The film crew was taping a segment about making a kora when Mali's premeir kora master, Toumani Diabate dropped in to see how it was going. Asked for his consent to appear in the documentary, he said it would be fine to tape his master class graduation ceremony the next day, Feb. 20th, at a club called The Diplomat. The Diplomat is Toumani's regular spot for performing in Bamako. If he's in town, you can be sure to see after midnight any Friday night there.
We arrived an hour before the ceremony was to begin not sure what to expect. About 15 students were in various stages of setting up and tuning their koras. Other instruments were out as well. I noticed a large, powerful looking man enter the Diplomat and go straight to a balaphone giving it a few taps to hear how it sounded. Later found out that he was a maker of balaphones, a teacher, and a master musician of that instrument. He was the subject of two segments filmed later.
Toumani promised we could get a line out from the house mixing board ( a 24 channel Behringer). After checking with the club technicians, I connected a parallel split from the Left and Right outputs of the board to two tracks of the 788. It soon became apparent that very few instruments were going to get miced. DI lines from 2 or 3 koras was about the extent of it.
To pick up the instruments acoustically, we placed the stereo Neumann in an unobtrusive position about 10 feet in front of the stage left side. Also managed to get the U87 right on the stage with intention of getting the koras' natural acoustics close up. Setting up any more mics felt like it would be an intrusion.
The first kora performance was by Toumani's son who appeared to be in his late teens or early 20s. He clearly demostrated that he had either inherited, learned or both, his father's skills on the kora.
Much of the evening was taken up with speeches and the graduation ceremony, interspersed with a few more kora performances.
Toumani was holding court, making the rounds dressed royally in a dark green bouba. Full length stand-up posters with elegant graphics declared Toumani a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador in the fight against A.I.D.S. Our hope, at the very least was to get a usable sound byte from him.
A week earlier, Toumani had been in Los Angeles to receive a Grammy for his last album with Ali Farka Toure. The Grammy was presented to him again as part of this ceremony. His sister and some of her friends sitting in the back near the sound board, all dressed with formal elegance, began singing acapella songs of praise for Toumani and carried on even as the M.C. moved on to his next presentation. They carried on this singing - it was nice singing - for a good 15 - 20 minutes unconcerned with the disruption they were causing. Toumani, himself, appeared to ignore them. Someone later said that this was a thing they did sometimes to try to get some money. I don't think they were successful, most people looked confused by it or mildly annoyed.
Finally, toward the end Toumani's band got up on stage though it was still uncertain whether the master would sit in. His band had a full drum kit along with 3 drummers upfront playing a drum from Senegal called a Sabar which looks like a skinny djembe and is played with a stick. There was a bass player, guitar, n'goni, balaphon, and a cheesy synthesizer - no vocals. Someone else, obviously Toumnai's personal sound technician, came back to the mixing board to get their mix together. At the last minute, much to our delight, Toumani jumped in on the kora.
All evening the house sound techs had been friendly and easy going and helped, where they could, with my audio requirements despite our language differences. They were also very hospitable, making sure that I was supplied with cold drinks as they were also. When Toumani's soundman took over, he noticed I was there recording and made sure to ask if everything was ok for me. He was friendly and welcoming, also.
The only instruments going through the mixer were Toumani's kora, the bass drum mic, and the synth which I thought was mixed too far on top. But the kora still cut through. With the audio from the ambient mics, including at least one of the camera pair of mics, combined with the board mix, we had good audio to go along with the footage of Toumani playing.
It was official, Toumani Diabate was in the documentary. Unlike most performers, he had not required a fee. This was considered a bit of a coup as the production was hoping for names more familiar to American and International audiences to help market the release. Toumani had been coy about his participation the day before and there was uncertainty about it for most of this evening. I considered that he was feeling us out before jumping in.
After his performance things became chaotic - people looking for photo ops and to meet him. A local TV crew was there broadcasting the event live. Aja and the film crew managed to get in a few interview type questions with Toumani for the documentary. Later, Aja was interviewed on television about what he was doing. We are still wishing to have a more formal sit down interview with Toumani but he's hard to pin down.
As we were getting ready to leave, Toumani was still center stage basking in the moment. People were going up to shake his hand, he wasn't saying much but smiling broadly. I thought to make contact and went and shook his hand. He turned to me and said, "Thank-you, bro ... I am happy." He obviously was. That made my night.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Bravo, Max
Are now taking pre-release orders for their new cd, Dog's Light which I Produced with them at Prairie Sun Recording last December. It's a very organic recording - great songs passionately played and sung live in the studio.
http://www.dogslight.com
http://www.dogslight.com
Break These Chains Release
Received an email from Winifred Adams mentioned earlier this year in The Mix:
OZ!!!
Your mix is our first single release on Itunes worldwide!
www.itunes.com/winifredadams
Maybe you can share your work with your blog fans as well!! Whoopie!!
Thank you so much!
OZ!!!
Your mix is our first single release on Itunes worldwide!
www.itunes.com/winifredadams
Maybe you can share your work with your blog fans as well!! Whoopie!!
Thank you so much!
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Rupa & the April Fishes in Grass Valley
One of my favorite groups plays in my hometown tonight. Unfortunately, I'm not there to make it. If you are, I highly recommend catching their set.
Saturday, February 26
The Center for the Arts presents a Dance Party
Rupa and The April Fishes
8:00PM, $15 members, $18 non-member
Tickets at: The Center Box Office - 530-274-8384 ext 14
BriarPatch Co-op Community Market - 530-272-5333
Cherry Records - 530-823-2147
Saturday, February 26
The Center for the Arts presents a Dance Party
Rupa and The April Fishes
8:00PM, $15 members, $18 non-member
Tickets at: The Center Box Office - 530-274-8384 ext 14
BriarPatch Co-op Community Market - 530-272-5333
Cherry Records - 530-823-2147
"...romantic and pulling from many worlds -- Indian ragas and sultry tangos, Gypsy waltzes and bossa nova. And all of it shares the soothing quality of lullabies, with deeply poetic imagery, which Marya sings in sweet, lilting French."
- San Francisco Chronicle
"Watching them perform is a little like riding with the top down in a double-decker bus, careening through seven or eight crowded ethnic neighborhoods, each one in the middle of a massive street party. " - Los Angeles Times
Rupa & the April Fishes hold up a carnival mirror to life and present a warped, humorous and occasionally disquieting reflection. Sequestered beneath Rupa’s infectious and captivating melodies are thought-provoking themes that address life, love, art, death and the real and artificial divisions that keep us apart. The San Francisco-based musical agitators are specialists in crossing borders and building bridges and with their new album they effortlessly blur the boundaries of genre and geography to create a sound Time Out has called "global agit-pop".
Although Rupa and the April Fishes are based in San Francisco, California, their music is a specifically locale-free style of pan-culturalism, with lead singer and songwriter Rupa Marya singing not only in English, but also French, Spanish, Hindi and the Roma language of the Gypsies. Marya was born near San Francisco, but her Indian-born parents traveled quite a bit, and she was raised not only in California, but also in northern India and France. Although the study of medicine was Marya's main priority -- she is an internist on staff at a teaching hospital in San Francisco -- she also began playing piano and guitar as a child, and began writing songs as a teenager.
After a stint in a folk duo with San Francisco singer-songwriter Kate Isenberg, Marya formed Rupa and the April Fishes with the intent of blending all the forms of music she had been exposed to, from wistful French chansons and dramatic Roma ballads to the Mexican-American pop that permeates the Bay Area, along with politically minded lyrics that concern her internationalist mindset. With herself on guitar and lead vocals, Marya formed Rupa and the April Fishes while completing her medical residency. The band's debut album, Extraordinary Rendition, was released in 2007.
Their latest release, Este Mundo, was recorded at Prairie Sun Studios by engineer and sound wizard Oz Fritz, who is best known for his work with Tom Waits (Mule Variations). Guests include rapper Boots Riley of The Coup, along with some of the Bay Area’s best musical talents including Tin Hat’s trumpeter Ara Anderson and Serbian slap bassist Djordje Stijepovic. Rupa & the April Fishes blend an alternative pop attitude with international spices, mixing in elements of Gypsy swing, Colombian cumbia, French chanson and Indian ragas. According to lead singer Rupa, “este mundo is a collection of sounds and songs highlighting life’s accidental beauty and surging joy as well as their inexorable partner: human suffering.”
Friday, February 25, 2011
Scouting a Location
2/14: Drove diagonally across Bamako from our home base in the South West corner to the North East area to scout a location where a donso n'goni (bass n'goni) instrument maker had his shop. It's on a hill overlooking several domes of a large mosque still under construction. The sound of many voices from an unseen market or public gathering of some kind funneled upward, amplified by bouncing off the stone buildings lining narrow alleyways. A pile of broken stones in the artisan's flotsom and jetson strewn dirt yard gives a post apocalyptic look to this place.
A number of shoots this week have minimal audio requirements - human interest stories,instrument making, on the street interviews - segments without music performances. I hang back and do rough mixes in the Production Room.The roughs give me a good idea as to how the recordings turned out - so far, so good! I'm finding the audio from the camera mics quite useful for picking up good ambience.
For a transistion piece, I was asked to buy a small radio and record the static and tuning in to various radio stations across the dial. I discovered BBC Africa which I've been listening to since. Their, bold, person on the street/reporters in the thick of things broadcasts with the attendant background sounds is confrontational and often quite shocking. The violence in Libya seems to reverberate throughout the African continent and, presumably, the world. Things seem very volatile to me.
A number of shoots this week have minimal audio requirements - human interest stories,instrument making, on the street interviews - segments without music performances. I hang back and do rough mixes in the Production Room.The roughs give me a good idea as to how the recordings turned out - so far, so good! I'm finding the audio from the camera mics quite useful for picking up good ambience.
For a transistion piece, I was asked to buy a small radio and record the static and tuning in to various radio stations across the dial. I discovered BBC Africa which I've been listening to since. Their, bold, person on the street/reporters in the thick of things broadcasts with the attendant background sounds is confrontational and often quite shocking. The violence in Libya seems to reverberate throughout the African continent and, presumably, the world. Things seem very volatile to me.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
General Diabate
On Feb. 12 we drove across Bamako to film djeli dun dun master General Diabate. We enter his compound and encounter an active domestic scene, women doing laundry, cleaning, preparing food, a multitude of kids being kids. General got his nick name as a child - something to do with his skill as a soccer player, never been in the military, but does work in a local hospital possibly as a surgeon though that wasn't made clear. General is a tall man with a stately and friendly demeanor.
He invites us into his living room where the interview is to take place and offers hospitality by having one of his daughters go out and buy sodas for everybody. The living room is just big enough to set-up cameras, lights and sound. The walls are painted a shade of bluish turquoise; An old television rests on a table in one corner broadcasting a soccer game which he turns off when we're seated. Small framed photos of family adorn the walls along with perfomance photos from Paris. Two clocks on the wall tell the time with extreme precision exactly twice a day.
For the interview, General changes from his house clothes into a colorful, light purple traditional costume known as a bouba. It is immaculately clean. The bright vividness of the bouba makes for a moment of concern with the camera crew but they end up going with it.
A djeli dun dun is carried by the musician by a strap slung over one shoulder. It's played with a wood mallet, the other hand plays a metallic bell. The drum has the sound of a powerful booming bass drum. A djeli dun dun player is a griot someone who communicates the history of their tribe through their music. General Diabate doesn't sing, he tells the history through different rhythms which have associations with various aspects of the tribal life.
For General's performance piece, the film crew is having him play walking up his street into his compound while also commenting on what he's doing. He's accompanied by two of his sons on the djeli dun dun. He's being miced with a clip on lavalier mic and the Rode shotgun. The lav works to pick up the commentary but both mics are woefully inadequate to capture the full power of the dun dun.
To get a good drum sound, we have them play a couple of rhythms stationary at one end of the compound. We are going to temporarily comandeer the courtyard and interupt their domestic activities and the children's play. Perhaps this is why General gets a bag of candy and gives a piece to all the children who need no prompting to come running up to him for their treat. This reminds me of Gurdjieff giving out candy on the streets of Paris in his later years.
The film crew doesn't want to see any mics in the shot so Lee and I set-up the Neumann stereo mic off to one side and a U87 beside the cameras. To try to get some of the low end with an ambient mic, I place an AKG D112 on the ground of the stone courtyard as close as they'll let me which is still about 10 feet away. I'm suprised by how well this works.
The sound of the dun duns shake and reverberate through the courtyard. The clatter of the metal ringing bells carries the higher frequencies in a way that I can only describe as purposeful chaos. The booming drums and rattling bells are loud enough to wake the dead.
The pieces aren't long but afterwards, in the true silence that follows, one gets the sense that something very powerful has occured, though exactly what remains unknown. Accessing new worlds through sound isn't something that contemporary science has found a way to measure as of yet.
He invites us into his living room where the interview is to take place and offers hospitality by having one of his daughters go out and buy sodas for everybody. The living room is just big enough to set-up cameras, lights and sound. The walls are painted a shade of bluish turquoise; An old television rests on a table in one corner broadcasting a soccer game which he turns off when we're seated. Small framed photos of family adorn the walls along with perfomance photos from Paris. Two clocks on the wall tell the time with extreme precision exactly twice a day.
For the interview, General changes from his house clothes into a colorful, light purple traditional costume known as a bouba. It is immaculately clean. The bright vividness of the bouba makes for a moment of concern with the camera crew but they end up going with it.
A djeli dun dun is carried by the musician by a strap slung over one shoulder. It's played with a wood mallet, the other hand plays a metallic bell. The drum has the sound of a powerful booming bass drum. A djeli dun dun player is a griot someone who communicates the history of their tribe through their music. General Diabate doesn't sing, he tells the history through different rhythms which have associations with various aspects of the tribal life.
For General's performance piece, the film crew is having him play walking up his street into his compound while also commenting on what he's doing. He's accompanied by two of his sons on the djeli dun dun. He's being miced with a clip on lavalier mic and the Rode shotgun. The lav works to pick up the commentary but both mics are woefully inadequate to capture the full power of the dun dun.
To get a good drum sound, we have them play a couple of rhythms stationary at one end of the compound. We are going to temporarily comandeer the courtyard and interupt their domestic activities and the children's play. Perhaps this is why General gets a bag of candy and gives a piece to all the children who need no prompting to come running up to him for their treat. This reminds me of Gurdjieff giving out candy on the streets of Paris in his later years.
The film crew doesn't want to see any mics in the shot so Lee and I set-up the Neumann stereo mic off to one side and a U87 beside the cameras. To try to get some of the low end with an ambient mic, I place an AKG D112 on the ground of the stone courtyard as close as they'll let me which is still about 10 feet away. I'm suprised by how well this works.
The sound of the dun duns shake and reverberate through the courtyard. The clatter of the metal ringing bells carries the higher frequencies in a way that I can only describe as purposeful chaos. The booming drums and rattling bells are loud enough to wake the dead.
The pieces aren't long but afterwards, in the true silence that follows, one gets the sense that something very powerful has occured, though exactly what remains unknown. Accessing new worlds through sound isn't something that contemporary science has found a way to measure as of yet.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Zumana Treta
2/11/11: The next music performance filmed was with soko fiddle player Zumana Treta. We shot this on the banks of the Niger outside the same Cultural Center where KSK had put on a concert 4 years earlier. It's near the bridge that connects the two sides of Bamako and right across the river from the lone, tall bank building that repuredly holds all or most of the country's gold not in the ground. Mali is one of the biggest producers of the world's gold. Downriver from the bank is the Hotel Libya. It's the only other building in view.
Accompanying Zumana was a calabash player, and a n'goni player - the same n'goni player who sat in with Djeneba Seck the day before.
A calabash is a percussion instrument - a shell that's a gourd cut in half. It has two sounds - fast syncopated rhythms played by the fingers on top of the shell, and a low thump played by the back of the hand or sometimes a fist on the shell.
To capture the low sound I put a SM58 inside the shell - not enough room to put on a stand so the mic just rests on a piece of cloth inside the shell. A SM57 covered the top of the calabash.
Often the calabash is played on the ground. At first we planned to have all the musicians on the ground for the shot, but the calabash player brought a stand, a portable raised platform that allowed everyone to stand up. The n'goni and fiddle were run direct.
Zumana also sings. We wanted as few mics in the frame as possible. Tried the Sanken lavalier but it didn't sound right for Zumana's voice. Switched to the Audio Tech lav. It sounded pretty dark but it did pick up the throaty part of his vocal and didn't get so much of the fiddle bleeding through. I was confident that I could brighten his vocal in post production.
Still wasn't happy with the vocal so set up the U87 and set it as close to Zumana as I could without compromising the shot. It ended up about 18 - 24 inches away, farther than I would have preferred to record a lead vocal but close enough to pick up some of the higher frequencies in his voice. I was reasonably satisfied with the combination of the U87 and the lav.
I had found some shade to set up the 788 recorder in to avoid getting fried by the sun. The temperature was 107 in the sun. We arrived around 3pm then waited about an hour or so until the light was better. The sunset, around 6:30pm was quite dramatic.
Didin't have much of an audience for Zumana but his singing and playing was mesmerizing nonetheless. He played 5 pieces. The plaintive wailing of the soko fiddle often in repetitive patterns that seemed to draw one in further with each repetition, had a yearning quality, reaching for something more. Drawing one up in a mood outside the ordinary.
Accompanying Zumana was a calabash player, and a n'goni player - the same n'goni player who sat in with Djeneba Seck the day before.
A calabash is a percussion instrument - a shell that's a gourd cut in half. It has two sounds - fast syncopated rhythms played by the fingers on top of the shell, and a low thump played by the back of the hand or sometimes a fist on the shell.
To capture the low sound I put a SM58 inside the shell - not enough room to put on a stand so the mic just rests on a piece of cloth inside the shell. A SM57 covered the top of the calabash.
Often the calabash is played on the ground. At first we planned to have all the musicians on the ground for the shot, but the calabash player brought a stand, a portable raised platform that allowed everyone to stand up. The n'goni and fiddle were run direct.
Zumana also sings. We wanted as few mics in the frame as possible. Tried the Sanken lavalier but it didn't sound right for Zumana's voice. Switched to the Audio Tech lav. It sounded pretty dark but it did pick up the throaty part of his vocal and didn't get so much of the fiddle bleeding through. I was confident that I could brighten his vocal in post production.
Still wasn't happy with the vocal so set up the U87 and set it as close to Zumana as I could without compromising the shot. It ended up about 18 - 24 inches away, farther than I would have preferred to record a lead vocal but close enough to pick up some of the higher frequencies in his voice. I was reasonably satisfied with the combination of the U87 and the lav.
I had found some shade to set up the 788 recorder in to avoid getting fried by the sun. The temperature was 107 in the sun. We arrived around 3pm then waited about an hour or so until the light was better. The sunset, around 6:30pm was quite dramatic.
Didin't have much of an audience for Zumana but his singing and playing was mesmerizing nonetheless. He played 5 pieces. The plaintive wailing of the soko fiddle often in repetitive patterns that seemed to draw one in further with each repetition, had a yearning quality, reaching for something more. Drawing one up in a mood outside the ordinary.
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