Author Archives: Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Music Listings – 10/7 through 10/13/13

1. Kavita Shah’s VISIONS

Date: Monday,  October 7, 2013
Time: 8pm to 9pm
Venue: ShapeShifter Lab (18 Whitwell Pl, between Carroll St & 1st St, Brooklyn, NY 11215, 646-820-9452)
Ticket: $12
Genre: traditional sounds of the Indian tablas and West African kora interlaced with jazzy elements
Hailed by Downbeat as Best Graduate Jazz Vocalist (2012) and winner of an ASCAP Young Jazz Composers Award (2013), Kavita Shah makes her debut with “Visions.” Co produced by renowned Benin-born guitarist Lionel Loueke (Herbie Hancock, Terence Blanchard), “Visions” features the traditional sounds of the Indian tablas and West African kora interlaced with those of a jazz quintet. In the musical conversation that ensues, a surprisingly fresh, genre-bending sound is born: one anthematic of Ms. Shah’s multiculural, global generation.

Kavita Shah – voice, arrangements, compositions
Yacouba Sissoko – kora
Stephen Cellucci – tablas
Michael Valeanu – guitar
Guy Mintus – piano
Sam Anning – bass
Guilhem Flouzat – drums

+ Special Guest Adam O’Farrill

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DooBeeDoo Endorses: INDIA MUSIC WEEK & BOMBAY JAYASHRI

1Presented by ARC
Co-Sponsor by HarmoNYom
461New York-The ARChive of Contemporary Music (ARC) announces the launch of India Music Week (IMW) from October 6-13, 2013!

This will be a full week of concerts, radio shows and academic events occurring around the world. IMW will be an online website to present, promote and explore the rich cultural heritage of Indian music of the past, present and future. IMW will offer videos, histories, seminars, concerts, lectures, sound files, sheet music, broadcasts, narrowcasts, album cover art galleries, essays, blogs, photos and links all highlighting the importance and beauty of Indian music as well as educate a global audience about it’s many genres and facets.

For full program of Events and Concerts:

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Concert Review: Arifa…a lush and joyful tapestry of sound filled the air

DSCF1486Date: September 19, 2013
Venue: Drom (NY)

Review by Dawoud Kringle, photo by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

A lush and joyful tapestry of sound filled the air. A melody of sweetness from the clarinet rose above it. Thus began Arifa‘s performance at Drom. They’re presently on tour, and this was one of two performances in NYC; the other being at the Kennedy Center.

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Asia Society Symposium: The Shiraz Arts Festival (Iran) – A Global Vision Revisited

Date: Saturday, October  5, 2013
Time: 10am – 5pm
Venue: Asia Society (725 Park Avenue, New York)
Ticket: $25
Genre: symposium

From 1967 to 1977, the Shiraz Arts Festival in Iran was an important international festival, hosting a dizzying array of artists, from the avant-garde to the traditional. The eclectic mix included Western artists from theater including Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook, and Robert Wilson; music including John Cage, Olivier Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis, Max Roach and Karlheinz Stockhausen; and dance including Merce Cunningham. Asian and African performances included Ravi Shankar, Indian Kathakali, the Senegalese National Ballet, Balinese Music and Dance, and Noh Theater among others.

1977 Shiraz Arts Festival poster.

1977 Shiraz Arts Festival poster.

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North Korea Scoop: a musician and former lover of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un, Hyon Song-Wol suffered the death penalty on August 20, 2013!!!

metal_postcard_anim.2Text by Metal Postcard Records (Hong Kong)

North Korea never ceases to surprise. Kim Jong-un‘s ex girlfriend Hyon Song-Wol the singer with the Unhasu Orchestra somewhat embarrassed the current leadership with a purported sex video ( although it’s also been revealed that members of the orchestra had also been caught with bibles in their possession) which meant she and other band members were summarily machine gunned to death their familes sent off to prison camps along with anybody who actually witnessed the executions. This for a woman who’d been the president’s former lover and the singer of such dittos as “Footsteps of The Soldiers” and “We are Troops of the Party”   Here she is singing the bizarrely titled “Girl In The Saddle Of A Steed”  The whole affair has brought back this 1977 Top Of The Pops performance.

This is the purportedly pornographic video of Hyon Song Wol  which was uploaded to Chinese video host Youku. The video isn’t really a sex tape, but just a dance routine dance set to Elvis Presley’s “Aloha Oe.”