A meeting by the River....


Sayas here on Audiogon recommended a to me a CD called "A Meeting by the River" featuring Ry Cooder on Bottlenect Guitar and V.M. Bhatt on Vina. I found this recording to be facinating. It's a real cross cultural dialogue through music. Ry plays a bluesy riff and Bhatt compliments it with blues a la vina. Then Bhatt plays a raga and Ry plays that bottleneck like a Vina...complete with drone chord. There is even interesting cross dialogue between Joaquim Cooder, backing his father on dumbek and Bhatt's tabla player. The result culiminates in the incredible track "Ganges Delta Blues." This is really a fanstastic piece and magical playing. My hat off to Sayas and I would like to know if any of you have similar suggestions...not necessarily Indian-American dialogue, but some other cross cultural exchange that is magical. By all means, try this record, unless you can't stand Sitar/Vina...otherwise, I highly doubt that you'll be disappointed...au contraire.
issabre

Showing 1 response by sdcampbell

"A Meeting By The River" has been a favorite "world music" recording of mine for 5 years or so. Kavi Alexander, who owns Water Lily Recordings, is a dedicated audiophile as well as very literate musically. If you enjoy "River" and recordings like it, may I suggest that you acquaint yourself with the recordings on the "MA Recordings" label. The label has a number of "world music" / cross-cultural recordinds, all done to very high recording standards. I found one of their more recent releases to be excellent: "Sera Una Noche". For more info about MA's releases, go their Web site:

www.marecordings.com