Saturday, June 11, 2011

Accents of: Percussion

When I started my research for good percussion albums I realized that my start was at least too vague. Percussions? There are thousands of different percussive instruments, almost everything can be beaten and used as percussion! And also, ethnic and geographical differences make this query even more generalist. So I thought I could narrow my field and make one different post for some of the most important percussions played around the world. Then I decided to go back and be general, for once. For different reasons: 1- not all the instruments I had in mind are well represented in the albums I found 2- more interesting putting different accents altogether and compose some kind of percussive journey. So, here we go:


This is quite an old album, but it resumes everything I had in mind when I started looking for percussions on BandCamp. The author is Louis Cesar Ewande, specialist of Djembé and mandingue percussions. In this album he creates a fusion between african atmosphere and jazz moods, which he developed in the newest creation that you can also find all around webstores.


Take a very big pot. Put in it a bag of afrocuban rhythms, a piece of brasilian sounds, a pinch of reaggae and add fluid electronic and house in large quantity. Mix well. Shake. And this is what you'll get.


Sometimes we forget that percussions are not an exclusive of Africa and african derived populations. There's so much to know about East. These guys took the ukranian traditional music, with all its folkloric intruments, and dip it into modernity using electronic, adding different influences. Definitely interesting and original.


I wanted to inlude a tabla album in this selection and I found it extremely difficult. There are tons of possible choices on BandCamp, but I think that tabla are a little bit "overused" and "missused" just to give music that chillout and ambient touch that I personally can't stand. So I choose one of the purest albums I found to pay honour to an amazing instrument by itself.

2 comments:

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.