialogue, but some other cross cultural exchange that is magical. By all means, try this record, unless you can't stand Sitar/Vina...otherwise, I highly doubt that you'll be disappointed...au contraire.
issabre
abstract7
541 posts
 
"Music for a Motherless Child" by Simpson and Wu (Guitar and Pipa). It is also on Waterlilly. Beautifully recorded, even better from a technical standpoint than Metting by the River. Simple, but a wonderful display of two cultures meeting. I agree with you completely on Meeting by the River.
issabre OP
120 posts
 
Oh, just one other observation...one of the most facinating things about this album is that neither artist had played with the other. So, on the first track, you can feel the two getting to know each other. If you listen, you can hear that Ry is a bit out of his element playing indian raga style. And even a little bit sloppy. Bhatt is very conservative on this first track too. The second track they get it together pretty well. But on the third track, they are completely jivin and the result is incredible. So this is really kind of microcosm/musical analogy to any other cross cultural interaction...learning each others language and then beginning to discuss fluently and then laughing and shouting together. Check it out.
sdcampbell
2,136 posts
 
"A Meeting By The River" has been a favorite "world music" recording of mine for 5 years or so. Kavi Alexander, who owns Water Lily Recordings, is a dedicated audiophile as well as very literate musically. If you enjoy "River" and recordings like it, may I suggest that you acquaint yourself with the recordings on the "MA Recordings" label. The label has a number of "world music" / cross-cultural recordinds, all done to very high recording standards. I found one of their more recent releases to be excellent: "Sera Una Noche". For more info about MA's releases, go their Web site:

www.marecordings.com
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