2010-07-13 Interviews with Sándor Szabó and Kevin Kastning
Sándor Szabó and Kevin Kastning have created four albums of subtle, spiritual and emotional music each recorded in a single day. There were no overdubs and nothing changed post-recording. Each song tells a story that comes from the heart, from the Source and from the beyond. They play extended guitars with the skill of masters. They know what they are after. Each describes a process of letting go, getting out of the way, and allowing Music to sing through their strings. The "interview" below was conducted through email on the subject of the latest album called "Returning."
Click the images below to read the interviews:
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2010-03-30 Fela Kuti - The creator of Afro-Beat
The "Black President" suffered humiliation, beatings, imprisonment and torture until his death in 1997. A million people marched through the streets of Lagos to pay him homage one last time. Fela leaves behind him a combat, an ideology, sixty albums, the memory of the "Kalakuta Republic," and the mythical "Shrine," the real historical temple of Afro-beat.....
In October 2000, Femi Kuti created the New Africa Shrine. Like his father, Femi has dedicated his music to spreading the message with his group, The Positive Force, and to mobilizing Africans and the African Diaspora towards the idea of a united Africa.
Though Fela constructed a permanent Shrine in his lifetime, he always called Africa Shrine subsequent venues where he performed with his group Africa 70 and later Egypt 80.....
"The Shrine should not be seen as a nightclub, it should be regarded as a place of worship - more sacred than the churches and mosques that abound throughout African cities." ~ Fela Anikulapo Kuti
~ From the the scroll before the title sequence of the film Femi Kuti: Live at the Shrine (a film about Fela Kuti's son and his music)
The video below is a video of Fela Kuti and his band "Egypt 80" performing in New York City:
"American Velvet" is a first rate tribute album to The Velvet Undergound. It is both an introduction to 13 worthy artists and an alternate look at some familiar songs from the original alternative band.
Blue King Brown is that roots/reggae/Afro-beat juggernaut from Oz that has become Carlos Santana's favorite band. He says they are the future in music. These guys are great!
Baoku Moses and the Image Afro-Beat have brought Afro-Beat to the Midwest with a powerful message of unity against the machine. Baoku's combination of Nigerian and Senegalese rhythm, American jazz, and social consciousness have musicians and listeners together to dance to a different drummer.
Barry Cleveland's Hologramatron is a 21st Century protest record with songs featuring biting, sometimes brutal, commentary on the state of the Western world.…
What's Rattlin' on the Moon is Beppe's dialogue with fellow composer Mike Ratledge. It is as though Crovella were saying, "This is where you took me with that song, and this is somewhere else I found from there." It's a little like describing a dream, or a trip, or a moment of illogical inspiration.…
Pianovagando: "It is an invented word (I like to create new words) that means travelling with piano, in my memories, to me the piano is my 'car' or my 'horse', my diary, my mirror, my portrait."…
"I didn’t know it before writing “Pianovagando” but the subject of ...searchin’ more in our past is fascinating, like watching a film a second or third times when you “get something” you didn’t get in the first play, and sometimes you understand it even more. Differently from Beckett, my jump into my past is “lighter” in “drama” but at the same times full of depths of different kinds, without a real path, just picking up cards, in the big box of our life: sometimes you pick up an event that maybe changed your life and sometimes is just an “innocent” card, that by viewing it more accurately, can show its colors, sometimes in a surprising way!" …
This band does for me what Oscar Peterson did all by himself. The movement in the style of the story in these songs seems to take every angle like some Rashomon of a thing. Instrumental music of any description tends to take a journey or define a specific place in the mind or memory. On Blues for Tony, I feel the wind in my face as I look out the window on the fast tunes. The slower tempos can be as free as a firefly around a specific flame as we sit by and look a little deeper as I listen to the leaves, birds and the crackle of the warming bonfire. …
The Merrg is a band of indigenous Australian's bringing an aboriginal world view to pop with the talent and songwriting ability of a Los Lobos from Down Under. They won an award for Best International Band at a Toronto festival soon after this review. These guys are indigenous genius!
I'm Billy Sheppard and this is Billy's Bunker. The Bunker has been two years in the making before appearing on this website. This writing started as a blog on myspace written for a lark. This site now functions as a filter for good indie music of all descriptions. There are not negative reviews, and very little criticism. I don't believe in five star ratings. I don't think any song is 10% better than any other. Music is a gift, and if it works at all it causes people to feel something. Emotions are unruly things. You know them when you feel them. There's not much to account for what makes a song good. I know it when I feel it. You know it too, and what works for me may not work for you. I'm not smarter than the music, and I don't play it, don't write songs. Most of what I know I picked up from hundreds of conversations with composers and songwriters over the years. I listen to the music I write about longer and deeper than any sane normal listener, and I daresay more than most critics of this music. Maybe these reviews are fan letters, but they aren't some smart guy showing off what he thinks will sell in the marketplace. I'd rather write about a great unknown album that won't get played on the radio than some cookie cutter hit that will line the pockets of accountants and suits in the music industry. If you are looking for something to listen to, this site may have something you need. The world may not be saved by music, but without it there wouldn't be much to save.
Music is music is music is music. Pop, Rock, Classical composition, Death Metal, Hip Hop, Folk, Blues, Afro Beat . . . There's no point in picking one type of music and sticking to it. The more you can hear the more you can feel. The Kronos Quartet and P-Funk/Parlament both are after your heart. Give in and find the joy they have to offer.
"Only your notes are pure contraption,
Only your song is an absolute gift"
~ W.H.Auden from his poem "The Composer"
A word about genres: They suck! A good friend and massively talented guitarist Billy Jenkins has lead me to the opinion that categories generally function to keep the listener from finding anything new to listen to. Record bins benefit from some sort of organization, but something new always seems a little out of reach if you don't stray from your favorite stack. There is a unified field theory of music: A song either makes you feel something or it don't bleeping matter. Finding new music can lead you to a new way of feeling. My favorite category in my list is Category X. Ain't no proper bin for that music. Please please please stray from your normal. There are doors in your heart haven't been opened for a long long time. If you feel, you are healed.
I've never understood a single bar of music in my life, but I've felt it."
~ Igor Stravinsky
THE LINK BELOW WILL TAKE YOU TO A REVIEW OF CHAPA'S "A LOOK TO THE WEST." I BELIEVE THEY ARE THE BEST MIX OF NEW COMPOSITION AND POP MUSIC I'VE YET TO HEAR.
