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| June, 2006 | ||
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Imagine setting mystical Urdu and Persian poetry from the 14th and 15th centuries to music, using traditional Persian instruments and electronic effects. Add a female singer with a dark, haunting voice and a producer who is well-known for his dance mixes, and you have Niyaz. Vocalist and composer Azam Ali was born in Iran, raised in India and moved to the United States as a teenager. Composer Ramin Loga Torkian plays a variety of Persian, Turkish, and Kurdish traditional instruments. He was also born in Iran and moved to the United States as a teenager. Carmen Rizzo, who mixed and produced the CD and plays the electronic instruments, is a popular producer/programmer on the electronic dance scene. Niyaz makes this eclectic mix of instruments and technique work. The music is exotic, spiritual, and meaningful while also being complex and fun to dance to.
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 Amjad Ali Khan Real World Records CD, $17.95 For centuries, Indian music has been passed down from master to student, creating very old families and lineages of musical tradition. Amjad Ali Khan is a link in this long chain, having learned to play the sarod from his father, and now accompanied on this CD by his two sons, Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash. This CD is a collection of original ragas composed by Amjad Ali Khan, but the sound is not the same as most other traditional recordings of Indian music, which usually feature the sitar. To start with, the sarod has a very different sound—more like a steel guitar from country music than the nasal twang of the sitar. The last song on this CD features Amjad Ali Khan singing. His hypnotic voice, with the surprisingly free and soulful sounds of the sarod are very liberating. | ||
 Chöying Drolma and Steve Tibbetts Six Degrees Records CD, $16.98 In this collaboration between American guitarist Steve Tibbetts and Tibetan nun Chöying Drolma, the beautiful meditative chants were recorded in Boudhanath, a Tibetan community in Nepal. Then Tibbetts and percussionist Marc Anderson worked in an American studio, adding guitar, hand drums, and subtle electronic effects. Perhaps the most startling thing about this CD is how well it all works together—recorded months, and worlds apart. Tibbetts finds subtle jazz rhythms in unexpected places and sneaks in some tasty guitar solos. This is not a dreamy soundscape, but a purposeful accompaniment to the vocals. Everything he does is with the utmost respect for the spiritual integrity of Chöying Drolma’s singing. The result is a CD that leaves you feeling strangely energetic and peaceful at the same time. | ||
Land of the Feathered Serpent Jim Berenholtz and Mazatl Galindo founded Xochimoki Twenty years ago to revive authentic Mesoamerican music played on indigenous instruments. All the music is played on a fascinating array of pre-Columbian Aztek and Mayan instruments, and that’s a big part of what I like about it; nothing extra has been added to it. There’s a wide assortment of drums, flutes, trumpets, gongs, rattles, and other instruments, including a turtle shell drum played with deer antlers. The songs on the CD are about ancient Mayan ceremonial centers, sacred Aztek volcanoes, cosmologies, and cultural traditions of the native peoples of Mesoamerica. The music itself is richly textured, with exciting and changing rhythms. It’s unfamiliar, but in a really pleasant way—it takes you somewhere completely new. | ||
| —Beth Adleman | ||
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