seeline

I would pay $$$ to be allowed to play the Cloud Chamber Bowls.

Hype Machine and Stereomood work much the same way as Grooveshark, by aggregating and streaming content found all over the internet. (Both are free, but require signup in order to get unlimited access.) Blip.fm is similar, although you have to sign up for a free "DJ account" in order to access the search features. (PS.: My Hype Machine link above is shameless self-promotion; their main URL is here.) Edited to add: Personally, I'm not a Pandora fan... I don't think their setup (which is designed to suggest music via automated analysis of the characteristics of what you're listening to) works well in practice, though it's better now that their library is bigger. Early on, it actually coughed up Perry Como songs after I'd listened to some Brazilian music. (Then again, maybe I'm just "strange." )

Same here. I think it's worth noting that sometimes NOLA-area artists have had big hits on various islands in the Caribbean, while staying unknown (in the US) outside of NOLA and environs. The reason? Radio stations that can easily be picked up on this islands. (A Jamaican jazz reviewer who used to post over at AAJ had some interesting things to say about this - I think his username is jazzofonik. The threads are all archived, but should show up in a search.)

The whole is this or isn't this jazz [or insert other genre name]?" question just doesn't matter that much to me. Good music is good music!

jeff, I didn't intend to sound... I dunno, whatever! about this. But just last week, I saw a fairly well-known musician complaining - on another board - re. how nobody wanted to listen to their set, because the audience wanted that funky NOLA stuff. That didn't sit well with me. I *really* appreciate what you're saying about the musicians' attitude, too! cheers!

I love brass bands (and not just NOLA-style bands). Count me among the puzzled regarding them not being jazz bands - they swing like crazy, no matter what they're playing! To my ears, many different kinds of music from NOLA are all intertwined, and they have a distinctly different feel from, say, early KC-style music, or NY-style mingling of jazz and "Latin" musics. (The quotation marks are there because the word "Latin" is pretty imprecise.)... etc. The disconnect between dance music and jazz seems ... well, I wish it was a line that didn't exist. And I wonder what all the NOLA-area brass band members would say on this question... Just my .02-worth, anyway.

Many boards have standing policies about quoting PMs: it's not OK to do so, and posts that quote PMs get deleted. That seems fairest to everyone.

Or not. I have little love for it myself.

Re. Lew Tabackin, were you meaning his performances with Toshiko's big band, or his small-group recordings, or both? A lot of those flute parts he plays with the band are meant to sound like shakuhachi parts (melodically as well as technically). Am assuming Lew uses a custom headjoint in order to be able to get that sound, but I don't know for sure. His ability to create that sound on a Western flute is pretty amazing!

D'oh! (Really; I didn't look at my own post.) Thanks. [blushes]

i've seen the pic; I don't understand what you mean by it....

???

While I'm very grateful to have digitized versions of these LPs, I do think worldservice is likely right about the sound quality - especially from vinyl to the MP3 versions. (Although the most painful "transfer" I've heard/owned was of Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin, a Philips reissue. I bet this sounds terrific on vinyl, but the CD version literally hurt my ears!)

I've never understood the prejudices against flute, myself. But it's *not* an easy instrument to learn/play, and that might be part of it...

Looks like there's a ton of nice charanga stuff on the Tube. I pulled this one because it's actually titled "Trompeta y Flauta." NYC's own Orquesta Broadway!

I *love* this guy - Boubacar Jallow (Diallo) -

Here's another gent, Bassirou Sanou, playing the tambin (from the Fulani aka Peul people, W. Africa) - (I have no idea why the video says "flute mandingue," because it comes from the Fulani.)

You're right that the typical flute in charangas was wooden, until very recently. Here's a West African flutist (likely from Guinea, Mali or Senegal) for ya - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azSm1aGAFhg Side note: the drums on the far right are Senegalese (near right are Mali and/or Guinea-ish), so that's what I'm banking on, but it's anyone's guess!

I wanted to say something about the supposedly "feminine" character of the instrument - as viewed by a lot of people in the US, anyway - but decided not to. However I think you're right - which doesn't explain the popularity of wood and metal Boehm-system flutes in much Brazilian and Cuban music. I guess the more "macho" societies don't have any hangups with that. Musicians from northeastern Brazil (Hermeto Pascoal, for one) have made no secret of their love for it (in all sizes and shapes and musical contexts), and there's a parallel tradition in Rio, wich choro and a lot of popular music. As for amplification, I dunno: flute can be very cutting and shrill! But quills sound very cool - nothing like Zamfir! here are some examples, by Big Boy Cleveland and Henry Thomas: http://spinninginair.blogspot.com/2008/01/quill.html

The African American fife and drum tradition survived mainly in northern Mississippi. And yes, they call the hand-carved cane fifes "fifes." the same is true for "quills" (panpipes) that can be heard on some very early "blues" recordings - some of henry Thomas' sides, for example, though I'm sure Allen L. could provide far more detail than I can. Either way, I'm not sure that anyone was much interested in recording music from northern Mississippi - other than Alan Lomax, that is. Strickland's and Turner's music has been influential for a number of younger artists, and there are good articles about both of them, available in print journals and on the web, too. There are some CDs available as well. I've got an anthology on the Testament label. fwiw, the Brazilian pife groups (which mainly come from the NE part of the country) sound very similar. Again, the fifes are made of cane or bamboo, and the bands also play bass drums - handmade wooden ones with natural skin heads. (I've got some examples of this music on my blog.) Here's a somewhat modernized, jazzified adaptation, with reed player Carlos Malta and his group Pife Muderno - AFAIK, flute in a number of genres of Brazilian music - most notably choro - goes way back, to the mid-19th c., or even earlier. (Choro started approx. 1870, as a defined style, as far as I'm aware, though i really should doublecheck that.) I think it's likely a similar timeline with charangas - originally called charanga francesca, because the instrumentation and style came from plantation owners who fled from Saint Domingue to Cuba, during the Haitian Revolution - and most especially from the slaves they brought with them. You can go way back, as far as popular music in Cuba, for flute leads - Cachao and his brother and sister composed danzones and mambos that used it. There's a gorgeous piece called "Africa Viva!" - with flute lead - that Cachao's brother created (partly by lifting the melody of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"). You can see/ hear this on Andy Garcia's doc about Cachao - Like his Rhythm there is No Other" - which seems not to be available on DVD. (Cachao talked about how his brother came up with the piece, etc.) There are some beautiful W. African flute traditions, too... so I don't think it's a stretch to say that there's a confluence of African, Native American (in Brazil and elsewhere), Western European and "creole" (New World) musics, styles and ideas - plus the presence of military ensembles and the instruments they played. (Even the early keyed brass stuff!)

Fife and drum *is* an African American thing, though... though it's only survived in certain places. Turner's 1st name is sometimes spelled "Otha," and he recorded under that spelling. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00v9cBGpMMo Who knows what might have happened if a record label or two had pulled some fife and drum players into a studio? Napolean Strickland was another cane fifer; Alan Lomax recorded him and wrote about him. I believe that's him in the 1st clip I posted above - Lomax did some filming, but AFAIK, he never made the entire reel public. I wish I knew the answer to this, but I don't!

The scenes in the last episode - where Sonny's at the juke joint in Texas - came across as fairly sinister (in the way they portrayed him, that is). He's been nursing a grudge against her for two episodes now, and I don't think he's going to give that up. For her part, Annie comes across to me as very trusting and, in some ways, naive. That doesn't bode well for her, I'm thinking, but who knows? fwiw, IMDB has Annie listed as being in a large number of episodes, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. (I think sometimes there is misleading "info." posted there so that viewers won't be able to determine if a character leaves a show for whatever reason.) Edited to add: Sonny's pals - the ones who talked him into going to Texas for the jam session - also came across to me as young, naive and fanboy-ish. (Or wannabe-ish, maybe?)

I'd like to believe that, RJ, but Sonny is already jealous and bitter about her spending time with other musicians (all men) and the fact that she's playing good gigs. Almost sounds like the plotline for an opera...

I've been thinking (for the past two episodes) that things aren't going to end well for her... but that's just my hunch.

Sonny: I have no idea!