|
|
Post by pascal on Oct 18, 2013 15:25:54 GMT
I do not know if someone cited them before, they're from UK, Philipp plays dobro on lap, sings and Hannah plays the banjo (clawhammer style) and fiddle, sings also. They are wonderful: |
|
|
|
Post by DaveRed on Oct 18, 2013 16:14:49 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by Michael Messer on Oct 18, 2013 16:32:59 GMT
They are great musicians. I met Phillip in Exeter a few years ago, he opened the show for Louisiana Red and me. He has a lovely tone and touch. Phillip spent some time at Debashish Bhattacharya's music school in Kolkata and it shows. I recently heard some of their new album which is very good.
Shine On
Michael
|
|
|
|
Post by pascal on Oct 18, 2013 18:51:54 GMT
They are great musicians. I met Phillip in Exeter a few years ago, he opened the show for Louisiana Red and me. He has a lovely tone and touch. Phillip spent some time at Debashish Bhattacharya's music school in Kolkata and it shows. I recently heard some of their new album which is very good. Shine On Michael Very interesting Michael. can you explain a bit more for the readers... I am very interesting about these guys (thinking of Harry Manx etc...) and the new field they are exploring. I am just an hawaiian guy, and feel lost sometime. (Do I have to go to India... Mhmmm I should prefer Tahiti or kauai) |
|
|
|
Post by garrysmith on Oct 18, 2013 19:31:16 GMT
Seen them loads of times. Fantastic musicians and lovely people. Phillip is taking the dobro into new areas. Oh and he beat boxes and plays fantastic harmonica (simultaneously)too.
Taking Slide Guitar out of the "Blues Ghetto".
|
|
|
|
Post by Michael Messer on Oct 19, 2013 0:50:28 GMT
This thread could turn into a long debate!
I don't really know where to start with this subject, but I don't see Phillip as taking the Dobro into new musical areas, as I have heard Celtic music played on Dobros by Frankie Lane and Jerry Douglas, Arabic and Greek music played by David Lindley, Avant-Garde weird stuff by Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser...etc, and Indian-influenced and Indian-style Dobro before. In almost four decades of being obsessed with slide guitar I have heard a lot!
Indian music, both classical and pop, has been played on six string lap steel guitars for decades, and western musicians have dabbled with these sounds and made fusion albums with Indian slide for a long time too. I first heard Brij Bhushan Kabra, Sunil Ganguly and Ashish Bhadra back in the early 1980s. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Ry Cooder recorded A Meeting by the River, in 1993. Debashish Bhattacharya burst on to the scene with his Hindustani Slide Guitar video in 1995, Jerry Douglas went to study with Debashish back in the 90s. Taj Mahal and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt in 1995...Mumtaz Mahal, also in 1995 Jerry Douglas and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt recorded Bourbon & Rosewater, Doug Cox recorded with Salil Bhatt in 2007, Gary Lucas Rishte album.....etc.
Pascal, I believe that every now and again something turns up that effects everybody, and in the world of slide guitar it is Indian musicians who are setting a new standard. When it comes to technique, Indian slide players are in a world of their own and apart from Brij Bhushan Kabra who invented Indian classical slide guitar, this is due to the classical training on the instrument from childhood that all Hindustani slide players have gone through. Their study of techniques and their skill with a slide, in my opinion, even leaves the great western players like Sol Hoopii, Bob Pauole and Jerry Douglas behind. I have not been around V.M. Bhatt, but I have as you know, spent time with Debashish Bhattacharya and of course my dear friend Manish Pingle. I have also over the years spent time with many of the great Western slide players and I now understand what George Harrison meant when he said that Ravi Shankar was the greatest living musician in the world and became his student.
Indian classical music may not be everybody's favourite music and I am not becoming an Indophile Indomaniac (I have spent the past two weeks studying Bukka White's playing), but I do believe Indian music is a higher form of music than 'almost' anything in the West. We do not study music and analyse it in the way they do. For centuries this amazing study and practice was only done with Indian instruments, Sitar, Sarod, Tabla...etc, which was a million miles from anything that most of us were interested in, but over the past forty years it has been played by a handful of musicians on Western instruments, guitars...in fact...Slide Guitars! ....and it has started to rub off on Western players.
Phillip Henry is playing Western folk music on lap steel guitars and using Indian techniques to achieve that. His touch, tone, vibrato...in fact lack of vibrato, hand positions, the way he holds his slide, it is all influenced by Indian slide guitar players, especially Debashish Bhattacharya, and he has a unique sound. I hear it as completely different to Harry Manx, because while Harry has a deep understanding of Hindustani classical music (he studied under V.M. Bhatt) and he plays raags on a Mohan Veena, I hear his touch and tone as very Western. This is not a criticism, I love Harry's playing, he is a wonderful musician, but in my opinion he does not have the touch and tone of an Indian slide player. What I hear with Phillip is that Indian touch and tone, but used in Western music and that is pretty cool!
Anyone who is serious about lap steel and slide guitar playing would be completely blown away by hanging out with these guys. I remember how I felt when I first heard Sol Hoopii and Jim & Bob - I did not know that it was possible to make that sound with a National Tricone and a steel bar. I felt the same when I first heard Brij Bhushan Kabra (aka BBK) and Debashish Bhattacharya. I wish I had gone to India and met Brij Bhushan Kabra in 1983 when I first heard his records. In 1983 I only knew one other person, apart from me, who was even aware of these players.
Not all Indian slide players are at this level, I have heard many that are just average, but when they have the musical ability and the lifetime of training behind them, it is unbelievable! It does not make me feel inept, or that I want to stop playing, in fact quite the opposite, I find it totally inspiring. After a lifetime of playing guitar since I was a young child and 37 years of dedicating myself to playing slide guitar, there is still so much to learn.
Pascal, I don't know if I answered your question. Now I am going to listen to Pandit Casey Bill Weldon before I go to sleep!
Shine On
Michael.
|
|
|
|
Post by pascal on Oct 19, 2013 10:17:25 GMT
Thank you very mucho Michael, I was not expecting a so long manifest.
But I found this interesting to debate (and you're the best at this subject!). I never ever tried to play the indian style, as it is far from my own culture.
Hawaiian is different as we had along list of players in Europe since its invention. The creator, Joseph Kekuku, even played in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century (if my memory is good)
Billy Kanui (& Lula) for "Luna parc" 1914 or so... Gino Bordin (an Italian born) was a bit as Harry Manx, as Gino never really played hawaiian music but used that technique for French musette and waltzes. Even the hawaiians (golden era) as soon they landed to the US continent, played Jazz and "Novelties"... "get the wheels turning"
|
|
|
|
Post by Michael Messer on Oct 19, 2013 11:58:10 GMT
My pleasure, Pascal. I didn't know I was going to write that much either!
One point in your reply that I dispute, is that Joseph Kekuku was the inventor. He was not the inventor of Hawaiian steel guitar, but he was the person who developed and popularised the style of playing. The nearest and most plausible explanation is that the technique of sliding a bar on strings came to the Hawaiian islands from India. Gabriel Davion was an Indian musician who played the Gottuvadyam (an ancient Indian lap steel instrument) and he travelled to Hawaii in the 1880s and used the technique for playing the Gottuvadyam on a guitar. The Zither also played a part in the development of Hawaiian steel guitar, it was played by members of the Hawaiian royal family and became popular just after the turn of the century through to the 1920s.
I find the whole thing totally fascinating because if it is true that the technique came from India to Hawaii, which I believe is the truth, the amazing thing is that Tau Moe took it back to India and taught Brij Bhushan Kabra how to play steel guitar. This is the equivalent to an Englishman arriving in France and teaching someone how to make wine!
Shine On
Michael
|
|
