Guest House Studios
Monday, November 20th, 2006 Posted in News | No Comments »Back in Kathmandu, we’ve spent the last few weeks mostly in our recording studio. Most professional recording studios we’ve found here are great for radio voices but too dead for acoustic instruments, so we’ve converted Tara and Danny’s hotel room into a decent space, complete with hot showers for the musicians, something the Gandharbas don’t […]
Return to Lamjung
Monday, November 13th, 2006 Posted in News | No Comments »Buddhiman and I hop in a minibus back to Kalimati in Lamjung, cross the creaky bridge and walk through the now harvested rice fields to his home in Pipal Tari. Neighboring farmers ride their plows on the backs of water buffalo as others wave straw platters at the rice piles, blowing the chaff away. Everyone […]
Kathmandu
Thursday, November 9th, 2006 Posted in News | No Comments »Back in the big city, we rehearse and scout for studios to record a CD that will capture the best songs that we think show the similarities between Appalachian and Himalayan folk music. No small task, since drums are rare in Appalachian music and Nepalis don’t use pickup notes; everything starts on the downbeat. There […]
The Terai
Thursday, November 9th, 2006 Posted in News | No Comments »We leave Hum Bahadur and drive out of the Himalayan foothills to the northern edge of Chitwan National Park, where we spend a night in Jyamire with Shiva Gandharba’s family, a friend of ours from Kathmandu. Shiva’s father builds sarangis and there’s about 20 kids in and around the family compound to keep us occupied. […]
On to Palpa
Thursday, November 9th, 2006 Posted in News | No Comments »The road from Pokhara to Palpa curves through rice fields midharvest, deep river gorges with the churning water several hundred feet below the road, and snowy Himalayas peaking through the valleys as we round the endless bends on a five hour journey. Small towns with brightly painted brick buildings, kids who can say “Hello, give […]
A Note from Tara and Danny (The American Musicians)
Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 Posted in News | 6 Comments »It has been great fun for us to travel around meeting Gandharba musicians, listening to their music, and sometimes playing together. The fallback tune is Reshum Phiriri. It is a great love song, crowd pleaser that everybody knows and all the kids love to sing. Since it the one that they always call for, it […]