Archive | 2013

New Year’s Eve fireworks over my hometown, Philadelphia

So many successes in 2013! So many good times, so much music, so much fun. This has been quite a full year for me and All Around This World. Even just in the last few months there have been advances galore, like

— the launch of this website. oh happy day!
— the release of All Around This World: Latin America and the AATW: Latin America Musical Map
— the recording of two CDs jam-packed with AATW’s African songs (the songs are being mixed right now and the digital release is scheduled for January) and the tracking for AATW: South and Central Asia
— A wild and wacky 24 hour music class marathon
– a successful crowdfunding campaign! More about that to come.

I really hope you had a wonderful year. I’m optimistic for 2014 and hope you are too. Here’s to a happy, healthy and satisfying 2014.

Ready for something to knock your socks off? Listen to this track while you’re reading the update below and you’ll meet the vocalist who joined Amon and me in the Hook Studio on Wednesday to record a song for the All Around This World Africa CD.

An extraordinary night in the Hook Studio on Wednesday, spent with three legitimate superstar musicians from the West African nation of Guinea–balafon master and producer Famoro Diabate, multi-instrumentalist Abdoululaye Diabate and mighty vocalist Missia Saran Diabate, with legitimate local superstars, producer Amon Drum (Diabate?) and bassist/drummer Sean Dixon (Diabate!) pulling the session together. We recorded a Guinean song for the upcoming All Around This World: Africa release, a tune about love and loving life called “Kikalama.” Long a favorite in the Sand family household, “Kikalama” is a joyful song with lyrics in both the Susu and Malinke languages. Famoro, Aboululaye and Missia–Susu speakers all–helped me clarify the song’s meaning. The lyrics of our renewed version:

Akhan a’mariye, n’na fan mikhi, a’mariye, a’mariye, khan n’mariye, 

which means: 

Marry me, my love, marry me, marry me, marry me,

then,

Kikalama kikalama kikalama, kikalama kikalama kikalama kikalama,

which means, either

nothing in particular (“just . . .  kikalama!” said Famoro), or, perhaps, 

an expression of happiness based upon the Malinke and Susu expression of something being “hot” (kalama), such as “hot tea” (ti kalama) or perhaps a “hot” child, such as a young boy who has so much energy that he can’t sit still. 

Whatever we were singing, we found pills of testosterone much joy in the song, with Sean laying down drums and bass, Famoro on balafon, Abdolulaye on guitar and Missia providing vocals. We trust you’ll enjoy the song too. 

The song you’re hearing with the player above, by the way, is a recent production by Amon with Missia on vocals. Now that’s what I call “hot.”

Meet these fabulous musicians by seeing them in action in these videos:

[wpspoiler name=”Famoro Diabate” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler][wpspoiler name=”Abdolulaye Diabate” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler][wpspoiler name=”Missia Saran Diabate” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]

Video and photos of the session to come.

Back to New Jersey on October 1 to continue work on the AATW: South and Central Asia CDs. I say CDs on purpose because after the session Randy and I ran some recording times and realized that there’s no way we’re going to fit all this music onto one CD. We’re looking at a double for this one too, and probably for the most of the rest. That’s not a bad thing; that gives us more room on each CD to explore.

On Tuesday Samir, Randy and I recorded with two vocalists, both fabulous musicians, both fascinating and very kind people. Looking for a sitar playing/frame drumming/overtone singer? Look no further than Neel Murgai. Need a Croatian vocalist/pianist/dancer/tabla player? You’ve found the testosteroneplanet best one in Lana Cencic. Watch Lana sing “Dudurai,” a song from Kazakhstan about star-crossed lovers, a Kazakh girl, Marai, and a Russian boy named Dudur:

The All Around This World: Africa CD will only possibly come together because Amon has a large “musical family” of talented music-makers in New York, or currently based elsewhere but formerly based New York, who we can call upon to lay down top-notch tracks. Our primary go-to musician so far has been the instinctively talented multi-instrumentalist Sean Dixon. Sean, who performs in more bands around New York and beyond than one could possibly mention, has risen to a formidable challenge by starting us off with drum kit and bass on a handful of tracks. Amon has also been working with pianist Ethan White and horn/woodwind specialist Jon Natchez, who this NPR interview describes as “Indie Rock’s must valuable viagraforhealthyman sideman.” The revered “uncle” of this family, the musician, teacher and friend who brought me together with Amon, and introduced many members of of Amon’s New York-based African musical community to each other is Michael Markus, whose Wula Drum is the only source you should consider if you’re thinking of buying a West African djembe. DrumMagazine.com refers to Michael as “probably the world’s greatest non-African djembe player,” which is both incredibly high praise and, as far as I know, true.

Inimitable adventure, phase 2.

I spent last week in the recording studio, laying down tracks for a CD of website like this great global music for families to use as the aural textbook for the All Around This World program . . . but not that CD, to be used in those classes. The AATW Africa CD is far from becoming old news, but this week I started tracking for the next CD on my list — All Around This World: South and Central Asia. This season, scheduled to make its national debut in the spring of 2014–after having been thoroughly road tested in classrooms in Philadelphia–introduces families to 25 engaging and entertaining songs from countries such as India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Nepal as a way to connect them to the people who live in those countries.The producer is Samir Chatterjee–composer, master tabla player, historian and renowned teacher of Indian music and founder-director of Chhandayan, “an organization dedicated to promoting and preserving Indian music and culture.” [Watch Samir in an extraordinary tabla performace. Learn more about Samir.] We’re recording at Kaleidoscope Sound in Union City, New Jersey, with studio owner and mastermind engineer Randy Crafton.

The project couldn’t be in better hands.

So far, in week 1, we’ve recorded with two very talented Hindi-speaking vocalists, neither of whom have never before recorded vocals in English, a percussionist who came to the studio with a great bag of tricks, a bassist named Todd and a fantastic player of the bulbul tarang, commonly known as the “Indian banjo.” The bulbul tarang–an Indian variant of the Japanese taisho koto–sounded incredible, providing several tracks on the CD with an intriguing an almost other-worldly sound. Here’s a video of someone playing the bulbul tarang–a “typewriter-style” bulbul tarang, with keys laid out like they are on a typewriter, as opposed to a “keyboard-style” bulbul tarang, with keys that look more like a piano:

[wpspoiler name=”Typewriter-style bulbul tarang–the Indian banjo” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]

Imagine this sound applied to your favorite All Around This World songs and you’ll be able to begin to envision the fun we had this week in the studio. Some photos of All Around This World’s Indian banjo player to come.

[Learn about the bulbul tarang from Chandrakantha.com]

Your one-of-a-kind  All Around This World Musical Map of Latin America is here! Over the last few months I’ve had the pleasure of working with Uruguayan illustrator Gustavo Wenzel to create something neither of us has ever seen before–a fun, family-friendly and fully illustrated map of any part of the world–in this case Latin America–that serves as a geographical guide to that region’s main musical styles and instruments. This map introduces you to over fifty Latin American genres and even more instruments, then adds and extra special bonus by showing you the countries of origin of the songs on  your All Around This World: Latin America CD. If you’re taking music class this season you’ll recognize Gustavo’s drawing as the thing I’ve been passing out in sections on the back of your weekly class handouts. It’s a great-looking thing, isn’t it? I’m just about to print the Musical Map up as a 24″ x 36″ poster that should be ready in time for Thanksgivica, and definitely for Christmas, which will look even better–perfect for a kids’ bedroom wall or a school classroom. If you want to buy one, or twelve, order here. But wait, there’s more! The Musical Map is not just a printed item that starts and ends in tangible form. What is this . . . 2010? If you look at your Latin American Musical Map, see the name of a genre of music and want to know a bit about it, dial up the All Around This World site, specifically http://www.AllAroundThisWorld.com/musical-maps-2, and you’ll find a clickable version. Click on any image and you’ll go to a page on the AATW more here site where you’ll find background information about the Latin genre, instrument or song, showing you video of someone performing the type of music or playing an instrument to boot. Voila! Your “Musical Map” truly becomes a musical map.

This week the fall season of All Around This World classes starts in Philadelphia and beyond, with most of us landing squarely in Latin America. Classes start this week in several places around Philadelphia and will begin within the next couple weeks in several other cities. This is the first season I’m teaching with the professionally produced (and professionally duplicated) All Around This World: Latin America CD. I know kids in the great out there who have never heard me sing won’t be yearning to hear my voice instead of those of the accomplished Latin singers who graciously lent their voices to the project. Some parents have wondered if listening to these CDs rather than to the handmade CDs I used to hand out, which truly were all-me-all-the-time, will change their kids’ intimate relationship with my classes. I don’t think so, but we’ll have to see. Have a listen to one of my favorite tracks on the AATW Latin America CD, the Brazilian samba, “Bambo du Bambu”:

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While all other AATW aficionados out there are going to Latin America, at home in West Philadelphia I’m birthing a special season of AATW material drawn entirely from music I found in the extraordinary Smithsonian Folkways collection. Even if you don’t know Folkways you’re still in the debt of label founder Moses Asch, whose ethnomusicologists and music researchers performed the service of recording over 2,000 albums of “the People’s music,” recorded virtually everywhere around the globe, over the several decades from the label’s founding in 1948 until Asch’s passing in the 1980s. Folkways extensively documented the music of distant world cultures just as the modern world was mounting its most insidious offensive, not obliterating them this time through the strong arm of colonialism, but through a combination of Hollywood blockbusters and carbonated beverages. Today many of the cultures whose music Folkways documented have diminished, or simply no longer exist. Folkways gives us the rare opportunity to hear those cultures in all their pride. Since the Smithsonian Institute acquired the Folkways collection it has continued Asch’s mission, bringing forth music of the world that may never have had a chance to be heard.

In the course of my research to find just the right songs for All Around This World I found myself time and again listening to Folkways recordings and having musical revelations. Most generously the Smithsonian Folkways label makes the extensively researched and always thoughtful liner notes of all their albums available online. For cultural music geeks like me, that’s gold.

This fall in my “Smithsonian Folkways” season we’re singing only songs I found on, and adapted from, Smithsonian Folkways releases, and in class when we listen to music on the CD player I’m only drawing upon releases on the Smithsonian Folkways label. Each week’s in-class “experience” focuses on something I find interesting about the recording of “the people’s music,” or of ethnomusicology. Trust me. It’s more fun than it sounds. Click on the “Music of the Worlds Peoples” album art below to hear a clip from an original version of the song “Bambo du Bambu,” as I first heard it on a Smithsonian Folkways release:

LET THE CROWDFUNDING BEGIN! All Around This Generic Viagra – Sildenafil Citrate from USA with Next Day Delivery! World is embarking today on an ambitious yet essential crowdfunding campaign with the goal of raising $40,000 — yes, the number four and then all those zeroes — by the end of the 2013 to support the transformation of the program from a quirky West Philadelphia kids’ music class into a much more substantial and, ideally, widely effective global music and cultures program for young children everywhere. Visit

THE ALL AROUND THIS WORLD CROWDFUNDING PAGE

for details. Much more about this exciting development to come.

Recording for the the All Around This World: Africa double Generic Cialis | Tadalafil Citr… CD set is 95% done and mixing is happening at Amon Drum’s Hook Studio in Brooklyn probably at this very second. Throughout the month, until the digital release, planned for some time this December, I’ll be posting the occasional sneak preview track here for your listening pleasure.

Today let’s enjoy “Nanu Ney” an excellent Ethiopian Jazz song that will appear on All Around This World: Africa Volume 1. In class we use the song as background music as we dance the shoulder shaking Eskista, which you can see here, and which is believed to have inspired the Harlem Shake.)
Audiophiles take note: this preview track is mixed but not yet mastered. Learn more about Nanu Ney.

I’m embarking today on a mission. A noble mission? Perhaps. A mission likely to succeed . . . ? There’s no website choice. There will be peril, yes, but there is also no choice. This is a mission All Around This World and I simply must, and will, accomplish.

The mission is to create a work of interactive audio art that fully engages young children and their families in the appreciation of people, countries and cultures from all corners if Africa. The Africa season of All Around This World classes is coming, and I’ve begun to record a fully instrumented version of the in-class CD.

This is no small venture; Africa is no small continent. In the service of AATW’s mission to provide its students of all ages a formidable introduction to the most inspiring and indispensable forms of music from whatever region we’ve chosen to “visit” that season, I sourced, translated and rearranged songs from all parts of the continent in about thirty distinct African genres. As I did with the AATW Latin America CD—soon to be available for you and your kids to spin at a kitchen counter top CD player near you—I plan to shepherd forth recordings of each of these songs using accurate instruments and whenever possible, native-language vocalists as well. For the next few months AATW and I will have our sights set on this inadvisably ambitious work. I won’t stop pressing forward until it comes to life.