DBDBD NY – cross-cultural on-line magazine – believes based on the view that music and community are indivisible that a social awareness can be fostered through music.
Date: December 19, 2012 Venue: the STONE Review by Dawoud Kringle
On a cold night close to Christmas, and close to December 21, bassist/composer/ bandleader Damon Banks appeared at The Stone.
Damon Banks is a well known bassist in New York who has worked with Miki Howard, Hassan Hakmoun, Karsh Kale, George Benson, SoSaLa, and many others. On this night, he was joined by Graham Haynes (trumpet), Manu Koch (keys), Bruce Cox (drums), and Brian Prunka (guitar and oud. Prunka also plays with Banks in SoSaLa and leads his own band Nashaz).
I didn’t know that for almost two decades a group of Israeli women who called their movement Women of The Wall have been fighting for their right to pray at the the Western Wall in Jerusalem, which is one of Judaism’s holiest sites, carrying a Torah (a prayer shawl).
The Western Wall which is also known as the Wailing Wall is a holy site for both Muslims and Jews. It is believed to have been erected around 19 B.C. at the time of Herod the Great, and has been the site for Jewish prayer and pilgrimage for many centuries. Its structure stands at the western side of the iconic Temple Mount.
Their goal is to abolish the 2003 Israeli Supreme Court ruling that prohibited women from carrying a Torah at the site, a right which is traditionally reserved only for men. They believe that the holy site belongs to all Jewish people regardless of gender. In the past few months a number of women carrying the Torah were arrested by police officers. These arrests have sparked an international outcry.
I love YouTube…and by chance I found this short documentary film in YouTube. Visually and musically this film is so beautiful that I decided to post it in DooBeeDoo. This short film says so much in such a short time. It tells and shows us about one thing that we aren’t aware of in our daily lives. Guess what?
Some time ago I attended a performance at The Stone in New York City with Steve Gorn and Curtis Bahn. Gorn played flute, bansuri, and percussion, and Bahn played electronic sitar, esraj, and laptop. As I sat on the floor in the uncomfortably hot and humid room, I was enraptured by the multi-layered sounds of the two masters. Gorn is no stranger to listeners of Indian classical music. Additionally, he has a background in classical and non-classical western music; trained in jazz and electronic music. Bahn, a student of Ustad Shaheed Parvez Khan, and computer programmer, had commissioned the building of a completely different instrument that combined the sitar with new design technologies, and unprecedented electronics, including a computer interface. The instrument has WII controller – motion sensors / physical sensors, pitch sensor, accent sensor, etc. The bow of his esraj was outfitted with a motion sensor. These all ran through a laptop with a program he wrote. The duo made marvelous use of both acoustic and electronic sounds, blending them perfectly within their improvisations. Samples were looped, tabla tarang sounds held down intricate rhythms. The overall concert was astonishingly beautiful. It was a music that spoke of a timeless truth. I left the Stone with a refreshed outlook on everything; something the best musical performances should do for the audience.
Not long afterward, my friend Sohrab (who publishes this magazine) started bugging me for the article I promised him. Naturally, I said “Yeah, I’ll get right on it” (poor Sohrab; he hears that from me all too often.) But, after some rumination, I abandoned the idea of writing a review. There was something else happening here; evidence of something greater.
