Hank's Blog
Monday, February 28, 2005
Well last night was cool and I'm truly grateful to all the outstanding artists who showed up and gave the blessing of their presence. It was a light turnout but we didn't promote the show very well, due to the last minute change of plans. I really miss Jorge and wish he had been there. I look forward to having him back in New York and to our next Orixás event. Thank you to everyone who came.
Friday, February 25, 2005
Chris Landreth's "Ryan" is a hand-painted 3-D animation short film (nominated for an Oscar) = his "psychological realism", is genius - watch it at: http://www.nfb.ca/oscars2005/ryanchoix300.html
Thursday, February 24, 2005
the "essential exception", the amazing Po Gyzer's music and videos can be watched online, streaming live on BCAT (Brooklyn Community Access Television)
Here's the link to the stream:
mms://141.155.201.61/channel2
Here's the link to the stream:
mms://141.155.201.61/channel2
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
in the Spirit of Love
a special concert
with members of
the Orixás collective
Hank Schroy
Erol Josue
Sophie Acadine
Vernon Reid
DK Dyson
Chief Dayo
Brother Leonard
Shelby & Dave
and others...
Brazilian food by Erminia!
Love songs, chants, and invocations
Live at the Brooklyn Lyceum
227 4th Avenue Brooklyn, NY
Tel: 866-Gowanus
R to Union Street
this Sunday, 7 PM February 27th
$12 at door or $10 in advance online Gowanus.com or $8 for students with valid ID 18 & up
newritual.com
I know this is sort of LAST MINUTE, but I would like to invite you all to come out to a party this Sunday, Feb 27th, at the Brooklyn Lyceum. If you received my last email, you may remember that I mentioned we would be doing another fun Orixás party like the one we did last October for our CD release. But due to unforeseen difficulties, my main partner in that project Jorge Amorim hasn't been able to leave Brasil... So after much deliberation, and lots of encouragement from everyone involved, we've decided to put on a show anyways, although slightly different. We will still play some of the music from our Orixás CD, but our focus will be on the Spirit of Love, from any tradition... Last month, I had the pleasure of performing alongside Erol Josue, Houngan, at the place where I regularly practice yoga (OM !!!). There we played a song Erol wrote for Erzulie Freda, one of the Vodou spirits of love. We had so much fun that we thought it would be great to make a whole evening based on this theme. There will be so many beautiful musicians there on Sunday, it's bound to be moving. Vernon Reid's Masque (me, Don McKenzie, Leon Gruenbaum) will be there playing Coltrane's A Love Supreme, DK Dyson will sing some songs we wrote together in Brasil, Sophie Acadine will sing for Yemanja and more, Chief Dayo will offer a libation to the Yoruba gods, Brother Leonard will sing the gospel, and Shelby and David will present a beautiful song!
And if that's not enough, Erminia Apolinario will bring her delicious Brazilian home cooking.
So I hope you can make it, remember it's THIS SUNDAY!!!
a special concert
with members of
the Orixás collective
Hank Schroy
Erol Josue
Sophie Acadine
Vernon Reid
DK Dyson
Chief Dayo
Brother Leonard
Shelby & Dave
and others...
Brazilian food by Erminia!
Love songs, chants, and invocations
Live at the Brooklyn Lyceum
227 4th Avenue Brooklyn, NY
Tel: 866-Gowanus
R to Union Street
this Sunday, 7 PM February 27th
$12 at door or $10 in advance online Gowanus.com or $8 for students with valid ID 18 & up
newritual.com
I know this is sort of LAST MINUTE, but I would like to invite you all to come out to a party this Sunday, Feb 27th, at the Brooklyn Lyceum. If you received my last email, you may remember that I mentioned we would be doing another fun Orixás party like the one we did last October for our CD release. But due to unforeseen difficulties, my main partner in that project Jorge Amorim hasn't been able to leave Brasil... So after much deliberation, and lots of encouragement from everyone involved, we've decided to put on a show anyways, although slightly different. We will still play some of the music from our Orixás CD, but our focus will be on the Spirit of Love, from any tradition... Last month, I had the pleasure of performing alongside Erol Josue, Houngan, at the place where I regularly practice yoga (OM !!!). There we played a song Erol wrote for Erzulie Freda, one of the Vodou spirits of love. We had so much fun that we thought it would be great to make a whole evening based on this theme. There will be so many beautiful musicians there on Sunday, it's bound to be moving. Vernon Reid's Masque (me, Don McKenzie, Leon Gruenbaum) will be there playing Coltrane's A Love Supreme, DK Dyson will sing some songs we wrote together in Brasil, Sophie Acadine will sing for Yemanja and more, Chief Dayo will offer a libation to the Yoruba gods, Brother Leonard will sing the gospel, and Shelby and David will present a beautiful song!
And if that's not enough, Erminia Apolinario will bring her delicious Brazilian home cooking.
So I hope you can make it, remember it's THIS SUNDAY!!!
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Thursday, February 10, 2005
from Mi2N (Music Industry News Network):
Playing A Musical Instrument Reverses Stress On The Genomic Level
A ground-breaking study due to be published in the February 2005 issue of the international research journal Medical Science Monitor shows for the first time that playing a musical instrument can reverse multiple components of the human stress response on the genomic level. The study's principal investigator, Barry Bittman, M.D. of the Mind-Body Wellness Center in Meadville, PA, says these unique findings not only shed new light on the value of active music participation, but also extend our understanding of individualized human biological stress responses on an unprecedented level.
read more...
http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=76367
Future: Tense : The Coming World Order?
by GWYNNE DYER
from Common Dreams:
Published on Wednesday, February 9, 2005 by the Metro Times (Detroit, Michigan)
Why We Must Lose This War
by Jack Lessenberry
Gwynne Dyer isn’t exactly a wimp. Not many guys from Newfoundland are. Born during World War II, he has been fascinated by things military all his life, and has served in three navies — ours, Canada’s and Great Britain’s. He has university degrees from all three countries too, and a Ph.D. in military and Middle Eastern history. During the 1980s, he produced and narrated the best documentary series about the nature of war that I’ve ever seen.
And here’s what he says about what we are doing:
"The United States needs to lose the war in Iraq as soon as possible. Even more urgently, the whole world needs the United States to lose the war in Iraq. What is at stake now is the way we run the world for the next generation or more, and really bad things will happen if we get it wrong.”
Those are the opening lines of his latest and perhaps most important book, Future Tense: The Coming World Order (paperback, McClelland and Stewart, $12.95). If you plan on reading only one book this year, make this the one. In perfectly clear prose, with arguments as well-researched as they are compelling, this military expert explains why what we’re doing is mad.
read more...
"Orixás" is now available on the new digital distribution service, mp3tunes.com ... This service was founded by mp3.com founder Michael Robertson, and allows users to purchase mp3s for only 88 cents, without the digital rights management encoding embedded.
To see our page, goto:
http://www.mp3tunes.com/JorgeAmorimandHankSchroy
To read more about mp3tunes.com, goto:
http://news.google.com/news?q=mp3tunes
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
a fun video about the parade in the New York streets during the RNC last year...
RNC...NYC
By Bradley Grant and James Mckay
Music by Kimya Dawson
"Hidden Vagenda"
a squirrel on a moped production
RNC...NYC
By Bradley Grant and James Mckay
Music by Kimya Dawson
"Hidden Vagenda"
a squirrel on a moped production
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Monday, February 07, 2005
Sunday, February 06, 2005
if I have time to take a yoga class while on the road:
in Sacramento: Bikram
in Oakland: Piedmont Yoga
in San Francisco:
in Sacramento: Bikram
in Oakland: Piedmont Yoga
in San Francisco:
Soma Yoga
Mindful Body (recommended by Cyndi Lee)
Yoga Tree (recommended by Cyndi Lee)
NY Times covers Suphala's concert in Kabul - article out February 5, 2005
for more info on Suphala, goto suphala.com
Rare Sound of a Woman's Drum Enlivens Hushed Kabul
By CARLOTTA GALL
for more info on Suphala, goto suphala.com
Rare Sound of a Woman's Drum Enlivens Hushed Kabul
By CARLOTTA GALL
KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb. 4 - Kabul's badly depleted music scene received a welcome injection of excitement last week with the arrival of Suphala, the New York-based tabla player and composer, who held a joint concert with some of the Afghan capital's most celebrated classical musicians.
One of the first foreign musicians to visit the war-battered city - and a rarity as a woman performer on the tabla, a pair of small hand drums traditionally played by men - Suphala packed a concert hall here. Reporters from Afghanistan's leading private television station, Tolo TV, followed her around town. Local companies and donors sponsored the concert last Thursday in a new hall at the private Foundation for Culture and Civil Society.
But it was the welcome Suphala received from Afghanistan's master musicians that set her visit apart. The musicians, who had survived years of war and repression only to be silenced completely under the Taliban, gathered to play for her, gave a lunch at the mostly destroyed musicians' quarter in the old city, and then, in an unusual break with tradition, joined her on stage.
Suphala, an Indian-American who was born and raised in Minneapolis, trained with India's leading tabla masters, the late Ustad Allarakha and his son, Ustad Zakir Hussain, in Mumbai, the former Bombay. This itself brought her ready acceptance among the proud Afghan musicians. Afghanistan's classical music traces back to India, the source of Kabul's first court musicians. The tabla is well known and loved here, since it is one of the main instruments in Afghan classical music.
"It's a rule, we always respect anyone who puts their hand on a tabla," said Khalid Amahang, one of five young tabla players who joined Suphala during the concert. But a woman as tabla player is unheard of in Afghanistan today. In fact, there are no known female instrumentalists left, after the deprivations of two decades of war, a fundamentalist Islamic government that banned women from television in the early 1990's, and then the Taliban, which banned women from public life altogether and prohibited the playing of music by both men and women. There are women who are professional Afghan singers, but they live abroad, and none have returned to perform in Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted.
"I have not played with a woman before," Mr. Amahang said. "Our grandfathers do not even know of it." In fact, there were some female instrumentalists in the 1970's, but mostly players of the harmonium and the rebab, a classical lute.
Ahmad Shah Shahidahi, a tabla player from a leading musicians' family, said that it would be good if Afghan women could play. "It would create some brightness," he added.
Suphala certainly brought brightness, in her gold-embroidered Indian clothes and a full-length white rabbit fur coat, which she bought hastily after arriving in snowy Kabul in sandals. She brought her own mix of traditional and modern musical compositions. Her touch and rhythm are sure, and she held her own as she played with a group of five young Afghan players.
Two old Afghan masters of the tabla and the dilruba, a stringed instrument, played alone, and Suphala later joined another famous duo, Ustad Ghulam Hussein on the rebab, and Ustad Muhammad Asef Mahmud on the tabla. Afterward, Suphala stooped to kiss the hem of Ustad Asef, as the tabla master is also known.
"She has a good future," said Ustad Asef, himself a celebrated player, who has returned after 14 years in exile in London to teach at Kabul University for a year. "It's good she's here, in terms of art, but also because she is an international, and because she's a woman," he said.
