Monday, September 12, 2011

East Meets West with Sucess

Sometimes, the term "East Meets West" becomes cliche. Whenever I usually hear that term, I think of a high end expensive trendy Asian Fusion restuarant with excellent atmosphere, but mediocre food catered to yuppies or suburbanites. However, there are certain times when East meets West with sucess, and last weekend was one of them.

One of my songs (Midnight Serrenade) off my upcomming album, Guitar Gumbo, is an instrumental spanish/latin style song played with nylon string guitars. This past sunday on 9-11, I drove down to Alexandria to record Indian tabla tracks for Midnight Serrenade, and the tablas ended up sounding great and complementing the song very well. The tabla is such a dynamic percussion instrument that it was able to accentuate certain climaxes and dramatic turns in the song, as well as laying an infectious groove. I guess you'll have to really hear an mp3 to know what I'm taking about. I will defintely get an mp3 up once the song is done being recorded and mastered, but that will be a while.

Tabla is traditionally used for classical Indian music. However, I always thought that tabla goes hand in hand with latin music. I'm not the first one to have thought of this. Check out how these artist incorporate tabla playing in these latin/spanish themed songs:

"Seville" by Justin King
http://www.reverbnation.com/artist/song_details/3614514

"Dos Parejas" by Pieces of East
http://new.music.yahoo.com/pieces-of-east/tracks/dos-parejas--20832928