It’s being a *rough* time for me at the moment. I’m relocating (down the street) and packing stuff, dealing with things like forgetting where i left my brain.
I am getting through this… it’ll be with bags under my eyes and some scorches on my shoulder, and i’m powering through by the power of awesome music. I thought I’d share since it’s awesome enough to keep me moving.
First off, Gui Boratto‘s remix of Helen Cristina’s “Canto de Ossanha” is righteous. I was walking down the hill saying to myself “I can conquer my DAY now” while dancing.
The second one is from Besh O Drom… a band from Hungary that mixes together so many traditions of music in such an awesome way. The desire to see the madness live has me thinking that maybe planning a trip to Budapest in conjunction with a show might be a fantastic idea.
Listen to Csujogato…. sorry for any craptasticness on the page… only place i could find it to link to.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about music lately. I’ve had a lot of fodder for thought. I did some studying up for singing back in June, the first time I’ve been in front of people as a vocalist in a long time. Factory Seconds did some playing out before that, which was fun and exciting. Lately there’s been a lot of thinking great thinks on the wonders of band practice, and where we want to go, or where I want to go. At the beginning of the month at Firefly I jammed on the melodica, accordion, and singing a whole bunch, and just could not believe the amount of fun I was having.
I actually managed to stumble through some offbeats on the concertina while singing a song last weekend, which is definitely a step in the direction i want to go. I like the idea of being able to jump back and forth between instruments, which frees up my mouth for some singing. Now I’ve got to commit to learning more than 2 verses of italian. I’m almost completely on board for going to a balkan singing workshop next month. Things are looking fun.
I’ve also been finding a lot of inspiration in the world around me. Things that keep me going when I feel like people are taking to long to take on new songs. I’m hungry to be doing a lot more than i am at the moment, but I’m too in-between with the impending move and writing for school to actually do anything about it at the moment. Finding new voices, songs, ideas, and just… artists making things happen help stem some of that pent up whatever it is that’s been keeping me up at night.
On Tuesday night, while recapping on Firefly, John Payne mentioned Augusto Paolo to me, and I’ve been pretty excited to use youtube to actually watch him in action.
Then, after a little more digging around, I came across another melodica performance that had me losing it. Hermeto Pascoal rules. Check out the end where he’s singing with the melodica pulling in some old school classical with harmonies? That’s sweet!
In other news of blowing me away this week… I had the pleasure of stumbling across Mart’nália. She is awesome and laid back and has a sound and rhythm that just leave me in awe.You can listen to a bunch of her stuff on the last.fm page, but my favorite thing I came across was this sweet beautiful laid back hotel room jam. I remember saying during Firefly that I think you need certification to be given a tambourine. It looks simple, but that stuff is no joke. She just milks so many sounds out of it on top of the most blissful singing. That’s the sweet spot where the world goes away. Beautiful.
