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Category: Music
WORLD FUSION WITHOUT THAT SAME NEW WAVE
THE TRADITIONAL MUSIC OF ANCIENT KUZHEBAR ABORIGINES
The world of Vladiswar Nadishana is a magical place. On a dark cynical day in Los Angeles, only the real magic of honest music is worth wading through the myth of world fusion. On a good day a little New Age would do, but the demands of the dismissive darker days would shred the paper thin optimism of hammer dulcimers and echoing wooden flutes of false hope. This Vladiswar guy is made of stronger stuff.
Sure, there's a boatload of wooden flutes. His web page is littered with descriptions of the scores of things to pound, pick and blow. His musicianship is legendary and there's a posted myth of Ancient Kuzhebar spun from Siberia through time and teleporting space to support the unlikely existence of this Pan of a pipe player. Nadishana is as hard to believe as he is to resist. He's a multinstrumentalist (!) of impossible diversity, dancer, inventor of something dubbed sound microsurgery, and web designer of humbling ability. Where does he find the time? A myth carrying the torch of an ancient time and space traveling lost Russian cultur of Kuzhebar Aborigines is worth accepting if only to salve pain in wounded self-comparison. He's that musician and composer whose instruments I can't pronounce, whose outlook I can't fathom and a grasp that exceeds the reach of non-enchanted human potential.
So, Vladiswar can dance through musical traditions the world over despite the challenge of tonal variations, time signatures that could send Dave Brubeck into a dark depression, and manage to layer that crazy quilt with enough surprises along the way to avoid cloying sweetness and New Age sugar shock with inventive sculpted microsurgical sound design. He does a duet with a cat! That can't be a good idea, right?
Okay, he got the cat song right. Didn't hide the nasty side of the feline. And a little Talk Box or Vocoder employed skillfully makes the song intriguing, if a little disturbing. Here's the deal: he pounds things with authority on stuff that sounds like the Tabla and Tambura, he blows a mean wood flute whatever of a few dozen names he may call the thing, and plucks strings clean, fast and tasteful. All that music may rob you of a bummer. Sad part about it, this music is too creative to be avoided on a dark day. He may bring the world together in your mind on the right day. If that's not what you're after, avoid VH like the bubonic plague. He's infectious.
THE SONGS:
HELI-WE APOLINGAYO (WATER SONG) begins spooky and woody in a forest of African voices and rain sticks. Buncha sounds echoing through the subconscious before the hand beat drums and wood flute meander through something like a Panish dream in a valley filled with tactile drums and enchanted thumb pianos. Headphones will take you deep into this enchanted forest with a lot of charming little nuances. Tribal voices chime in Primordial as seasoning.
UNREGULARDANCE has that country twang from a distant land on the sitar with a crazy assymetrical swing that makes a little 5/4 seem like child's play. All the drums are played by hand with scary dexterous complexity. This one rocks in a scale uncommon to Western ears.
CAT'S LOVE SONG elevates a complaining cat to soloist, with the help of the Talk Box made famous in "Frampton Comes Alive." Stories and songs about pet cats generally reach the round file half experienced. VH's housecat is a folksinger and collaborator. The good news is he has the decency to include the honest squeal of a cat in complaint. This feline has a little complaint. There's a little Nirvana nastiness in the vocal line from this furry singer.
AEYOLIO SUE sounds like a little hammer dulcimer has infiltrated the music after all! There's a little Celtic feel to this Clannad-like simplicity.
WINTER SONG meanders like the opening to a Raga with the Sarod establishing the mystery and a wooden flute exploring the possibilities. A plucked and resonating chord progression leads into a little ditty about cold wonder
BAGPIPE TUNE is somehow sweet, though I swear that instrument was meant by the Scots to scare the British. Short of the occasional Amazing Grace that instrument is usually a liability. And this tune. Okay, it's charming.
11/16 TUNE takes a turn into disarming territory with enough complexity in the time to get past the sweet melody. Very lyrical.
 MORNING TUNE is rain stick ghostly and glowing with the swirl of harmonic daybreak clouds. A high sounding flute trumpets the transition from dreaming. 
STRAIGHTENING THE MIND (DANCE) drums in a sonic field of ethereal echoplex sounds. Wooden and leather percussion straightens the time with a Kalimba sound that taps along to a solid headspace.  NATIONAL HYMN OF ANCIENT KUZHEBAR is a sad and deep excursion into a region lost to time. This is a folk song sung melodic and harmonized. The strings are strummed and time tapped, with a thud of bass to deepen the experience. A clap along number, if you can count in Huzhebar time 
SONG OF UNREGENERATED SINNERS is a dance number with a bowed barn dance of a solo that gets the feet tapping. A brass trumpet joins in the unregenerated romp. Something like a sitar and tabla gets a workout. The joys of sin for a season, perhaps. No shame in that.Nadishana used: dzuddahord, guitar, sitar, mandola, Bulgarian tambura, fretless bass, double-bass, flute gayda, bansuri, overtone flute, kena, kuzhebar flutes, various percussion, ghost catcher, musorophones, sampler surgeryYoul' ~ trumpet, double bass, on track 9, violin on tracks 9 and 4Yulia Dashevskaya ~ vocal on track 8, Tatyana Gordeeva ~ vocal on track 8Cat Basik ~ vocal on track 3Music ~ Nadishana/Kuzhebar traditional, including track 9 ~ Youl'/Nadishana, tracks 4, 7, 8 ~ Yulia Dashevskaya/NadishanaDesign ~ Nadishana, cover symbols ~ Yulia SurbaViadiswar's extensive website can be found at: www.nadishana.nm.ru
CLICK ON THE PICTURE BELOW TO VISIT VLADISWAR NADISHANA'S MYSPACE
 | Currently listening:
Move Your Chakra
By Vladiswar Nadishana
Release date: 15 June, 2005 |
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3:59 PM
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