Adam Rudolph the hand drummer
Performances
Since 2001 composer and handrummer, percussionist and conductor Adam Rudolph has conducted both Los Angeles and New York based versions of Go: Organic Orchestra a 15 to 30 piece woodwind, brass, strings and percussion group including concerts with special guest performers Yusef Lateef, poet Saul Williams and hand drum legend, Big Black. The group was chosen by the LA Weekly as “Outstanding World Music Group” in both 2003 and 2005.
New York-based Hassan Hakmoun, one of contemporary Moroccan music’s most notable figures, was born in Marrakesh in 1963. At age seven he began to study tagnawit, the traditional arts, folklore, and rituals of the Gnawa tribes, former slaves originating from the Sudan whose arrival in Morocco was marked by their conversion to Islam.
The Gnawa people act as intermediaries in the spirit world and also as entertainers; Hakmoun initially studied their dances and songs, later graduating to drumming, litanies, and chants. He left school at the age of 14 to travel in the pursuit of other Gnawa masters, eventually ending up in France; upon returning to Marrakesh, Hakmoun’s repertoire continued to grow — later including songs of Arab and Berber descent — and he performed as a m’allem, or master musician of the derdeba, a trance ritual held to placate the spirits. Hassan became a Master of the Santir (a three string,long necked lute).
Abdoulaye “Djoss” Diabaté is a Malian musician born to a famous West African griot family. Little brother to the great, world-renowned singer Kassé Mady, he grew up in the celebrated griot village of Kela, Mali. His mother, Sira Mory Diabaté, was a singer who defined her generation.¹ His mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters² were, and still are, at the heart of Mandé culture: the cream of the country’s instrumentalists, singers, dancers, historians and story-tellers. His extended family reads like a who’s who of Mandé music in Mali, Guinea, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea Bissau.
His credentials as a recording engineer and producer
Martin Bisi the engineer and producer
As the person responsible for recording a dizzying number of groundbreaking albums by the likes of Sonic Youth, Bill Laswell, John Zorn, Herbie Hancock, Brian Eno, the Swans, Foetus, Cop Shoot Cop,The Boredoms, Unsane and The Dresden Dolls—to name just a few.
By Gerry Hemingway
Article courtesy All About Jazz
I am writing to offer my insights about the experience of listening from the perspective of being a musician. The art of listening is, of course, a somewhat open-ended topic that, for the sake of this article, will concentrate primarily on a few points of what I have observed and can articulate verbally about on the experience of music and sound for me as a player and creator of composed and improvised music. I am hoping that sharing my experience may enrich your next encounter with a music performance or recording.
