Dulce Pontes is a fado goddess. She sings the fourth track on my album, 'Se É Pra Vir Que Venha', and she performs the hell out of it! Estrella Morente is a flamenco wonder. I first came across her in the movie Volver, when her amazing performance of the title song was lip synched by none other than Penelope Cruz.
Two of the most soulful voices in the world, from stylistically similar traditions: fado and flamenco. I would have loved to have seen this tour. I think they do reunion concerts from time to time... wish I could read Portuguese, so I could actually tell what was going on on Dulce's website.
My Maori friends Hui-a (made up of Jerome Kavanagh and Ben Mullon) have released their debut EP, Got To Live. Both artists are of Maori ancestry, and I had the good fortune to work with them in December of 2007, during my recording sessions at Abbey Road. They perform a haka and whakorero on the final track of my album, a Maori song called 'Kia Hora Te Marino'.
Also guesting on the EP is the singer Kevin Mark Trail of The Streets. The album's a great blend of traditional Maori chants and instruments, accompanied by contemporary beats. Anyone who's a fan of traditional music blended with modern instrumentation ought to give it a listen.
I quite like the title track 'Got To Live' myself. I think it would make great late-night driving music for the Los Angeles highways. It's amazing how some of those Taonga Puoro sound like wolf howls.
The Angel City Chorale performed 'Baba Yetu' tonight in their One World Many Voices concert--a full evening of music from around the world. At the invitation of the choir, I attended the concert, held at the Wilshire United Methodist Church in Los Angeles.
Their rendition of 'Baba Yetu' was excellent! They turned it into a slow gospel number... totally unexpected, but really effective. It made me think that there's a lot of potential for releasing such an arrangement/recording of the song. (Special nod to the tenor soloist Vini Marques, who did a great job as well.)
As for the rest of the program, it was a very diverse set list, including songs from Bulgaria, Argentina, Russia, Mongolia... really, it was right up my alley. Kudos to Sue Fink, the Artistic Director of the choir, for such challenging and diverse programming!
They're doing one more performance tomorrow night, Sunday June 7th, at 7:00 PM. Los Angeles locals should consider checking them out--they're quite an impressive group. Click here for more info.
Hopefully I'll get to work with them some more, perhaps on some future choral works--perhaps even some of the songs on Calling All Dawns.
The final stop on my tri-continental trip was Johannesburg, where I was scheduled to rehearse and record with the Grammy-winning Soweto Gospel Choir, darlings of the world-music scene and perennial Grammy favorites. They will be the featured artists on my re-recording of 'Baba Yetu' for my album, Calling All Dawns.
The Soweto Gospel Choir, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, performing my music... now THAT'S exciting.
Here are pictures from the rehearsals:
And here we are at the recording session:
(On a side note, I promise that I really *do* have more poses than 'left arm raised' and 'chin down in thought', but for some reason the camera seems to catch me in one of these positions more often than not.)
Richard Mitchell did the engineering. The studio was SABC Studios Johannesburg.
I'm very, very pleased with how it turned out. The choir has some amazing voices, and the new version of Baba Yetu is going to be awe inspiring.
The Maori people of New Zealand have an old tradition called the haka. It's a choreographed group dance that's commonly associated with a pre-battle ritual, whereby Maori warriors would shout, stomp and make threatening gestures at their opponents as a means of intimidating them. Today, the Maori aren't waging too many wars, but the tradition is alive and well, most famously with the New Zealand All Blacks, pretty much the best rugby team in the world. The All Blacks have been performing the haka for over a century now, and it's one of the great traditions in sports.
It really is just an awe-inspiring. (Except if you're the French team in this video, in which case you're probably wetting yourself at this moment.)
I'm closing my album with a Maori song, and with the help of Jerome Kavanagh, a Maori collaborator who happens to be an expert on traditional Maori instruments and music, I'm integrating parts of this tradition into the track. I figure if I can harness just a tenth of the goose-bump-inducing power of the All Blacks haka, I'll have a fine finish to the album. Yet at the same time, I have to be careful; the Maori are very proud of their heritage, and are very protective of their traditions. Whatever I do, and however I do it, I need to proceed with the utmost respect for their culture and traditions. I hope, though, that my intentions will be considered honorable; at once I want to increase awareness of their extraordinary musical and oratorical traditions, and at the same time, integrate it into the over-arching message of Calling All Dawns: that we are all one and the same, and all travel the same journey through life and death.
