Category Archives: Musicians

Recommended Kickstarter Campaign: recording of compositions for piano and shakuhachi by the Japanese composer Rando Fukuda played by Marco Lienhard and Charles Tang!

Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

I have known Marco Lienhard  for more than thirty years. We met in Osaka, Japan, when we were thirty years younger. At that time I studied Kendo at a sports college and had just started playing sax. Marco, as far as I can remember, was an exchange student. We both were young and starting our adult lives far in the Far East. Both of us had no idea that we would stay in Japan for a very long time and would master a specific Japanese art. Marco is one of the first Europeans to learn and master the shakuhachi and taiko drum in Japan, and I myself become a Kendo master. In 2008 NY brought us together.

Recently Marco joined my band SoSaLa on shakuhachi.

Recommended DooBeeDoo posts

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Dafnis Prieto: one of my favorite NY drummers in NY

Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Since coming to New York I have played with many drummers, but there is one drummer who I haven’t played with yet, but would love to: Dafnis Prieto. Whom I have already introduced to you, my dear reader, last year in this post.

What I love about Prieto is that he transposes elements from his Afro-Cuban musical background, rumba and son, into a jazzy drumming style incorporating congas and timbales in his playing. He’s able to to play very complex, poly rhythmic structures with extraordinary speed and precision. No wonder he’s one of Michel Camilo’s favorite drummers!

He’s putting out a new CD and here is his EPK to it. Very well produced. In the next DooBeeDoo music listings I will announce his CD release event dates at the Jazz Standard in NY.

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Musician in NY: why and how I met Michael Wimberly.

Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

My first encounter with the djembe was, when I played with Salif Keita and his band for the first at the Blue Note in Tokyo in 2001. Before the show I had no chance to rehearse with him. When Salif called me on stage to join him in one of his songs, I felt so insecure and was so scared. When he started the song I didn’t know what to do about myself. But things instantly changed when I started to play my solo. I could feel instantly that the djembe player was following me. He quickly developed a cool rapport with me. By doing so he gave me confidence in my performance. I could feel that he enjoyed the melodies and noise I created. Eventually we were grooving together, so did the whole band. Salif and the whole band enjoyed my contribution to the song. The audience got excited as well, so when we finished we received a standing ovation. What an experience!!!

Playing three nights with Salif at the Blue Note made me decide to look for a djembe player for my own band. I searched in the internet for djembe players in Tokyo and found out about an African restaurant in the outskirts of Tokyo which had African live music once a week.

Some weeks later there was a Senegalese music and dance show directed by the Senegalese sabar player Wagane N’Diaye Rose. Before going I thought that the sabar drum is kind of a djembe drum, but when I saw him playing I found out that I was wrong. It’s a different drum but played with the same spirit. Wagane invited me to sit in and wowwwwwwwwww it was great playing with him. I fell in love with him in the same way I did with Salif’s djembe player. A couple of months later he joined my band The Tehran-Dakar Brothers. After moving to New York I had following Senegalese musicians in my band: Mar Gueye (sabar), Masamba Diop (tama or talking drum), Cheikh Tarou B’Baye (sabar), Jean-Marie Collatin-Faye (djembe) and now Michael Wimberly (djembe and drums) who is American.

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Kickstarter Campaign: 577 RECORDS CURATOR SERIES 2012

Text by 577 Records

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

(Read more here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1987855001/577-records-curator-series-2012-0)

We are 577 Records, a small independent record label based in New York City. We have been releasing creative music for almost 12 years by musicians such as Daniel Carter, Federico Ughi, William Parker, Steve Swell, Sabir Mateen, Kirk Knuffke and many others.

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Iranian alternative rock bands moving out from Iran: Yellow Dogs and 127 in NY!!!

Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi!

Two things happened recently which made me write today’s post: first of all last Saturday at the “Celebrate Brooklyn” music festival I happen to meet the Iranian trombone player Salmak Khaledi who’s a member of the Iranian band 127, which is one of the first Iranian rock bands that toured the USA. (Their music is a mixture of rock, jazz and Iranian melodies.) We talked about our bands and about being a musician here and in present Iran.

And three days ago I got an email from a music colleague and friend Lukas Liget asking me whether I have heard of the Iranian band Yellow Dogs. First I thought that I didn’t know them but then I remembered that they were one of the Iranian band featured in the Iranian movie No One Knows About Persian Cats which DooBeeDoo featured some time ago.

Because Iran seems to be so far away from NY, people here think that there’s no no pop music, no indie rock, no club music…no techno, hip hop…even no Jazz. Not at all, there’s been a thriving underground music scene in Tehran for more than ten years!

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