Love Triangle

At the moment, I'm playing in a band trying to reinterpret some classic zydeco tracks by the likes of Clifton Chenier, and in doing so have been trying my hand at playing some zydeco percussion. The genre's better known for its use of the washboard or "veste frottoir", but for me the gem of Louisiana percussion is the triangle.

The urban dictionary defines a 'triangle player' as "someone who does something easy very well or because they're lazy". On the rare occasions that triangle players are featured on television, they're depicted as nerds or simpletons, convinced that their exaggeratedly simple triangle playing is great music. For idiotic trianglists, check out Ed Grimley from Saturday Night Live or Gene from the cartoon Bob's Burgers.

Ed Grimley from Saturday Night Live

The fact of the matter is that playing the triangle is not easy. Playing with controlled dynamics (volume) can be tricky, and sometimes the steel beater is replaced with a knitting needle to enable quieter playing. As with any any percussion instrument (or instrument for that matter), keeping steady time is a difficult musical skill. Cajun triangle also involves a lot of coordination between the left and right hands. The left hand dangles the triangle from the middle finger and, at intervals, muffles the sound with the thumb and remaining fingers. The right hand holds the beater inside the triangle, and strikes two sides of it. Here's an example of a basic 2-step triangle rhythm:

A basic 2-step rhythm

But triangle playing doesn't have to be simple. In the video below, virtuoso percussionist Mino Cinelu does some really fancy things (check out his high-speed triangle playing about four minutes in). Keyboardist Herbie Hancock intoduces Mino, likening the mind-blowing eighties technology of the Casio calculator watch to the humble technology of the triangle.

Mino Cinelu playing with Herbie Hancock and Headhunters

The triangle isn't only found in Cajun and North American music, it also plays a role in Brazilian samba and bossa nova. Here's an amazing dancefloor-friendly track by Carlinhos Brown (the YouTube title says it's by Sergio Mendes, but it's not).

Magdalenha by Carlinhos Brown

European classical music is not immune to the allure of the triangle either. Hungarian composer Franz Liszt featured the instrument prominantly in his first piano concerto. The triangle player's right at the back, on the left. He must get so bored reading all those rests...

Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1

And if you thought that we'd already reached the pinnacle of triangle-making technology, then you were wrong. Percussion manufacturers LP have created the one-handed triangle; as Doug Hinrichs explains, "what we have actually is not a triangle as in a three-sided geometric shape". Advanced.

Doug Hinrichs shows off the one-handed triangle

We Made This

It's come to my attention that the clever people from the Brownswood message board (who are also behind the Fun Your Ear club nights) have released a very fine compilation - We Made This: Volume One. Joining the dots between hip-hop, house and jazz, it features tracks from the likes of Surra, Scrimshire and Mr Beatnick.

It's a not-for-profit venture, so at £4.99 it's quite a bargain (available from Juno and Piccadilly Records).

Nepali field recordings: part 1

The sickle dances
and the grass cutter continues,
halting, collecting moments
as if they are bright jewels.
"This forest belongs to the gods
and this is a ripe field to be cut.
I reap my fruit and pay rent to the earth.
This life is two days of sun and shade,
so I give to the gods
the rest house and the watering place."

From "The Grass Cutter" by Laxmi Prasad Devkota

With eight of the ten highest peaks in the world, the scale of the Himalayas means they truly are a fitting rest house for the gods. Despite Nepal's turbulent recent history (the bloody Civil War only ended in 2006), Nepal remains a beautiful, hospitable place to travel. I did the popular Annapurna Base Camp trek, which starts near Pokhara, and ends up 4130 metres above sea level, with incredible 360° views of peaks in the Annapurna range. I was puffing and panting most of the way, but I occasionally remembered to get out the recorder.


Track twelve: Pokhara festival band

Pokhara, Nepal's second largest city, has a considerably more laid-back feel than Kathmandu, and isn't quite so choked-up with pollution: on a clear day, you can see the beautiful 'fishtail' peak. The annual new year's festival is a real treat - the Lakeside area becomes full of street stalls selling barbequed meat, momos and dhal bhat. The most popular part of the festival appears to be a kind of 'pin the tail on the donkey' competition, where you have to walk up to an upturned porcelain pot, blind-folded, and smash it with a big stick. It's harder than you'd think. One of the bands playing at the festival had a couple of narsingha players (see image). The narsingha was originally made of buffalo horn, and makes a tremendous, elephanty farting noise. I love the fact that this recording ends with a bit of Jimi Hendrix style distortion. Some fool was trying to mic up a narsingha, in all likelihood.


Track thirteen: A cuckoo in the mountains

The Annapurna range of mountains hosts a huge variety of wildlife: bears, wild pheasants, langur monkeys and the elusive snow leopard. In this recording, I caught the sound of a cuckoo calling. Minutes later, some local kids were mimicking the call back to him.








Track fourteen: The sound of an avalanche

In Machapuchre ('fishtail' mountain) Base Camp, the snow started to come down thick and fast at about 2 p.m. I wandered out into the freezing cold, and was amazed to hear the sound of avalanches. It was quite faint, and a little difficult to record. There's a lot of background noise on this recording, but I think you can still hear it. A man from Northampton said that it reminded him of distant rumbling thunder. To me, it sounds like gravel being trodden under a big boot, or the gods crumbling an enormous bag of digestive biscuits in preparation for a Himalayan-sized cheesecake.


Track fifteen: Singers in Sinuwa village

These singers in Sinuwa village, half-way up the mountain towards Annapurna Base Camp, were busking for hikers late into the evening. I really like this recording: lovely pentatonic melodies, sung with real gusto.

Thanks again to Nia Jane Williams for the photos on this posting.

Sign O' The Times

This health food shop sold plastic pyramids of all shapes and sizes. We puzzled over their use for ages - were they moulds for ice, or jelly? We even asked the shop owner, who gave us a "what, are you stupid?" look, and said something about energy. We were still perplexed until we saw them "in action". I've come across lots of spiritual mystical guff in India, but this really takes the biscuit.



All toll roads in India have this sign in front of the toll gate. I wonder if Manmohan Singh has to get out his Blockbuster membership card to prove that he is in fact the prime minister. Why can't the toll guys just have a little card in front of them that tells them who's exempt? And do supreme court judges really need to save Rs. 50 on route 7?



Back in the day, each house had a number. In Chennai, people erected smaller buildings between bigger buildings, and separated large houses into smaller flats. Instead of having 4a, 4b etc, they decided to put in place entirely new numbering systems. Now all houses have two numbers - a old one and a new one. Bear in mind that nealy all cities have an old and a new name, and most streets also have two names - for example, "Horse Shoe Corner" is now "Asharkana" (a mangled phonetic aproximation of the original English name). What a mess!



Local government is never satisfied with a simple "Do not litter" or "Don't drink and drive". Each sign writer comes up with his own little slogan. A lot more fun.



That's right. No honking. Honking is a genuine menace in India, and you find no honking signs all over the place, which are totally ignored. A honk can indicate many different things, and precedes many dangerously unpredictable manoeuvres. Many auto rickshaws have the type of horn featured on the sign: the comedy clown horn.



In the Ooty botanical gardens, there was one of these "Do not" signs about every two metres. Do not spit, do not sit on the grass, do not pick the flowers, do not play ball games etc etc. It's a little fascist state. And telling you not to touch the hedge just makes you want to touch the hedge.



Many signs appear to have been written by a Martian with a big vocabulary. This whole tourist attraction, "The World's one and only Thread Garden", was weird. It took 50 women 12 years to create the garden - even the blades of grass are wound with tiny bits of green thread. Why?! I'm not surprised there's "no one to compare and compete".



This sign is from Kodaikanal lake, where you can take out rusty old pedalos. In other walks of life, safety isn't such a high priority, but here, everyone wears a life jacket. Check out rule 11.



Actually, I don't need to be told not to obstruct an elephant.


Thanks to Nia Jane Williams for the photos on this posting.

Indian field recordings: part 2

Sonically, Europe has become automated and robotic: the computer-voiced lift tells me which floor I'm at, buses and trains feel the need to tell me when "the door is closing", chain pubs have their muzak piped directly from head office, so you can't even ask the barman to change the song. Slowly but surely, robo-sound culture is encroaching on India too: if you call Vodafone, you'll hear the same pre-scripted rubbish about being "happy to help" and so on. In other respects, India is still an audio wild west. UK health and safety officials, decibel meters in hand, would have a field day.

When my elderly grandfather became deaf, I was surprised to find that his complaint wasn't that he couldn't hear anything. He could hear plenty - stick a hearing-aid in your ear and it'll amplify all the sound around you. His problem was that he couldn't differentiate between the sounds around him: the sounds of voices chatting blended in with the TV show that was on, which got mixed up with the birds tweeting outside. The frequencies got muddled. In a way, that's what walking around an Indian city is like - too much noise, coming from too many directions. In this posting I want to share a few recordings - rare moments of clarity, when one or two sounds jumped out from the cacophony.


Track six: The pianist in the Ooty Savoy

Ooty is known as the Queen of Hill Stations, and was the British Raj's summer capital. In many ways, it's now indistinguishable from any other Indian town, but there are still a few vestiges of the old regime to be found, such as the race track, boating lake and the grand old Savoy hotel. We decided to check out the Savoy, partly to get a glimpse of pre-independence India, and also to treat ourselves to a slap-up meal. In the hotel, you can almost imagine what it must have been like to be a Company man in India: billiards, teak-panelled restaurants, cabinets full of crockery and expensively acquired titbits from home - there's brussel sprouts on the menu, for goodness sake. I've eaten in numerous fly-ridden roadside dhabas all over India and found the food delicious and hygienic. After my gloopy Chicken Chow Mein in the Savoy I had a dickey tummy for a week.

The pianist in the corner of the room was tinkling away on an ancient out-of-tune upright piano, with mirror attached (presumably to gauge diners' reactions). "This", I thought, "is a real taste of the old Raj". My partner Nia was obviously pondering something: "I think I recognise this one - isn't it No Matter What by Boyzone?". As the evening wore on, many of the songs were well-known to us - Sealed With A Kiss by Jason Donovan, Lady Madonna by the Beatles and Istsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini by Timmy Mallett. The guy had a prodigious memory; he played for about three hours without any sheet music. He must have learnt them all from one of those "Easy to Play Pops: the 80s and 90s" books. I had the strong sense that he'd never actually heard any of the songs; his rhythm was often a bit eccentric to say the least.


Track seven: leaving Mapusa bus station in Goa

In the UK, we have a simple system to aid people using public transport: it's a sign on the front of each bus, saying where it's going. Many buses of India have dispensed with this custom - it's just as easy to have the conductor say the name of the destination over and over again, super fast. I've never been able to distinguish one of these names, even once. The conductor on this recording sounds as though he's saying "Uraba"*. I don't know where that is, but presumably I was going there. I've spent a fair amount of time in Indian bus stations, running to and fro asking each bus conductor if his bus is going where I want to go. I always try to cross-check the answer with three other passengers, and even then I've had around a 70:30 ratio of right bus to wrong bus.

This recording also contains a couple of prime examples of the hawk and spit. To be fair, it's a revolting habit, but it's something to be heard all over India. The government makes some attempt to eradicate it - it's common to see "No Spitting" signs along side the "No smoking" signs in museums and public buildings. To many travellers, this is a deep and unfathomable mystery - why do Indian men have so much phlegm? Is it the pollution? Is it the little bidis?

* I think I might have just made out the location "Margao" at the end of this recording. That's a first!


Track eight: Calls to prayer in Pondicherry

Pondicherry, a little south of Chennai on the Bay of Bengal, is a special place. It's good value, in that you get two towns for the price of one: east of the central canal you find relaxed, sleepy Mediterranean backstreets; west of the canal there's a bustling Tamil town. We stayed in the wonderful budget hotel Maison De Satia on Rue Dumas in the French quarter. It happened to be more or less equidistant from three mosques. Every morning at 5.00 a.m., I'd be woken by the three calls to prayer, weaving in and out of one another. As you can hear, each of the three muezzin has a very individual style, and it sounds to me as if, in some way, they're singing in concert, though perhaps not consciously.


Track nine: Puja in Kodaikanal

Kodaikanal is a quaint little hill station in the Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu. It's kind of a one-horse town, but they make excellent cheese and chocolate, and also have a small population of Tibetan refugees who run a couple of fantastic restaurants. Like many small Indian towns, it's more or less completely dry. I was on a quixotic search for a shop selling beer, when I heard these beautiful sounds. As we walked down to Kodai Kanal lake, we could hear the puja going on, amplified by large speakers and echoing off mountains on the other side of the lake.


Track ten: Hampi bazaar trader

This jewellery store owner in Hampi bazaar didn't mind me recording our conversation, and was happy to go on record with some fairly sweeping generalisations about various nationalities and ethnic groups: Karnatakans are "difficult", Israelis are "no clean", the English and Germans are "nice people - very clean, very nice looking". Well, as long as he thinks I'm nice looking and clean I guess that's okay. "Madam" is also like clean, thankfully. Neither of us were really sure how to respond to that - the silence says it all!

It's been interesting to learn about how foreign tourists are variously perceived in India. I've been told that Europeans are rich, but have no understanding of the importance of family - they spend all their time working. Many traders in tourist spots will quite openly admit that they have a range of prices - the highest being Russian price, followed by English price, with Israeli price being the least expensive. When asked where I come from in a shop, I try to remember to say "Wales" as opposed to the "UK" or "Britain". Or who knows; maybe this backfires on me - some shop owners might think it's a part of Russia.


Track eleven: On the Konkan express

There's something special about Indian trains - the breeze through the open windows, your own little bunk and plenty of chai and coffee wallahs walking past to cater for your needs. I always get a good night's sleep on the sleeper trains. Check out my recommendations on thesleepclub website.

Thanks again to Nia Jane Williams for all the photographs in this posting.

Indian field recordings: part 1

On the 6th of October 2009, I got off the plane in Chhatrapati Shivaji airport in Mumbai and took a car into the city. At this point in descriptions of India, it's customary to remark upon the colours: lime green and shocking pink saris, technicolour temples, garish billboards and so on. It is indeed colourful, but, to me, a more striking thing about India is the noise. The city hits you with a wall of sound - the constant honking of horns, street dogs barking, merchants selling their wares, kids begging, builders hammering away, Bollywood hits blaring out of auto rickshaws and shops. It's not what I would call regular street noise, and walking through central London is like a quiet stroll in the Brecon Beacons in comparison. Indians specialise in loud.

In the six months I spent travelling around India, I seldom left the hotel room without my trusty Tascam digital recorder, which I used to record sounds I heard along the way. The collection of recordings I accumulated is a real mixed bag - street festivals, interviews with local people, recordings of music lessons I've received, street noise, nature sounds plus some real curios - like the pianist in the teak-panelled restaurant of the Ooty Savoy hotel, banging out Boyzone and Kylie songs on an out-of-tune upright.

In this posting, I want to write a little about some of the devotional music I recorded. India has a truly diverse culture, and during my travels I was able to hear some superb music at various temples, Gurdwaras, mosques and religious festivals (I'm sure the Parsis, Christians, Buddhists and Jains have some good tunes too, but I didn't record them). The recordings, which you can listen to in the player on the right, were recorded all over India, in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi, Goa and Tamil Nadu.



Track one: Hampi wedding band

In the UK, people are understandably selective about who to invite to their weddings because it costs a bleeding fortune. Not so in India, where it's customary to invite extended family, friends, acquaintances and then, for good measure, complete strangers. I was struggling up the hill outside Hampi bazaar on a knackered old scooter when I heard frenetic, exuberant music. I pulled up, a polite distance from the building where it was taking place, to check out what was going on. Within moments, a bunch of people were imploring me to come in and join in the festivities. Under a pergola were a ramshackle bunch of musicians, seemingly drunk on music - a clarinet, trumpets, snares and larger hand-held drums. What they lacked in subtlety, they made up for in crazed, wild-eyed energy. I thoroughly approve of this Balkan-style approach to wedding music - loud, messy and full of brass. I've heard similar music at other weddings in India, but they've all sounded a bit polite next to this lot.



Track two: Qawwali music at the Haji Ali Mosque

You can't reach the Haji Ali Mosque at high tide, because the 500 metre causeway linking it to Worli in south Mumbai becomes completely submerged. It's worth the wander down there just to see the mosque, surrounded by crashing waves and draped in multicolour flags, but if you're lucky you can also catch some Qawwali music. Qawwali, popularised in the mainstream by the great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, is Sufi devotional music - odes to Mohammed, songs of mourning, and passionate love songs. I don't know what the lyrics of this particular Qawwal mean - if anyone could let me know I'd be much obliged! The music contains extended improvisation on certain phrases, often passed back and forth between the main singer and his student. There's also tabla, harmonium and a chorus of backing singers who provide complex counter-rhythmic handclaps. So entranced was I by this ecstatic music that I looked for similar performances elsewhere. Apparently, there's excellent Qawwali in the Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi. I went along, and I was encouraged to donate garlands of flowers and cloth to various tombs, and donate 500 rupees to the Dargah's charitable foundation before they let me know that the Qawwali is suspended during the Muharram festival. Maybe I should have asked for a refund...



Track three: Revathy Krishna at the Madras Music Academy

The annual Margazhi festival in Chennai is a feast of music, lasting over a month and showcasing more than 1500 performances of Carnatic music. For me, one of the highlights was veena player Revathy Krishna's concert in the Madras Music Academy. I've written a feature article on the festival for the May edition of British music magazine fRoots, which includes an interview with Revathy. In this recording, you can hear Prapancham Ravindram on the double-skinned mridangam drum, V Suresh on the pot-shaped ghatam drum, Revathy Krishna on veena, plus the obligatory tanpura drone.



Track four: A brass band playing at the Shigmo festival in Panaji

Goa's got one of the largest Christian communities in India, but, judging by their celebrations of Shigmo, the Hindus are not willing to be outdone. Shigmo is a part of the primarily north-Indian Holi festival, in which revellers fling coloured paint at one another. The procession in Panaji included many impossibly elaborate animatronic models enacting scenes from Hindu mythology, all flood-lit, with sound systems amplifying the narrators of the stories. Parts of the procession had groups of drummers, dancers and brass bands. This track sounds to me like a Goan tune. However, some of the brass bands weren't averse to throwing in the odd surprise: I'm pretty sure I heard a version of El Condor Pasa by Simon and Garfunkel somewhere along the way.



Track five: Singers at Nizamuddin Gurdwara

Nizamuddin is a vibrant community in the south of the Indian capital, littered with tombs and relics of old Mughal Delhi (including a number of very impressive restaurants serving meat-heavy Mughal cuisine). It's a mostly Muslim area, but there's also a very beautiful Sikh Gurdwara. The friend of mine who took me to the Gurdwara wasn't overly impressed with the music: "This isn't the really good stuff", he said. He seemed determined to find a better Gurdwara, and persisted in asking turbaned cab drivers where the best Sikh music was to be found. Unfortunately, whenever we went to other Gurdwaras, they'd tell us it wasn't on, or to come back at another time. Personally, I enjoyed the music, and didn't dislike the sugary paste they gave us to eat.

Thanks to my partner Nia Jane Williams for all the photographs on this posting.