Musical Ramblings

i-mics from Sweden

I have just posted three i-mic photographs in the i-mic photo album. They were sent to me ages ago by Jan Gulbrandsen of Sweden. They include an amazing model based on a bicyle headlamp! Check it out!

Olivier Ker-Ourio and Danyel Waro - Sominnker

Since I've been late in reviewing Olivier Ker Ourio's latest release Siroko, I thought I'd post this review of his previous album Sominnker in the meantime. It's not easy to find, but it's definitely worth listening to. One of the harmonica albums in my collection that has endured the most listening and one of the favourite records of my four year old son... This review was written in French and originally published in a French blues magazine.

Olivier Ker-Ourio is one of a new generation of chromatic harmonica players who have started to mark the European Jazz scene of their imprint in the last few years. Of his three previous albums, two are anashamedly jazz (Central Park Nord and A Ride with the Wind) and one lies between jazz and world music (Oté l'Ancêtre). The latter was the first record in which Olivier explored his Reunion Island roots, and incidentally is also my favourite of the three. Since his latest release Sominnkér is rather in the same vein, it won?t come as a surprise that I liked it a lot.

Actually, Sominnkér isn't an Olivier Ker Ourio record so much as a collaboration between Olivier and his habitual band (Gildas Boclé‚ on double-bass, Pierre de Bethmann on piano and Franck Agulhon on drums) and maloya singer Danyel Waro. The record constitutes of about 2/3 vocal tracks sung in creole, the rest being instrumentals.

The thing that struck me upon first listening to this record is the cohesiveness of the ensemble. Of course, the jazz arrangements alter the original maloya sound some, but without betraying its essence, in particular its rhythmic core. In other words, it doesn't sound like collaboration records often do, ie. artists watering down their identity: it sounds like these guys have been playing together forever. The sleeve notes mention the existence of a documentary on this recording session, and I hope I get to see it one day, because it's pretty obvious listening to the music that there has been a true cultural exchange going on.

As soon as the first track Banm kalou banm starts, the listener is immersed in a wonderful blend of jazz fluidity and tropical exoticism. This feeling pervades the whole record. Danyel Waro's voice is superb, rather high pitched, flexible and powerful, and it's impossible for me, as a French, not to immediately get hooked by the lyrics. I don't understand creole, but the snippets of French words I do get suggest a depth and intensity that deserve more attention. Mercifully, the liner notes feature these texts not only in the original creole, but translated in French and English.

And these lyrics are as intense and poignant as anticipated. It's hard not to make parallels with blues themes: Banm kalou banm links the historical slavery endured by Reunion Island natives to the modern condition of destitution that this province, one of the poorest in France, lives through. A little later,  La météo (the weather) tells of a child crying, trapped under the remnants of a house destroyed by a tropical storm. I immediatly thought of these early blues on the floods in texas, and more generally of the themes of hardship of rural life often present in early blues. The comparison with blues is tempting, all the more since the seriousness of some of these themes is offset by a humour and derision that can only stem from fatality. Musically, maloya is very different from blues but its harmonic texture isn't that far removed, with oscillations between major and minor that definetely confer to it some shade of  blue.

The album starts at a high pace with five very strong, driven tunes, including a wonderful harmonica instrumental where Olivier's playing particularly shines. The pace slows down after that with more melancholic pieces, including Pok Pok, a beautiful duet between Olivier and Danyel, more a poem than a song really with the harmonica weaving musical phrases around the verses. One of the last tracks, Gardyin Volkan is a very lively and amusing piece where Danyel imagines a young Olivier running amidst the Reunion mountains, playing his harmonica to the volcanoes.

Overall, even though this is one of my favourite jazz harmonica records, I have to concede that the pace of the album isn't perfect. The record begins on such a high that the second half isn't quite on par with the first, even though there are a few superb songs in that second part as well. That being said, Sominnker remains a wonderful and exceptional record, one that easily sustains repeated listening.

It's musically elaborate and yet accessible, even for those who are not jazz connoisseurs. Olivier's harmonica playing is clear and beautiful without being smoochy and features the unusual phrasings that define his style, but his playing is simpler, barer than on his other recordings. Additionally, the combination of the jazz rhythm section and the reunion percussions form a superb backdrop for Danyel Waro's striking voice and powerful lyrics.

In other words, if you can find it, don't miss it !

Click here to purchase this record directly from the label (reading French is recommended...)

More i-mics for the holidays

I dug up all the i-mic photos I've been sent over the years last night. Wow. I didn't think I had so many.

Today is my last day of work. I am finally going to get some rest, if the children allow. Consequently, the day at work is hectic, so I only found time at lunch to post three more i-mics in the gallery. I'll add the rest in the coming days.

I dug up the clean schematics as well, but they're in French. If anyone is knowledgeable on electronics and stuff, could you please send me an email so that we can discuss terminology. I'd like to avoid the blunder from last time and actually use the proper terms in the English language version this time!

Return of the i-mic

In the second issue of Planet Harmonica, alongside a roadtest of various famous or less famous harmonica microphones, I published the schematics of a home-made microphone designed by Michel Triste, a retired electrical engineer who used to be one of Greg Szlapczynski's students.

The success of that particular issue, and specifically that particular feature, was tremendous. Even though it was published in 2000 and is no longer linked to the main page of the dying website, it's still the most visited page on the site. Over the years, I've received many photographs of people's i-mics and I kept them aside preciously waiting for the day when I'd have time to set them up on a page of their own.

Today, I receiced Arnout Deurinck's funky looking pepper mill i-mic and so I decided a photo album of i-mics was long overdue. I salvaged whatever was available online, and this week-end I'll skim through my dusty e-mail archives to salvage many more i-mics.

I also have somewhere a clean, revised schematic that was sent to me, and a no longer functional link to an amazing flash DIY instructions by Steve Dayton. I'll try to retrieve and post these in the coming days as well.  And of course, if you have any photos of your own creations you want to send over, please do! This time, I will put them online !!!

The photo album will always be available in the sidebar on the right, so feel free to consult it regularly ! Long live the i-mic !

Jimmy Herring !!!

Awesome jazz-rock guitarist Jimmy Herring has just opened his own website at www.jimmyherring.net. Jimmy Herring is an amazingly fast yet very fluid guitarist who integrates a whole realm of jazz vocabulary in rock. He came to many people's attention through his long stint with Aquarium Rescue Unit, whose latest album The Calling is one of the best CDs in my rock collection bar none.  He was also the guitarist behind Jazz is Dead, the jazz band that covered Grateful Dead songs. More recently, he released a CD of his own band called Project Z, and this new website tells us that there will be a second album released in September under the title Lincoln Memorial.  Finally, in parallel to being the guitarist of the latest incarnation of the Dead, Jimmy has now joined Rob Barraco's band The Dragonflys. Let's hope that means lots more CD releases.

Saturday Morning : Howard Levy's Masterclasse

The program of the last day of the festival was very cool, and I had to get up early to provide the translation for Howard Levy's masterclasse. Howard speaks better French than he gives himself  credit for, but probably not at the level required to run a smooth session.

Setting up took a while since Howard was accompanying himself on keyboard, and is rather taller than the average human, so adjustments were required. After a sufficient amount of caffeine had been ingested, he was ready to go and introduced the class by telling us how he'd gotten started on the harmonica, a tale of love and dedication to a single G harmonica that led him to theorize overblows and ultimately find them.

Howard's musical background however, was intense well before he got started on the harmonica, and although my own personal opinion is that it bears a lot on his musicianship, he explained how it also affected his playing. His first intrument was the piano, and he explained how he visualises a keyboard in his mind when playing the harmonica. Furthermore, he said, until he learnt to transpose in all twelve keys on the keyboard he had trouble playing in all twelve keys on the diatonic.

Howard then used a few select examples of how to play middle-eastern scales on the diatonic to move into the explanation of modes. Using the keyboard he explained how diatonic positions were laid out in a way that  followed the modes. I was glad that I had seen his video on New Directions for the Harmonica or I would have been at a loss to translate that part (I was actually complimented on my mastery of music theory at the end, which made me laugh a lot !)

From then on the class moved onto "how to chose the right harmonica for the job". Obviously, being capable of playing in any key on a given harmonica, doesn't mean that any tune or improvisation will sound good in any key. Some will sound better than others. Howard chooses the key or keys to play in based on how well the theme will lay, of there's a theme, and that's often a matter of where the pertinent notes to the tune or scale in question will lay. If the scale relies heavily on a major fifth, for example, being able to bend into or play a heavy vibrato on that note is a plus. Sometimes, it's more a matter of sequences of notes or even chords laying nicely.

At that point we were joined by Anthony Molinaro who had enoyed a lie-in and Howard asked him to play Stella by Starlight in all twelve keys in sequence and he played the theme and then a sequence of improvisation in each key. It wasn't as smooth as it could have been, but that more because Anthony had had no time think about the transposition of the chrod sequence before hand !

After this (somewhat musical) interlude, Howard demonstrated a structure of exercices designed to build up speed based on drum patterns, and in particular the amusingly named paradiddles.

par·a·did·dle (păr'ə-dĭd'l)
n.

A pattern of drumbeats characterized by four basic beats and alternating left-handed and right-handed strokes on the successive primary beats.

Using paradiddles as a base, Howard demonstrated how draw/blow could be substituted to left-hand/right-hand to build up fluency, with added complexity from the alternance of holes. Working on such exercices faster and faster also provides with runs that can be played without thinking, an important component of speed on the harmonica (or any instrument for that matter).

As far as I remember, that was roughly the ground that we covered, with Howard presenting his most recent records towards the end and apologising for not having let so many participants (nearly 30, I think) play in turn. All in all it was interesting to hear the man himself describe his craft although unsurprisingly, much of that material was present in his video. But then again I was there as a translator, so the fact that not everything was new to me was rather a bonus than a drawback.

 

Inside Out by Nick Mason

Last week, I treated myself to a somewhat expensive coffee table book entitled Inside Out : A Personal History of Pink Floyd. It's a thick 350 page book full of gorgeous photos and a very pleasantly written narration by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason of his memories with the band.

I've always been a great fan of Pink Floyd. I own, as far as I know, everything they released up to The Wall (I owned The Final Cut at some point but I really didn't like it, so I believe it was sold). Furthermore, my interest in 70s rock and particularly prog was recently rekindled, and I've been looking around for good books on the subject. So when I heard that this book was being released, I decided that I'd get it. Now I have. I just spent most of my week-end reading it from the first to the last page.

Nick Mason was, and still is for those who consider that Pink Floyd isn't a late band, the drummer of one of the most successful and long lasting rock bands. More interestingly in relation to the content of this book, he is the only member who was part of the band from day one and still is today. Rick Wright was officially fired in the early 80s, following the release of the Wall, David Gilmour only joined the band a few years after its inception when Syd Barrett started losing it, and Roger Waters, of course, left the band trying to sabotage it in the process but failing to do so after The Final Cut.

In terms of continuity, certainly, reading Nick Mason's memories of the band makes sense. In terms of working out the relationship between the members, I think it also makes sense since Nick seems to have been less confrontational when it came to relationships. At leats, it's the impression you get reading it. He describes himself as more of a passive member of the band. This has led to some of the criticism that I have read about this book, ie. that he doesn't take sides in the acrimony about the band's history and temporary demise after The Wall. I think it's one of the great strengths of the book, actually. I didn't want to read a bitter pamphlet of accusation, I wanted a somewhat neutral view of the band's history.

That's what I got, and I loved it. It's really good reading, with a lot of humour and little anecdotes that give a good feeling of what everyone's personality was like. As always with these books, it's not the big revelations, it's the accumulation of little things. I enjoy that, it's a bit like impressionistic painting, one brush stroke at a time.

Another interesting thing is that for the first time, never having been at a Pink Floyd concert, especially during the era where I would have liked to be able to (I was 10 when the original band sans Syd stopped touring) , I got a sense of the sheer scale of their live concerts. Not sure I would have liked them (especially since on most bootlegs I managed to find I felt that the singing wasn't on par with the rest) but it was so bloody huge it's just astounding to read about.

Anyway, it's a great book. As I mentioned above, I read it in one week-end straight and loved every minute of it. It's never boring, and the visuals are awesome.  If you're a Pink Floyd fan, you owe it to yourself to get it. It's that good.

Click here to purchase Inside Out from Amazon.com

Too tired to try

The deadly combination of too much work and young kids has finally done me in. For the last week or so I've been dragging myself, always exhausted despite many hours of sleep. I went in for a check with my doctor and got a blood sampling done. I should know more in a few days...

Meanwhile, I don't have the energy to write all the stuff I want to write here, so I thought I'd draw a list of "things to do" to remind myself later on, and so my faithful readers (if they exist) know what's coming up.

First of all I need to finish the St Aignan Festival report, including Howard Levy's Masterclasse and the Saturday night gigs as well as an overall post on the event.

Then there are many reviews I want to write. I received a few interesting albums featuring harmonica recently, including Olivier Ker Ourio's latest "Siroko", Sébastien Charlier's first called "Diatonic Revelation", and a few others.

I also want to review some non-harmonica albums, something I haven't done for too long. In particular, I've been intending to write about Aquarium Rescue Unit's "The Calling", one of the finest rock albums of recent years in my opinion. I was also quite taken by the stark elegance of Anthony Molinaro's solo recording "New Blue".

I guess I should also tell you about Eddie Manson soon, a wonderful chormatic player that Bill Barrett made me discover. So much to do, so little time...

Minor Swing

Yesterday, I went with Corentin, my son, to the Flea Market in St Ouen (les puces). It's the largest flea market around Paris and the birthplace of Gipsy Jazz. Every saturday and sunday there are old gypsies playing jazz in one or two of the bars, but yesterday there was a festival, called Jazz Musette. There were musicians everywhere ! I decided to take Corentin there because he quite likes live music anyway, and I don't often have the opportunity to take him to concerts during the daytime. I had another reason to go there : meeting up with Sébastien Charlier who was scheduled to play harmonica with some of these

As soon as we got out of the metro, we spotted a trio playing on the street, double-bass and two guitars. Nice stuff, very jazzy and fluid, but not quite the real thing. So we went into the heart of the market, in a tiny bar called La Chope des Puces. There, two old guitarists called Ninine et Mondine were playing, in a very relaxed style.

The place was packed (it's not hard!) but Sébastien was there. I put Corentin on my shoulders so that he could have a look at the guitarists. The music was wonderful. Just like with old blues, there was an uncertainty in the harmonies that was quite refreshing: the rhythm guitarist would change chords when he wanted rather than when the song required it, but everything flowed nonetheless, and the soloist would follow.

We stayed about twenty minutes, enough to hear Sébastien play St Louis Blues with Ninine and Mondine. We then walked down about thirty yards to another bar where three guitarists and an accordion player were tearing the place up. The accordion player, whose name I unfotunately didn't catch, was totally amazing. He was lightning fast and very iniventive harmonically, but never missed a beat and never overdid it.

We managed to sit down there and watch a couple of tunes. Again, Sébastien joined them, and they played Minor Swing. It was very nice and I was particularly thrilled to hear an old man on the other side of me suddenly say with a big smile on his face: "They have a mouth organ in there ?" I would have gladly stayed and listened to them some more, with or without Sébastien, but they broke up for a while at that moment.

So Corentin and I started wandering again and we soon found another trio, double-bass, accordion and guitar this time, playing in yet another bar. We had a really good view this time so I could actually take some photos. The music was nice, of course, but there was something more about these old guys. They looked just increadibly pleased that people were digging their stuff...

All in all we saw a good hour of music, which is roughly as much as Corentin had the patience for anyway, but he enjoyed himself (although the ice-cream he earned for letting his dad drag him there might have been a little part of that!) On the way back to the metro, we saw the band that had greeted us on the way in and stopped there another ten minutes. The photo displayed here shows Corentin looking at the musicians.

It was a cool Saturday. I enjoyed myself, got to hear great, heartfelt music (and a little harmonica) and spent the afternoon with my son. What more can you ask of life ?

More photos of St Aignan

While you wait for my final updates on the St Aignan festival (I should get onto it next week, hopefully) you can at least check out the faces of those mentioned so far: Kris Gibeau, harmonica enthusiast, contributor to the Harmonicales Festival in Limoges and radio DJ has opened a blog and posted a whole photo album of pictures taken during the festival. If you're interested, check out his blog !