The Melbourne/Istanbul Sessions

Pin Rada

Telluric Music

Indie CDs

Web: http://www.indie-cds.com

Pin Rada is a Melbourne based multi-instrumentalist and producer and The Melbourne/Istanbul Sessions is his unique vision of a unification of the various strands of world music with an emphasis on Turkish and Australian genres. It is the result of three years of collaboration between musicians in Melbourne and Istanbul and offers an amazing array of sounds in a superbly textured work.

Rada studied wind and bowed instruments in Greece, India and Turkey, has played Didjeridoo with Istanbul musicians, and collaborates in Australia with musicians from India, Turkey, Morocco, Mozambique Indonesia and Sudan. He has worked with an enormous variety of other ] ethnic Australian musicians including; Croatian multi-instrumentalist Mark Planigale, Mosambique vocalist Kobya (a.k.a Carlos Panguana), Moroccan Oud player Brahim Benhim, The Western Thrace Sufi Music Ensemble, Vietnamese horn player Tai Jordan, Bosnian vocalist Amela Usanovic, Turkish percussionist Ugur Serpinli, Samoan/New Zealand harpist Natalia Mann, Italian singer songwriter Kavisha Mazzella, Indonesian vocalist Ria Soemardjo, Sudanese singer Ajak Kwai, and Russian singer Zulya Kamalova.

The line-up of featured instruments on The Melbourne/Istanbul Sessions certainly appears unusual when judged in relation to traditional musical forms and cultural practices. An Australian Aboriginal 'didjeridoo' playing with a Brazilian Capoheira 'Berimbou' and Turkish 'Darbuka,' does seem a strange combination. At the same time, all of these instruments can work together and transcend cultural and linguistic barriers to create a unique musical form from a shared vision and that is what this work attempts to do.

When first experienced this CD is quite different from run of the mill “new age” or world music, it has a strong ritualistic even spiritual tone yet not with overt religious overtone nor with clichéd forms and combinations. Some of the pieces are quite sparse and allow the instruments to speak for themselves. It certainly has a strongly middle eastern flavor yet this is mediated through a variety of instruments coming from diverse cultures.

This CD took a while for me to warm to, it is different from what most people have experienced as world music and while creating a work which is coherent and unified also recognizes the unique diversity of its parts and allows each instrument and culture to have a voice.