Dr. Lloyd performing in Tehran

Dr. Miller also known to many Persians as Koroush Ali Khan is one of the first jazz innovators who was interested in Eastern music since the 50′s but did not gain fame because he left the scene in 1959 to travel through the orient and to live in Tehran. Before going on to Europe, Dr. Miller was working on Eastern music and finding ways to bring metaphysical and highly developed Eastern concepts into modal jazz.

While in Europe Miller played with top jazz artists like Don Ellis (where he was inspired by Miller’s Eastern concepts) and Eddie Harris including occasional appearances at the famous Blue Note in Paris where he sat in for Bud Powel to play with Kenny Clark. During his residence in Europe, Miller was prominent in the Stockholm. Frankfurt, Brussels and Paris jazz scenes and played at two major jazz festivals in Belgium.

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New York-based Hassan Hakmoun, one of contemporary Moroccan music’s most notable figures, was born in Marrakesh in 1963. At age seven he began to study tagnawit, the traditional arts, folklore, and rituals of the Gnawa tribes, former slaves originating from the Sudan whose arrival in Morocco was marked by their conversion to Islam.

The Gnawa people act as intermediaries in the spirit world and also as entertainers; Hakmoun initially studied their dances and songs, later graduating to drumming, litanies, and chants. He left school at the age of 14 to travel in the pursuit of other Gnawa masters, eventually ending up in France; upon returning to Marrakesh, Hakmoun’s repertoire continued to grow — later including songs of Arab and Berber descent — and he performed as a m’allem, or master musician of the derdeba, a trance ritual held to placate the spirits. Hassan became a Master of the Santir (a three string,long necked lute).

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Keyhan Kalhor by Todd Rosenberg

Musicians: Kayhan Kalhor – kamancheh & Behrouz Jamali on tombak (hand drum)

Date: Saturday, October 03, 2009 8:00PM
Where: Peter Norton Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th St, New York

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This is a solo sitar piece; variations of a theme of a composition of mine called “Will to Power”. The scale it is built upon is a hybrid: D Eb F G# A B C D. The improvisation is intended to convey the struggle against conflicts with, and within, human free will. There are a few motifs that the melody constantly returns to; symbolizing the inexorable pull of one’s individual destiny.

Note: this is NOT a raga, and the rhythm is not at all based on tal. I was experimenting with concepts that are neither East nor West.

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Yvette’s aouncement

Dear Friends,
Please come out to the first installment of my ‘creative-non-fiction event’ project: “Adoption Story.” This will be part of the tale of my search for my Iranian birth father.

Where: Bar Matchless (directions: corner of Driggs & Manhattan Aves, Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Trains: G train to Nassau, L train to Bedford). This is part of Casey Block’s “This is Pop?” series

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Hand Of Fatima DVD cover

The Hand of Fatima is a feature-length documentary structured by two parallel journeys to the remote Moroccan village of Jajouka, where a hereditary band plays music older than history.  

The first journey begins in the 1960s, when critic Robert Palmer uncovers “cryptic allusions” to Jajouka in the novels of William Burroughs. On assignment for Rolling Stone in 1971, Palmer finds the place where the musicians spend their days smoking kif, playing music, and “driving possessed tribesmen into mass Dionysian frenzies.”  

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Mani Irani, an Iranian activist in NY and leader of the Where is My Vote ? – New York Chapter (WIMY-NYC) sent a message to the Doo Bee Doo Bee Doo readers:

Dear Friends,

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The seeds of Mandé tradition germinate in the New World

by Sylvain Leroux

Abdoulaye “Djoss” Diabaté is a Malian musician born to a famous West African griot family. Little brother to the great, world-renowned singer Kassé Mady, he grew up in the celebrated griot village of Kela, Mali. His mother, Sira Mory Diabaté, was a singer who defined her generation.¹ His mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters² were, and still are, at the heart of Mandé culture: the cream of the country’s instrumentalists, singers, dancers, historians and story-tellers. His extended family reads like a who’s who of Mandé music in Mali, Guinea, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea Bissau.

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Tumi Crafts was founded in 1978 by Mo Fini promoting fair trade crafts and goods with Latin America, working closely with organisations such as Traidcraft and Oxfam Trading, specialising in distribution and mail order online of world fairly traded crafts.

We sell a wide range of fair trade products from Latin America, including fair trade jewellery, crafts, pottery, musical instruments, glass, tiles, paintings, games, toys, carvings, mirrors, hats, accessories, soft furnishings, plaques, dolls, puppets and more.

The videos shown here were recorded by Mo Fini and his partner Lucy Davies during their travels in Latin America in the 1980s, and record the traditional crafts of villagers in Peru and Mexico.

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