Monday, May 23, 2005

First up, the Greek Food Festival in Little Rock was very very cool. The food was great (ooh, the hummus was amazing!), and the dancers were really neat too. I was absolutely enthralled by the Indian dancers, despite the snarky comments about needing to 'edit' their performances from some of my wife's bellydancer friends. I completely disagree. I liked how they didn't water down their performances for a Western audience. At least, the girls who were doing the classical dances didn't. There were some girls who also did some fusion dances that seemed to merge hip-hop dancing with Indian styles, and they seemed to mostly be dancing to Bhangra.

In other news, via Boing Boing, is this really cool site that talks about some 'tiny music makers.' Ever wondered who made the Intel startup music, or the THX sound? Here you go.

I was thinking about this live Mashup band, Smashup Derby, and I was thinking about the kind of things that I would like to hear, in a live, mashup sort of vein. There are two things that I would love to hear. The first would be to hear a jam between the church band of the Jazz Church of St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane , and this Rastafarian church band that uses reggae music in their worship services in Jamaica that I saw on CNN once. The second would be a jam between Anoushka Shankar on sitar, David Hudson on didgeridoo, Zakir Hussain on tabla, Huun Huur Tu singing Tuvan throat music, and Toumani Diabate on the kora, with myself on effects and delays, dubbing everything into ethereal spaciness. I might just try to cobble something like that together from various CDs, just to see what it might sound like.

Also, I should have a few more tracks up on my emergent page by tomorrow.