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anti-looper bigots / Miles & Teo
JD wrote:
" Hey, Bill, I'm no academic in this realm by any stretch, but how do
you figure in people like Martin Denny who seemed to ( perhaps,
haphazardly) play any instrument they found from any part of the world?
And, I think, maybe a few years earlier than the mentioned masters."
Hey JD, I'm going to assume that you made the mistake that our father
used to make all the time (and all our friends as well) and
that you confused me, Rick , with my brother Bill.
If not, disregard my reply and wait for one from Bill. It's just that
you quoted my post to respond to so I'll make the obvious assumption.
So, my answer is that I'm really talking about popular movements in
music: movements that affected the masses and the largest share of
musicians in general.
People like Martin Denny (and David Lindley in our country) were vastly
ahead of the curve in their fusion of ethnic musics and instruments and
styles
so they are the exception to the phenomena I've been talking about.
They also didn't start an avalanche of influence that resulted in people
copying what they did. They are magnificent islands in the stream of
that popular musical history.
Also, I was speaking pretty specifically about percussion which is my
lifelong field of expertise, so I wasn't really referring to string
instruments.
What instruments did Martin Denny play in those days out of
curiosity? Lindley , pretty specifically, was playing Americana folk
instruments and a
couple of instruments from the Middleeast in his group Kaleidescope in
the late 60's.
*******************
*******************
So called 'ethnic music' (a term which I"m really uncomfortable as I
consider rock 'n roll to be folk music and hence, ethnic, just the
music of the folk of my country and others) has been prevalent in the
Colonial (Imperialist) countries since those countries started
conquering peoples around the world.
In the sixties and early seventies I found lots of many records on the
Nonesuch label of world traditional music. There were just very few
of them where I live
in Northern California compared to the explosion that would occur with
the so called 'World Beat' movement that I would be part of in the early
80's.
Modern popular music and jazz just didn't have a lot of influence from
these cultures for the most part.
In my small part of the world, during the early to mid eighties that
there was an explosion in commercial interest in world music, both
traditional and fusion varieties.
Before that, however, in my home town, Santa Cruz, which at one point
had the only large concert venue dedicated specifically to World Music
and World Music Fusion (World Beat----that horrid, horrid term again) I
remember lobbying and lobbying the booker for the local large rock
showcase club, the Catalyst until he relented and booked the first
Reggae bands, the first African Bands, the first Middleeastern
groups. In those days I was so fanatically and obsessively interested
in so called World Music that I did everything in my power to bring it
to my community. I remember my wife at the time, Janet Ring and I
going down to the Civic Auditorium and
at 7:00 a.m. in the morning to meet a bewildered group of musicians from
the Uzulu Dance Theatre to bring them back to our home for bagels and
coffee and
private lessons and dance classes I'd set up for them to make some money
so that they would come teach us about their artistry.
A mere five years after these humble beginnings, acts like Thomas
Mapfumo, Youssou NDour, Babtunde Olatunji, Sunny Ade, Johnny Clegg and
Savuka, the Gypsy Kings, Les Negresses Verte, a plethora of big Reggae
Acts to numerous to mention and many, many other groups from the
Middleeast were suddenly headliners at
all the biggest venues and their were multiple clubs that catered
partially or entirely to them.
Then, in Santa Cruz, this amazing world instrument (though primarily
percussion) store called Rhythm Fusion opened up...............Places
like Lark in the Morning which for a long time had catered to ethnic
music enthusiasts suddenly began to have increasingly large catalogues
and ever since it's been a cornucopia if you wanted to start finding
unusual ethnic instruments to start to learn on.
And , of course, all of this refers to just what was commercially
available to people and musicians where I live. Every part of the world
has a slightly different
time line for this explosion of influences and access to the musical
instruments that made them.