Saturday, July 08, 2006
The musical part of this journey has been commented on in the music magazine Sound On Sound, which led to an invitation to the university town Uppsala, about 45 minutes by train north of Stockholm.
Girilal Baars, a fantastic multi-instumentalist musician of Indian and Dutch descent, saw the little article and sent me an email... Check out his various musical activities on his very amusing website www.girilal.com! (I never really got the answer as to how one plays the balloon!?!?)
He met me at the station, and a short ride on his bike later...
...we arrived at his flat, where I met his Finnish film-making girlfriend Mervi, and where I would later spend the night.
It was actually Girilal's birthday, so we left the music-making for the Sunday and focussed on merry-making instead!
Left to right: Girilal, Swedes Claes and Elin, Mervi, and Davor from Sarajevo - a very expensive man!
As you might have figured, I love altering realities with my camera, and as it was a very mind-altering night anyway, I'll take some liberties:
First Girilal hypnotised Claes into only caring about three things:
My fluffy microphone windjammer...
...beer...
...and Girilal's funky beard.
Yes, we did poke some fun at Claes...
...but maybe we went a bit far.
He eventually snapped out of it...
...and we all lived happily ever after.
Quote of the day: Claes on life: "...and then you have some death angst, and then you collect stamps..."
That evening we came up with answers to all the problems in the world and The Ultimate Question To Life, The Universe And Everything; I unfortunately can't remember what they are.
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The next day Girilal had quite a task on his hands: Get the GMC back in tune, straighten up the rhythm, produce something musically useful, deal with a splitting headache... He succeeded on all points except the last one, I think.
It was a very interesting session - Girial brought out his best ribbon-mic to capture some throat singing, a vocal tradition he learnt in the Russian province of Tuva, just north of Mongolia:
He accompanied himself on the doshpulur, a skin-clad Tuvan "banjo" with three strings:
Girilal's Logic-based workstation in the background.
Yes I know, I'm the man... Notice the similarities to Ms. Zappa on the wall, left...
A little jam...
It's difficult to describe throat singing if you've never heard it before - a stop by the Music pages for a listen is highly recommended! He does something strange to his vocal chords to produce a fundamental note with overtones, in essence singing in harmony with himself, the human voice as an instrument. The overtones can be pitched by modifying the space inside his mouth - a similar principle to the mouth harp. So I just had to insist on a quick jam... I wish I had a way of uploading the video or the sound! The only thing missing was a didgeridoo! If I ever master the mouth harp, my next aim should be to learn throat singing... and do both at the same time!
Girilal and Mervi, thanks for putting me up! And thanks for the brilliant session!
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