Author Topic: Harry Manx  (Read 72 times)

Offline TIOTIT

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Harry Manx
« on: May 09, 2008, 12:32:03 PM »
Tonight I'm going to watch Harry play the
Mohan Vina...Indian Blues...
Check it out


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th20KcCgnyo

Some Mohan Vina From the Master himself...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRkq-tYt7E4&feature=related

« Last Edit: May 09, 2008, 12:40:30 PM by TIOTIT »

nichi

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Re: Harry Manx
« Reply #1 on: May 09, 2008, 12:48:17 PM »
Wow that Harry Manx is great. He has a nice bluesy voice indeed. Very intrigued by that instrument -- it's hypnotic. (I wasn't familiar with it at all... Thanks, Tio! I love something new.)  :) :)

So you're going to hear him in concert tonight?

Offline TIOTIT

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Re: Harry Manx
« Reply #2 on: May 09, 2008, 02:33:12 PM »
Yes just managed to get tickets booked out....
It's only a small venue holds maybe 200 ppl

Here's some info on Vishwa Mohan Bhatt
and the mohan veena...

Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt (b. Rajasthan, India, 1952) is an exponent of Hindustani music (North Indian classical music). Vishwa Mohan Bhatt (also known as V. M. Bhatt) is one of the most celebrated shishyas (disciples) of the sitarist Ravi Shankar. Born in Jaipur in Rajasthan in July 1952, he is the younger brother of Shashi Mohan Bhatt, who was one of the first three students to study with Shankar circa 1949/50; Shashi Mohan Bhatt is the father of sitarist Krishna Mohan Bhatt. Much of his formative musical education came from his family. His father Manmohan Bhatt taught and as a boy Vishwa Mohan Bhatt soaked up his father's singing, compositions and ragas.

Bhatt originally did not mean to pursue a career in music. He prepared for the security of the Indian civil service while studying sitar and violin. Around 1967 he found a Spanish Guitar left behind by a German student at his father's music school in Jaipur. Bhatt claimed it for his own and set about remodelling it. After experimenting with the instrument's structure, left and right hand techniques, various objects to produce the slide sound and strings, he modified the guitar with the addition of several drone strings and eight sympathetic strings, playing it like a Hawaiian slide guitar to get the sustained, sliding notes common to the vocal style of Indian classical music. Thus the 'mohan veena' was born, named after himself and Vina or Veena, the generic Sanskrit word for a stringed instrument. It is an instrument that appears to be a hybrid of a classical Spanish guitar and a sitar. The Mohan veena sounds somewhat like a Western slide guitar and is played with sitar mizrabs (wire picks) and a thumb pick and a polished steel rod for the slide. The combination of melody, drone, sympathetic strings and Bhatt's microtonal approach to melody, however, place it firmly in an Indian cosmos.

Although he had had established himself as a recording artist in India as early as 1970 and had toured and recorded with his guru abroad (including Shankar's ambitious Inside The Kremlin from 1989), his major international breakthrough came with the album A Meeting By The River, a collaboration with American slide guitarist Ry Cooder that would be awarded a Grammy award for Best World Music Album in 1994. It is for this album and other fusion and pan-cultural collaborations with Western artists like Taj Mahal, Béla Fleck and Jerry Douglas, rather than his own unique take on Indian classical music traditions that Bhatt is best known, although exposure such as an appearance on the 2004 Crossroads Guitar Festival, which was organized by Eric Clapton, does allow for this side of his playing to reach a larger audience. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2002 and Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1998.

He currently resides in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, with his two sons and his wife. His elder son Salil Bhatt is a renowed Mohan veena player (and also a player of the Satvik veena), while his younger son Saurabh Bhatt is a well known composer. His nephew, Krishna Bhatt, plays the sitar and tabla. Folk musician Harry Manx, who studied with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt for five years, plays a Mohan Veena.

Jahn

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Re: Harry Manx
« Reply #3 on: May 09, 2008, 06:30:58 PM »

Good "leaning backwards" music, aninteresting mix. I got focused on his right hand little finger that he hold in a firm position. That finger and the next appear to be a bit crooked.

Mr Manx radiate something cool and bright. I hope the show was good.

nichi

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Re: Harry Manx
« Reply #4 on: May 10, 2008, 12:21:23 AM »
I read a little about Harry Manx in Wikipedia. It said that he went to India for 5 years to study with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. Which brings me to a question.

When I've read of these Indian classical musicians, it's always noted the lineage of learning. One gets the impression that the student practically lives with the teacher. Is this so? There seems to be a time-honored relationship there, much more comprehensive than going up to the music store to get lessons in the back office. Am I projecting?

Offline Michael

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Re: Harry Manx
« Reply #5 on: May 10, 2008, 02:53:16 AM »
you got it niche.
that is how it was done, and still is.
although there are plenty of standard type schools, the old method still lives on.

I have seen Vishwa Mohan Bhatt play, and he plays very beautifully - very lyrically. I was really transported at his performance. And of course we all have A Meeting By The River, and a few of his classical renditions.

I am not a fan of his instrument myself - I prefer the traditional instruments - sitar, sarod, and of course the veena itself, but I have only heard one good rendition on the veena, and that was many years ago in my early twenties in Brisbane Aust. I don't know who he was, but it was truly sublime - that instrument has such a long sweet sustain. I have CDs by the famous veena players in India, one of which is dead now, but they really are not as good as the well known sitar and sarod players I have heard. the veena has almost completely died out as a common classical instrument, but India being what it is, I'm sure there are still masters at it - fame is no recommendation.

I recommend getting some of Vishwa Mohan Bhatt's music, because it is of a style that can help bridge the gap between Indian and Western musical ears. You won't be dissapointed.

Offline xero

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Re: Harry Manx
« Reply #6 on: May 10, 2008, 05:11:13 PM »
Michael - That was Ram Chandra..or 'Rum Chunder' as his ozzy, sometime tabla player, would irreverently call him. (Apparently, not without reason)

We caught up with him in association with the American Indian Ethnomusicologist...who's name does escape me at the moment.  "Awahy-a-heya !"

Help me out here TIO ...the Ozzi Sarod player > Gibson.

Manx was a treat. The link made between blues sentiment and the yearning inherent in much Indian music is palpable. Certainly, Harry works with it.

But like all musical experienced - 'You've got to be there - really"



Offline Michael

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Re: Harry Manx
« Reply #7 on: May 10, 2008, 07:08:36 PM »
Who was Ram Chandra?
You mean the whisky drinking tabla player who accompanied that guy at the Uni?
That's not the Veena player I am thinking of. I went to see this other guy in that area around Cloud Land Ballroom - I was much younger than when we met Rum and the Ethnomusicologist, who was a great guy - I still sing those old American Indian songs... Moose moose , ni teel la, unyuck perckya ni teel la... moooooo...sa!  mooooo...sa! (Or something like that)

Offline xero

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Re: Harry Manx
« Reply #8 on: May 10, 2008, 07:46:45 PM »
Yeah... yer right on.

Piggly Wiggly to that.

Jahn

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Re: Harry Manx
« Reply #9 on: May 17, 2008, 06:04:12 AM »

 

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