Tuesday, July 3, 2007

African Music as Social Fabric at pointofdeparture.org


Just published a long piece at Bill Shoemaker's excellent pointofdeparture.org on-line journal. Check it here.

2 comments:

Peter Breslin said...

Hi- Took me a while to carve out the time to give your Point of Departure piece the attention it deserves. Wonderfully written and a remarkable window into West Africa. I am particularly struck by your experience of the rhythms you learned and then transcribed and taught ending up different from the "real thing" when you returned and tried to play them again. My interpretation of many rhythmic cultures often undergoes this strange shift, whether I'm attempting to play a traditional Cuban figure or transcribing and playing a set of Philly Joe Jones fours.

PB

Harris Eisenstadt said...

thanks for taking the time peter, glad it was of interest. what can i say, the (respectfully) broken telephone seems inevitable. short of living over there for a really long time and truly immersing myself, seems hard to avoid.