The Listening Room
World Music | Student Performances
MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble
Hermanos Latinos
Hermeto Pascoal
arr. by Guillermo Klein
Frederick Harris, Music Director
Fall 2011
Rambax
Tuus
Rambax
MIT Senegalese Drum Ensemble, Dec. 2009
Directed by Lamine Touré, MIT Artist-in-Residence
and Patricia Tang, Professor of Music
Video of Rambax performing "Tuus" at the MIT Next Century Convocation.
"Tuus" is a traditional rhythm, hundreds of years old, played on Senegalese sabar drums. It was traditionally played to welcome kings and nobles, and others of importance as they entered a room. Rambax memorably performed "Tuus" as part of MIT's Next Century Convocation, the culminating event of the MIT150 celebration.
Gamelan Galak Tika
Tire Fire, Part 5
Evan Ziporyn
Gamelan Galak Tika
Directed by Evan Ziporyn, Kenan Sahin Professor of Music
Balinese gamelan, electric guitars, electric bass & keyboard
The piece combines traditional Balinese techniques with the sounds & rhythms of western music, and is typical of the work Galak Tika does in bringing these two cultures together & fostering new work by Balinese & American composers.
George Ruckert, Senior Lecturer in Music
Rag Shenan Mand
Performed by George Ruckert, sarod
Swapan Chaudhuri and Samir Chatterjee, tabla
Nilaswati Productions NS 001, 2008
It is common for a Hindustani classical instrumental artist to conclude a program with a "dhun," or folk melody. In this case, George Ruckert takes Shenandoah and blends it with traditional folk melodies of Rajasthan (Mand) and Bengal in the style of his teacher, Maestro Ali Akbar Khan. He plays the traditional twenty-five stringed lute, the sarod, which is able to slide the pitches owing to its being played with the fingernails on a smooth metal fingerboard.