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MP3 Tim Beckwith - Timo Solo
9 MP3 Songs in this album (68:07) !
Related styles: WORLD: World Fusion, WORLD: World Beat
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Details:
I grew up in the country east of San Diego on Dictionary Hill in a place called Spring Valley. It was a semi desert area with beautiful views of the mountains in Mexico from our yard.
Occasionally my parents took me to San Diego to visit the Museum of Man in Balboa Park. I will never forget the feeling of walking into that museum for the first time. In the foyer there were glass cases that contained carefully mounted shrunken human heads from Amazonia. I was around eight years old and it felt like some one had just turned a brilliant spotlight on to a whole other reality that had very little to do with the one I inhabited. It was there, in the Museum of Man, that I discovered a deep feeling of connection with many ancient indigenous cultures.
Around the same period as my first visit to the Museum of Man, I found a couple of old funky Tom-Toms made from tapered wooden nail kegs with goat skin heads glued and tacked to them. Sitting on the hillside, I would wrap my little legs around those drums and play them like Bongos. Once I started drumming, my soul connection to it was so deep that I could never stop. It was a totally solo endeavor. I had no one to teach me so I taught myself. I’ve just kept going with that approach and even today all my playing is self-taught.
The unique way I sing started to manifest over thirty years ago. Playing the congas all alone I would jam down hard and journey into a deep space of rhythmic trance. The world would dissolve and in that space vocal sounds began to emerge from the depths of my soul. With my mind on hold I would just let it happen. I was at the edge of not knowing and no explanation was needed.
In 1978 I began performing with an amazing Middle Eastern dance and music group in San Luis Obispo California and have continued performing ever since.
I’m so fortunate to have lived in a small community with a multitude of talented musicians, a few of whom have joined forces with me to perform some very exotic original world fusion music.
For many years I played in a duo called
HUMAN-HUMAN with a diverse and talented artist named Chris O’Connell.. Our self-titled album is available on CD Baby. My current group CALINAMBE also has an album on CDBaby titled Light at the Top. It was recorded when CALINAMBE was a duo comprised of myself and fellow founding member Johnee Gange. We are now a quartet with Dylan Johnson on bass and some powerful flute, sax and saz by Andrew Wise.
Amongst the many instruments on TIMO SOLO there are two very special eight-stringed harps. One is an Ennanga from Uganda and the other one I built to replicate the string pattern of the Ennanga. I call it the Gourd Ennanga as the body is a double-bellied gourd. You can hear the Ennanga at the start of track three, “Kundanjaro,” before it’s joined by the Gourd Ennanga. On track nine you can hear the Gourd Ennanga very clearly as it is the only instrument accompanying the vocals.
Track seven Tumambali has some interesting and unusual rhythmic structures. The Gourd Ennanga is playing in alternating measures of seven and eight beats to create a fifteen beat pattern. The percussion crosses the two measure harp pattern in three measures of five beats which also totals fifteen. The vocals explore multiple time signatures on and against the fifteen beat structure of the harp and percussion.
Making this album has been a life goal of mine for a very long time. I am so happy to be sending it out into the world. I sincerely hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed creating it!
Timo
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