Music

Check out more music on the new RagaJazzMusic blog!

Bageshri Beat (sitar meets beatbox!)
Paul Livingstone & Kmillion

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Arohi cd audio

Blessing (Listen to a sample, streaming audio)

This original composition is based on the raga from South India, Hamsadwani. The melody is played on 9 string fretless guitar and bansuri (Indian flute) accompanied by a traditional South Indian rhythm section of mridangam (barrel drum), ghatum (clay pot), and moorsing (jews harp). The piece uses several Indian calculative rhythmic cadences called tehai and koravai, which are played in unison by the whole ensemble. This recording opens the Arohi record to be released in 2001.

Personnel
Geetha Bennett - Indian vocal
Paul Livingstone - 9 string fretless guitar
Pedro Eustache - bansuri
Poovalur Sriji - mridangam
Leonice Shinneman - ghatum
Randy Gloss - riq

The Good Shepherd (Listen to a sample, streaming audio)

An exchange of solkattu (recitative rhythm) and percussion opens this piece into a theme based on the night raga, Bagesrhi over jazz harmonic structure. Pedro is featured with a bansuri solo over a Brazilian samba groove.

Dream Suite - in 3 sections (Listen to a sample, streaming audio)

Proseta se Jovka Kumanovka
Song from Ohrid
Metevo Oro

This contemporary world music suite encapsulates 3 Macedonian folk songs with improvisational interludes. With instruments and musical influences from the Middle East, Spain, India, Mexico and Jazz the suite takes on a dreamlike state where transitions flow mysteriously between time, places and moods.

The Mora the Merrier (Listen to a sample, streaming audio)

The Mora opens featuring the fretless 9 and bansuri playing alaap, a meditative invocation of Raga Yaman Kalyan. The guitar leads the ensemble through this up tempo composition, with expanding and contracting rhythmic sequences and solos.

Amiya (Listen to a sample, streaming audio)

This is a contemporary arrangement of a traditional melody in the Raga Sindhi Bhairavi taught by Amiya Dasgupta, our beloved guru who passed away in 1994.

Turbans Theme

This short theme creates an interesting musical juxtaposition between the Indian mridangam, bansuri, and fretless guitar with the very American sounds of the banjo and nylon string guitar.

Personnel
Paul Livingstone - 9 string fretless & nylon string guitars
Pedro Eustache - bansuri
Poovalur Sriji - mridangam
Gary Spangler - banjo

Turbans Jam

The groove and simple chord changes give a buoyant western feel to this recording. The melody and improvisation is on a raga again from the South Indian tradition called Charukeshi.

Personnel
Paul Livingstone - 9 string fretless & nylon string guitars
Pedro Eustache - bansuri
Poovalur Sriji - mridangam

Malkauns

This night raga from North India is played as a solo on sitar in the traditional style of alaap. Alaap is the invocation of the spirit and mood of the raga and is the purest form raga. The sitar is accompanied by the drone of the tanpura.

Personnel
Paul Livingstone - sitar & tanpura

Discography and Filmography Resume Curriculm Vitae
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Recording Collaborations
	Built An Ark, Love Part 1
	Built An Ark, Love Part 2
	Built An Ark, The Stars are Singing too
	Ozomatli, Ozomatli (first release)
	Alanis Morrisette, Knees of my Bees
	Group Estanzuela, Son Joyas
	Li�n Ensemble, Light & Fire
	Indonesia Postmodern, Indonesia Postmodern / vol.1

The Turbans sountrack cd is all orignal scoring I composed for the award winning independent short film by Erika Surat Anderson called "Turbans".

The Turbans soundtrack CD is currentlly out of print. Please check back later for copies of this recording.

Arohi - World Music for mind, body & soul

"Very effective and impressive approach"

- Pt. Ravi Shankar
11/5/01

"The Arohi players... seemlessly combined elements of jazz, Indian classical music and Brazilian rhythms with their own stylistically unfettered improvising."

- Don Heckman, Los Angeles Times
12/3/01

"While world music has become the latest thing with the use of exotic instruments in fusion or cross-over music, what makes Arohi so special is that it's members are not only consummate masters of their instruments, they are also completely fluent in every language in which they speak. Arohi plays not just with traditional instruments, but also with authentic rhythms, tunings, phrasings and structure - the very soul of the musical styles. If only the governments of our sweet planet could converse as elegantly as these musicians - exchanging the fruits of traditional culture and creating a global harmony as pleasing as the sounds of Arohi! Maybe that is the highest function of all great art, to remind us of what we share."

- John Schneider, Global Village, KPFK Los Angeles 90.7 fm
4/10/02