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anti-looper bigots / Miles & Teo



JD wrote:
" Hey, Bill,  I'm no academic in this realm by any stretch, but how do 
you figure in people like Martin Denny who seemed to ( perhaps, 
haphazardly) play any instrument they found from any part of the world? 
And, I think, maybe a few years earlier than the mentioned masters."

Hey JD,  I'm going to assume that you made the mistake that our father 
used to make all the time (and all our friends as well) and
that you confused me,  Rick ,  with my brother Bill.

If not, disregard my reply and wait for one from Bill.  It's just that 
you quoted my post  to respond to so I'll make the obvious assumption.

So,  my answer is that I'm really talking about popular movements in 
music:   movements that affected the masses and the largest share of 
musicians in general.
People like Martin Denny (and David Lindley in our country) were vastly 
ahead of the curve in their fusion of ethnic musics and instruments and 
styles
so they are the exception to the phenomena I've been talking about.  
They also didn't start an avalanche of influence that resulted in people
copying what they did.   They are magnificent islands in the stream of 
that popular musical history.

Also,  I was speaking pretty specifically about percussion which is my 
lifelong field of expertise,  so I wasn't really referring to string 
instruments.

What instruments did Martin Denny play in those days out of 
curiosity?    Lindley , pretty specifically,  was playing Americana folk 
instruments and a
couple of instruments from the Middleeast in his group Kaleidescope in 
the late 60's.

*******************
*******************

So called 'ethnic music'  (a term which I"m really uncomfortable as I 
consider rock 'n roll to be folk music and hence, ethnic,   just the 
music of the folk of my country and others) has been prevalent in the 
Colonial (Imperialist) countries since those countries started 
conquering peoples around the world.
In the sixties and early seventies  I found lots of many records on the 
Nonesuch label of world traditional music.    There were just very few 
of them where I live
in Northern California compared to the explosion that would occur with 
the so called 'World Beat' movement that I would be part of in the early 
80's.
Modern popular music and jazz just didn't have a lot of influence from 
these cultures for the most part.

In my small part of the world, during the early to mid eighties that 
there was an explosion in commercial interest in world music, both 
traditional and fusion varieties.

Before that, however, in my  home town, Santa Cruz, which at one point 
had the only large concert venue dedicated specifically to World Music 
and World Music Fusion (World Beat----that horrid, horrid term again)  I 
remember lobbying and lobbying the booker for the local large rock 
showcase club, the Catalyst until he relented and booked the first 
Reggae bands,  the first African Bands,  the first Middleeastern 
groups.   In those days I was so fanatically and obsessively interested 
in so called World Music that I did everything in my power to bring it 
to my community.     I remember my wife at the time,  Janet Ring and I 
going down to the Civic Auditorium and
at 7:00 a.m. in the morning to meet a bewildered group of musicians from 
the Uzulu Dance Theatre  to bring them back to our home for bagels and 
coffee and
private lessons and dance classes I'd set up for them to make some money 
so that they would come teach us about their artistry.

A mere five years after these humble beginnings,  acts like  Thomas 
Mapfumo, Youssou NDour, Babtunde Olatunji, Sunny Ade, Johnny Clegg and 
Savuka, the Gypsy Kings,  Les Negresses Verte,  a plethora of big Reggae 
Acts to numerous to mention and many, many other groups from the 
Middleeast were suddenly headliners at
all the biggest venues and their were multiple clubs that catered 
partially or entirely to them.

Then, in Santa Cruz, this amazing world instrument (though primarily 
percussion) store called Rhythm Fusion opened up...............Places 
like Lark in the Morning which for a long time had catered to ethnic 
music enthusiasts suddenly began to have increasingly large catalogues 
and ever since it's been a cornucopia if you wanted to start finding
unusual ethnic instruments to start to learn on.

And , of course,  all of this refers to just what was commercially 
available to people and musicians where I live.  Every part of the world 
has a slightly different
time line for this explosion of influences and access to the musical 
instruments that made them.