G reetings Good Folks!
Coming to you today with a story that fuses Charlie Yardbird Parker’s boplicity with Ravi Shankar’s disciplined trance ragas.
But first, it’s worth circulating the word on an upcoming September 9 house concert in La Jolla. It’ll be me, Danny, and Mack playing jazz, traditional Mexican folk songs, Brazilian samba, Carole King, Great American standards, and Beatle extracts. Late afternoon, wine and cheese, amazing house, and good music folks. If this sounds promising look below for the details.
At the end of this week it’s our band playing zapped out Cole Porter music at Tio Leo’s in SD. What a killer venue for music! Rebecca is singing along with Danny, Tripp, Mack, Duncan and me. It’s Sunday 9/3.
So looping back to Bird Raga –it’s the name of a song I wrote and also the name of an album I recorded back in 1980 for Xanadu Records. The song got it’s name because back then, and like now, I remain a big fan of Charlie Parker’s bebop and on the other vector of sound, Ravi Shankar’s Indian music. Charlie Parker’s nick name was Bird. Ravi played ragas which are songs based on one scale. There are morning ragas and evening ragas and each of them has their own unique color. So my song uses the scale (raga) of bebop along with the rhythmic discipline of Ravi.
The reason I’m bringing this up is that last week this article came out.
The writer is way into Bird Raga and goes to great lengths sharing his thoughts about the 43 year old album. Wicked and fun!
And out of the blue two orders for the vinyl release along with four album downloads show up on our online store. There hasn’t been a vinyl order in 7 years! Hah!
Well indeed our thanks to Aquarium Drunkard for digging up the ancient tablets of bop.
And last on the list we bring you a new single vid release of John Coltrane’s song “Wise One.” It’s John’s freeform meditative vibe out front transitioning to an Elvin-ish bossa nova groove. There’s a world of wisdom in Coltrane’s composition and we feel fortunate to take it for a ride.
thanks and see you soon, Peter