Things Come Together - Sagara & Meade (Album selected by Ted Gioia as one of the 100 best recordings of 2023) | Moise Sagara - calabash John Meade - banjo

Things Come Together - Sagara & Meade (Album selected by Ted Gioia as one of the 100 best recordings of 2023)

by Moise Sagara - calabash John Meade - banjo

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1.	Highlander’s Farewell - banjo & calabash 03:26 video	info	buy track
2.	The Shining One - banjo & calabash (dedicated to a friend)) 03:51	info	buy track
3.	Jenny ran away in the mud in the night - vocals, banjo & calabash (escape from oppression!) 03:26	info	buy track
4.	Icy Mountain - banjo & calabash 03:12		buy track
5.	Last Chance - banjo & calabash 02:46		buy track
6.	Improvised tune - banjo & calabash 03:59		buy track
7.	Christmas time in the morning - banjo & calabash 02:49		buy track
8.	John Riley the Shepherd - banjo & calabash 02:19		buy track

about

Banjo & Calabash Collaboration - all proceeds go to Mali
* www.dukeupress.edu/healing-songs
Hope you find some healing in these tunes-we have the same heart.
The painting “The Old Plantation” is the first depiction of the banjo in the States, circa 1785, near Beaufort, South Carolina. It shows what Kristina Gaddy in her wonderful new book “The Well of Souls” has suggested to be a component of the syncretic African religion that likely helped some of the enslaved people survive the horrendous ordeal of slavery and connected them to all that was taken from them.
A dark history and yet an instrument that I love and whose music has sustained me through my own dark times.
For the past several months I have been collaborating with Moise Sagara, a wonderful musician in Bamako Mali. He has been recording calabash tracks over banjo recordings I’ve made.
I sent a photo of the painting to Moise and asked him what he thought. He told me they are playing banjo and calabash just like we are doing and the calabash player is playing with sticks, “we still play it that way”.
I’ve put 8 tunes we’ve recorded on Bandcamp and am posting a link on Facebook and hope that you will listen and share and not because of my great banjo playing which is simple and weird but because the banjo playing is just the backdrop to an entire musical world that has been invisible to me. Moise plays the calabash with infinite variation, the beat is never where you expect it and yet drives and sustains the music in wonderful way and in part because of how new and unpredictable it seems.
I recently shared the recording we made of Highlander’s Farewell with Dena Ross Jennings and her response was so poetic and revealing to me that I had to share it here.
“This is beautiful. Moise is playing a polyrhythm of the breath, not the heartbeat. It is a rhythm of the sea and waves, not the rhythm of time. That can feel unpredictable to some ears because this rhythm arises from a different part of the body, all that makes the breath. Please share my joy with Moise.
This music is the force of pranayama. Thank you 🙏 ”

credits

released January 8, 2023

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about

We are together music Charlotte, North Carolina

Moise Sagara, professor of drums and percussion at the Conservatory of Arts and Crafts Bamako. He is the drummer for Salif Keita and Cheick Tidiane Seck.
On Djelli N'goni and Taman, Fode Kouyate, a griot from a famous griot tradition in Mali.
On Kora, Boua DIABATE, son of Fimani, a great Guitarist. .
John Graham Meade, received a National Endowment for the Arts grant as a banjo player.

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