Day 26 ~ Norway (Hardanger Fiddle)

A less-stringed cousin of the sarangi? 
(Not only for it's sympathetic strings, but for it's history of intrigue and controversy . . . )  

The amazing vistas of Norway accompany the sound of the fiddle on this video!

Away from the fiddle a moment, but not away from Norway ~ enjoy this Nordic Lullaby by our friend, Ole Andreassan.

Back to the fiddle, & A Whole List of Lovely Links to click on:

The Hardanger fiddle is often played along with foot stamping, as it is in this video from a Folk Museum which features 2 young dancers.  

A little fiddle from the kitchen.

What is better than a Hardanger Fiddle?  Why 8 Hardanger Fiddles, of course!  

A jolly bearded man w/ plucking technique.

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 25 ~ Ireland (Harp)

The harp has long been my favorite instrument, like a beckoning of angels it is. . . 

Enjoy the healing harp music of our friend Cheryl Angela.

If you want a whole morning or evening of harp, here is a beautiful 2 hour medley of different harpers.

And, for a little Lady Gaga on harp by the harp fantasy twins . . .

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 24- England (Glass Harmonica)

Guaranteed the most beautifully surreal 8 minutes of your day :)

There are several special instruments around the world which have been considered so powerful that they can connect the player or listener with other-worldly spheres, this is definitely one of them.  The glass harmonica is said to have originated in England, created by a man from Scotland.  Glass bowls revolve on a shaft, and when touched with watered-fingers they ring in much the same way a crystal glass resounds when played.  Ben Franklin (pictured below with his invention the Glass Armonica, was known, among other inventions, for creating his version of this instrument.  

again ~ Guaranteed the most beautifully surreal 8 minutes of your day :)

This video is a performance dance piece I directed, filmed by Kisoon Choi in the Ureuk World Music House (pre-restoration) in December 2012, with a soundtrack of Glass Harmonica played by my dear friend Darius Kauffman.  It is called "Communicating with the Past" and is an expression of people in the past wanting to experience something beyond what they know (shedding their traditional clothes), and the people of the present wanting to experience what was in the past (putting back on traditional clothes).  

The glass harmonica has been used as a particular vehicle for communication with ancestors, so it perfectly fits this theme of reaching out with curiosity and gratitude to the spirits and ancestors that lived in the traditional hanok (house), and Ureuk who inspired the creation of the World Music House.

About the Glass Harmonica

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 23 ~ Russia (Balalaika)

A triangle and 3 strings . . . in all sizes!

Wiki-History Link!

If you need something to get you up and dancing, these folk songs should do the trick!

And for some Paganini on balalaika?!

Russian soldiers play for the Pope!

A really fun old movie love song, probably balalaika must be somewhere in the mix.

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 22 - Croatia (Sea Organ)

From mother nature herself, today's instrument is the Sea Organ!  From the website about 10 weird instruments I came to know about the ultimate water instrument, a musical pipe organ that is played by the sea!  The SEA ORGAN, or the Wave Organ.  There is a similar instrument created at the Golden Gate National Park edge.

This is a fun video that shows the organ in action with a light show! 

"Waves create random harmonic sounds by way of tubes of varying size located underneath the structures. As the waves move in and out of these tubes the air likewise is pushed in and out of the tubes creating random sounds that are heard through openings on the surface / walkways of the structure. Like The Aeolian Harp this 
instrument's music is truly a composition created solely by nature."

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 21 ~ Switzerland (Alp Horn)

Having never heard a performance of the alphorn, I had no idea that the it actually plays more than one note.  Amazingly, though there are no holes to change the pitch, the alphorn can get 20 different notes using overtones of the main note (because it is 8 feet in length and has such a low note).

Here is a spicy video of alphorn, tights and all, with a background of mountains.  GUitars and accordian join the horns a little ways in.

And here is another nice video, perhaps a TV special, with beautiful sweeping views of the mountains.



Guess what, alphorn can even be played in HEELS :)

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 20 ~ Hungary (Hurdy-Gurdy)

A quaint mix of something between a fiddle + a bagpipe, the Hurdy-Gurdy is thought to originate somewhere between Europe and the Middle East around 1000 A.D.  By the early 20th century, most types of hurdy-gurdies were "extinct," with a great exception being the Hungarian variety, called Tekerolant.  At one time hurdy-gurdy playing was basically outlawed in the Soviet Union.  For more on the interesting history of this instrument, click here.  The hurdy-gurdy has a revolving wheel with rosin, that hits the strings as a violin bow would, including drones, and the main body has a keyboard to control the notes.  

This is a sample of Hungarian hurdy-gurdy 

This is a really great website with photos and stories and links to audio about hurdy-gurdies and variations on hurdy-gurdies throughout history.

And, here is a great Meideval rock n roll, English hurdy-gurdier teaching how to play.

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 19 ~ Greece (Tsabouna)

The Tsabouna is the Greek version of bagpipes, without the drones.  It is made of goatskin, and inflated by blowing into the mouthpiece.  At the other end of the instrument is a flute which is played with the fingers.  It was invented by Greek shepherds some 2000 years ago.

ENJOY LISTENING HERE

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 18 ~ Italy (Chitarrone)

Talk about an "axe," at 6 feet tall, the chitarrone, a large bass lute, or archlute, developed in Italy just before 1600, is quite formidable.  It was used to accompany singing.

 For a romantic candle-lit listen to chitarrone, click here.

The chitarrone had six to eight strings running over the fingerboard to a pegbox (the part of the instrument in which the tuning pegs are set) positioned midway in an extended neck. The instrument had six to eight additional bass strings, or diapasons, lying off the fingerboard and running to a second pegbox at the end of the neck. Having a sonority approaching that of the contemporary harpsichord, it was used as a ... (100 of 109 words)   http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/113313/chitarrone

For another listen, under the name tiorba (or theorbo), click here.

Through the late conductor and music historian Newell Jenkins, and the Clarion Music Society, I had the great honor to sing with a chitarrone as a soloist at the Kaye Playhouse when I was 19.  We performed Cavalli's Vespers to Mother Mary.  Though I don't have a copy of my own performance, here is a very lovely youtube performance of the solo piece "O Quam Suavis" just with chitarrone and voice (the only soprano solo without the chorus and other instruments).  

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 17 ~ Morocco (Lotar)

 Heat up a cup of mint tea, and click here to enjoy the sounds of North Africa with this video of the Moroccan guitar-esque LOTAR.

As Moroccanmusic.Com tells us, the Lotar is a 4 or 5 stringed lute with a fat round neck and hollow goat skin covered body.  Sometimes the body is made of a tin soup bowl!  Lotars have a stacatto banjo like tone that is often complimented by the more flowing sound of the violin-like rebaba.

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 16 ~ Madagascar (Valiha)

Somewhere between a harp and a guitar, the Valiha is the national instrument of the amazing island of Madagascar.

This is a fascinating website about different World Music instruments.  (Scroll down just a tad to Chordophones where you will see the valiha, and there are audio samples.)

My love of Madagascar and first siting of a Valiha happened in Brussels via N'Java, a band of Malagache siblings who play fast, flowing guitar (perhaps in a style created from the valiha) as a backdrop to strong chathartic other-worldly singing.  Here is a beautiful music video of N'Java!    And, another, also with scenes from Madagascar, by Monika N'Java called Reolo.  

It has been my ultimate artistic pleasure to visit with Monika, and many of her musical siblings, several times, and even to join them in the studio singing Indian-esque vocals for a kind of dance hit (I heard it was played in all of the coolest clubs in Madagascar).

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 15 ~ Nigeria (Dundun - Talking Drum)

I first heard the talking drum played by my Professor Milford Graves at Bennington College, I thought the world was splitting open.  Professor Graves is from New York, not Nigeria, but he plays the talking drum and is a master percussionist who has immersed in the rhythms of the world's amazingly varied cultures.  He also heals using the understanding of sound and astrology and Oriental Medicine to bring people back into healthy rhythms.  

(I'm not sure if the talking drum in this picture is from Zimbabwe or a neighboring country.)

The talking drum is nicknamed for it's similarity to tonal language (such as the Yoruba language of South Western Nigeria).  By pressing the leather cords, and changing the tension of the skins on both sides of the drum, the pitch changes in a way that fairly mimics speaking.  

Listen/Watch the:  Yoruba Dundun Talking Drum Ensemble

For Some Far Out classic Milford Graves free jazz music action, click here!

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 14 ~ Ghana (Gome)

* The GOME is a deep bass drum which the musician actually sits on and uses both Hands & Feet to play ~  WATCH HERE  

(The Gome is on the right, on the left is perhaps an adowa peg-tension traditional Ghanian drum; perfect complement to the bass with a unique, higher, mellow sound.)

The Gome drum was introduced to the Ghanaians by a group of Ga people in the 1940's, when they returned home to Ghana after a period of work on the island Fernando Po in Equatorial Guinea.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdYYiX8WucI

Now, to get you ON yOuR feet & DANCING ~ here is some amazing EWE Drumming!

And, to CHEER your DAY ~ This is a happy percussion ensemble playing in a park in Ghana.

Though I haven't been to Africa yet, I have had a strong connection, especially to Ghana, since I was 10 and met my best friend, Yao.  Yao, the great grandson of the former King of Ghana (Yao humbly denies being ROYAL as the King's position rotates through the main ethnic groups, rather than following the line of heredity ~ whatEVAH, his boisterous spirit and gushing heart are as royal as things get) and I decided that we had been twins in Morocco in a previous lifetime...so we go way back before our Chutes and Ladders Board games when we were 10.  On my daily walk home from school (where Yao's house was conviently half-way between school and my house), I stopped in to get my daily dose of Africa - the rhythms and music coursed through my blood as amazing Ghanaian singing loudly flowed out of the speakers in his living room day and night,  plus (how I wish it was around the corner from my house now) super spicy and delicious food was always steaming ready in the kitchen, and the gloriously booming voice of Yao's poet father, Vincent, and the exhuberance of his mother, Peace, were always welcoming me into this beautiful other world.

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 13 ~ Zimbabwe (Mbira)

The Shona people of Zimbabwe consider the MBIRA a sacred instrument.

"In Shona music, the mbira dzavadzimu (“voice of the ancestors”, national instrument of Zimbabwe) is a musical instrument that has been played by the Shona people of Zimbabwe for thousands of years." (Description continues here at Diasporicroots.tumblr.com)

Listen to the Mbira playing/singing of Newton Gwara HERE.

Here is a nice visual introduction to Zimbabwe with mbira music and singing.

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 12 - Mali (Kora)

KORA is the 21-string West-African sister to the harp.  This link opens to gorgeous strands of Kora music played by Toumani Diabate which you can enjoy while viewing gorgeously colorful pictures of him playing kora!

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 11 ~ Nubia (Oud)

One of the world's greatest openers of hearts and sonic universes is the late Hamza el Din of Nubia (an ancient land of the Nile River, in the south of Egypt and the north of Sudan); pictured with him is his 'Nubian accented' OUD.

Enjoy Hamza el Din's Music with Oud HERE

The first time I encountered Hamza el Din, he was laying out a prayer rug on a fire escape.  There was a hint of 'homeless/at-home-with-the-world' as people pushed past him into the back door of the concert hall where performers where ushered in to do sound checks.  Yet, already I could feel his prayer ringing in my heart.  The same people who had pushed past the small figure on the fire escape were bowing effusively at what could have been a high-powered lightbulb but was actually Hamza el Din now white-turbaned and with flowing white robes.  His performance was spellbinding even before his first notes, with his first breath.

Several years later I was fortunate of circumstance to be staying with a friend who was recording Hamza el Din's final album.  The glow surrounding Hamza el Din, palpable joy, was radiating deeply, and as he played I felt the presence of hundreds of his Nubian ancestors sitting in a circle around us.  Later that evening the ancestors were back onstage as he opened for the Grateful Dead reunion concert.

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 10 ~ Turkey (Ney)

Though footsteps of all great journeys are likely to intersect an ambling ancient track of a Sufi mystic, there are a wealth of tracks connecting us to the ecstatic dervishes of Turkiye and the sacred breath of the NEY flute that accompanies the poetry of the first whirling dervish, 13th century poet Mevlana Jelaluddin RUMI.

The NEY is a reed flute which often accompanies whirling ceremonies.  Here is a beautiful piece played by Bilgin Canaz - Turkish Ney Artist




The famous Rumi poem about the ney ~
Listen to the cry of the reed flute
Listen to its song of separation:

Ever since I was cut from the reed bed
I have made this crying sound
and made men and women weep with me

I need a heart torn by separation
So you may understand the pain of loves desire

Whoever has been taken from his Source
Always longs to go back

Listen to the cry of the reed flute
Listen to its song of separation

A great version of this song was recorded by my beloved friends BELOVED, a gorgeous world music ensemble I was a part of, and miss dearly as we all headed for different quadrants of the globe.  There is an audio clip you can download, and you'll notice set amidst the ney and amazing vocals is a hint of sarangi :)

My personal journey to see the whirling dervish sufis of Turkey, had me on an uneventful 12-hour train ride from Istanbul to Konya.  At the 11 and 1/2 hour point, the silent man sitting next to me suddenly said with a grand gesture across the aisle, "That man is a dervish, follow him at Konya."  It turned out the man was a school teacher; a kind one who helped me find a hotel and dropped me at the tomb of Mevlana.  The walk back from the tomb was the fateful one, where against a whole line of defenses I finally ended up in a carpet shop whose owner was a dervish and brought me along a winding alleyway to a secret gathering of 3 generations of real-before-my-eyes whirling dervishes and musicians.

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 9 ~ Persia (Santur)

Following the hills and the royal ancestries westward, let us gather the mysteries of the multitudes of colorful mirror-reflected sights and sounds of Persia.

The colors and patterns of Shiraz seem to represent what happens in my heart when I hear the SANTUR

This clip is of a well-known musician and respectful music scholar 

who was born in 1928 in Iran

Grand Maestro Dr. Dariush Safvat 

Another beautiful santur example is this video of Sahriar Agahi

While I have not had the great pleasure of hearing santur played in Iran, I have heard great santur masters of India, such as Pandit Shiv Kumar Shankar.

If you want to enjoy several hours of santur along with an intriguing story, which through it's twists of love, war, drugs, and sumptuous Persian feasts ultimately proves the healing power of music, I highly recommend this movie which I saw screened at a Film Festival in Dhaka two winters back:  

Santuri (The Musicman)

And, if you're looking for a good BOOK to accompany an afternoon of santur listening, I myself am happily ensconced in, and highly recommend, "A Mirror Garden" by Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian and Zara Houshmand [I thrill to realize Zara had passed through the academic barns and carriage houses of Bennington College several years before me, and must have left a magical residue of imaginative bliss that carried me through writing my India adventures.]

Now ~ if only there were a Persian Feast to be found in these cherry-blossomed rice paddies here in Korea. . .

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 8 ~ Hunza (Rebab)

Trekking up to higher altitudes, towards K2, we're going to discover music in the secret hills of this heavenly semi-autonomous region of far northern Pakistan (bordering China on the NE and Afghanistan on the NW).  A shift from the bowed rebabs of Indonesia, let's now get a closer look at the strummed rebabs of Central Asia.

Ready for a listen in the hills?  click here

The first Hunza musician I came to adore, after my own quick trek through the magical region of Hunza to relish in an endless supply of golden dried apricots (delicious beyond compare), was Shahid Akhtar Qalandar.  Here he is playing rebab (with some talking and dropped silverware in the background), and here is my (and the world's) favorite song of his, "Thala Thala"

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. (Click the orange words for more details!)

Day 7 ~ Indonesia (Gender)

Off to the tropical dancing islands of Indonesia, let's go to the monkey and music-filled heart of Bali, Ubud, to enjoy some traditional gamelan ~

either we can find a group of friends hanging out and     interlocking melodies    down an alleyway, across a rice paddy, or a formal evening performance in the

Ubud Royal Palace.

Of the numerous instruments in a traditional gamelan, I think the GENDER (above) is my favorite. . .

For over 20 years I had dreamed of going to Bali, since I first met Saddiq, and later his wife Surapsari, who now take the exquisite art of Indonesian dance wherever they go.  All expectations, joyously met and beyond, with the experience of nightly dance performances while I was in Ubud, more unexpectedly I had the thrill of seeing a "self-playing" gamelan.  

The Gamelatron is "a marriage of Indonesian sonic & ritual tradition with modern robotics."  

Honored with a lift on the back of a motorcycle to rice paddies at the outskirts of Ubud, the founder/creator/composer of this wild art he calls 'the Tron,' Taylor Kuffner brought me into his latest musical installation ~ and of course, the first question once I regained breath (lost not only from the sheer beauty of the music and the almost sacred but spooky curiosity that it seemed to play itself, but also from the implications that this type of work could be used to preserve a whole lineage of music that might be close to disappearing with older generations) was if the gamelatron could possibly make it's way to the Ureuk World Music House in Chungju, Korea.  

The answer is YES!

And you can help it happen ~ as you note this 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. 

Day 6 ~ Japan (Shakuhachi)

A perfect day for Zen meditative SHAKUHACHI . . .

. . . .to find out about the symbol of the baskets, and the fascinating, even possibly Egyptian, history of the shakuhachi click here.

As a perfect guide to shakuhachi and Japanese music, I would like to introduce you to my first guide to Japan, Shakuhachi Grand Master Ronnie Nyogetsu Reishin Seldin.

Here is a beautiful deep shakuhachi video of Ronnie San's teacher's son, Yoshio Kurahashi Sensei of Kyoto, and another from a concert at the Tenri Cultural Institute in NYC.

This time of blossoming spring about 16 years ago, I had the miraculous honor to be suddenly gifted a music tour to Japan in which I was to sing and play sarangi and mountain dulcimer along with a small group of shakuhachi players.  (For this I am forever grateful Ron, Darius, and Ronnie San!)  Another magical ingredient of the experience is that I would be singing one of my original songs "Silent I Bow to Your Heart" in Japanese, translated by the late Japanese-American poet & painter Hidé Oshiro.

As our tour stopped in Kyoto, several participants stayed with the late artist Shinichi Nakae San in his '100 years old unchanged' ancestral home, still with an 'irori' hearth in the center of the main tatami-mat room, and a suikinkutsu (instrument involving dripping stream water into a cavernous jar in the ground).  Before leaving Kyoto each one of us was gifted an ink painting with a poem.  From my ink painting arose my stage name, Comet Angel.  Though Nakae San has since passed, there is still cemented to his ancestral home's portal a stone time capsule - to be opened on Christmas 2018 - with the words "Comet Angel" hand carved.  [Yes, there will be a time capsule opening in Kyoto that night, to which all are welcome!]

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. 

Day 5 ~ Tuva (Igil)

Veering up north to the pocket of mountain fresh air between Southern Siberia and Northern Mongolia, we are in Tuva peering for eagles (the birds) and igils  (the instruments).

Read the interesting folktale about the founding of the igil, and it's relation to the horse. 

Tuva is particularly known for OVERTONE singing.  I came to know of Tuvan music through the incredible adventure of an American blues singer named Paul Pena whose documentary film "Genghis Blues" spins the tale of his journey to Tuva to compete in (and win) a throatsinging contest. 

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House kickstarter crowdfund. 

Day 4 ~ China (Pipa)

Today we travel the expanse of China, through the 56 ethnicities, to discover the instrument PIPA.

There is an online INTERACTIVE pipa, you can try out on the website of one of the world's leading proponents of pipa, Wu Man.  Click on ENTER and enjoy audio samples, descriptions of the pipa and Wu Man, plus a very COOL interactive pipa you can play along with (click on 'what is a pipa')!!  AND she has a documentary film about returning to China from the US to meet and play with musicians THROUGHOUT the country!  (This movie is definitely going to be shown at the Ureuk World Music House, and will be available in the archives of the Listening Room.)

 I first came to know of Wu Man about 15 years ago through amazing label Waterlily Acoustics. Waterlily Acoustics is my favorite record label in the world for so many reasons; breathtaking music, Sufi poems interlaced in the liner notes, stunning portraits of the artists.  Captured on the albums is not only music, but the human experience, and the language of the heart.  Master musicians of different cultures, with different musical instruments gathered together to create music.  While "East Meets West" has been a popular theme in the US since the meeting famous "sitar meeting" of the late Pandit Ravi Shankar and George Harrison, the idea of "East Meets East" in the US has come about, with deeply beautiful results, thanks to Waterlily Acoustics.  It is the only record label still recording analog; to maintain the sound closest to 'real' live music.  One of my favorite Waterlily Acoustics albums is Wu Man (pipa) and Martin Simpson (guitar) "Music for the Motherless Child."

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House  kickstarter crowdfund.  Wu Man's pipa music will be a part of the Ureuk World Music House archives for the Listening Room, along with all Waterlily Acoustics albums!  

Day 3 ~ Vietnam (Danbao)

From the desert sands of the Maharajas, let's retreat to the shade of those irresistible triangle hats in the rice paddies of Vietnam.  Do you know the danbao?!    

Maybe an ancient distant relative of the theramin, just played backwards? 

Does the similarity strike you too?

More on the danbao.

Here's a video of danbao set with beautiful pictures of the Vietnamese countryside.

And totally ROCKING out on danbao, Pham Duc Thanh

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House  kickstarter crowdfund.  

Day 2 ~ India (Sarangi)

India is "mera sapnon ka jaan," the land of my dreams, so I want to share one of the most amazing, yet surprisingly rare, instruments from there called SARANGI.

Sarangi, in Hindi, means 100 Colors or 100 Voices, and it does reverberate with 32 sympathetic strings.  It is the "violin" of North India, with 3 main strings that are bowed.  The musician pushes against the string with the fingers, usually at the cuticle (ouch), rather than pushing down on the string with the pad of the finger.  Interestingly enough, the translation of Sarangi into Korean is "Love Power."

The first time I heard sarangi played was a very rare concert with one of the world's greatest sarangi players, Ustad Hafizullah Khan (see photo above).  The concert was played in a lord's palace in Jaipur, there were peacocks at the fountain in the garden outside, and inside were crystal chandeliers and ornately painted floral archways that stretched high above us seated on white cushions on the floor.  As Khan Sahib played, time stopped, and everyone was mesmerized.  As he played, it felt to me that he was pouring out the sadness of the whole entire world, and transforming it into peace.  There was a flash storm, a pound of thunder, and the huge palace doors flew open in the wind.  Khan Sahib's music soared on without a second's pause, and we held our breaths along with his notes.  After about 40 minutes, the bow took it's last impassioned glide and the last mystical echo diminished into the breathless audience.  There was a moment of total stillness, a moment later a collective sigh, and eventually after a few minutes the entranced audiences began to clap.  I knew I had to have this instrument.  I acquired one, and within the year started learning from the, now late, Ustad Hafizullah Khan.

listen to SARANGI

Hafizullah Khan's biography

This 40-day Virtual World Tour of Music correlates with the World Music House  kickstarter crowdfund.  You can even receive a sarangi music lesson for a pledge of $50.

Day 1 ~ Korea (Kayageum)

안영하세요! Hi!  Let's start our 40-day virtual music tour around the world in South Korea, home of the Ureuk World Music House which is being restored from an abandoned traditional house in the rice paddies of Chungju, into a global community arts center, for people from around the world to gather and enjoy music from around the world.

Today's MUSICIAN is the great ancient master UREUK!!!

Ureuk is considered one of the 3 founding fathers of Korean music.  He lived in Chungju about 1500 years ago, during the Silla Dynasty.  He played the instrument kayageum (or gayageum), and composed music which was the model for centuries to come.

The most common kayageum now has 12 strings, though there are 'orchestral versions' with up to 21 strings.  The strings are plucked and flicked with the right hand, and the left hand adjusts the pitch and vibrato pushing on the other side of the raised bridges.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayageum

To HEAR the kayageum, listen to one of the foremost masters of the instrument today, Byoung-Gi Hwang  There's also a video gone viral on Youtube of a young woman playing on her kayageum to Jimi Hendrix music?!

Chungju City's Traditional Orchestra is named after Ureuk.  Their website is in Korean, but it's fun to click around:  http://www.ureuk.or.kr/ There are some youtube clips such as this brief one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5APcFhUsD_k These are the musicians who will make frequent appearances at the Ureuk World Music House!

In the US, there is a Symphony named after Ureuk and a Chamber Orchestra in Teaneck, NJ.

Enjoy today's journey, see you tomorrow for Day 2 of our 40-day tour!

Oh, and if you haven't seen the video interview with former Ureuk Orchestra director playing daegeum in the future Ureuk World Music House, it is a MUST SEE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyw4lBlJKXs