Quote:
Originally Posted by Dieselboy
That's just beyond cool right there. You gotta love watching people who, when they're performing, are just totally feeling their music and enjoying themselves. So fun to watch. Gonna look through his site when I get a chance today for sure.  |
One of the things I miss most about living on the East Coast is the abundant number of public music performers in the subways, the parks and the public streets.
Here in St. Louis there laws against public
busking (as it called) and the few performers who get permits are consigned to low traffic areas where it is nearly impossible to earn any money. It's a shame because street busking is a tradition that dates back to antiquity. The minstrelsy and commedia dell'arte (street theater) are rich musical traditions. Busking a great way to enrich our cities culturally and provide a respectable living for many talented musicians.
Song of the Day
In the busking tradition here's a good chill video perscussionist Davide Swarup improvising on the Hang drum in Vondel Park in Amsterdam in 2008. Davide is one of the world's leading players of this exotic musical instrument.
There are only two people who make Hanghang (plural form of Hang), the inventors Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer. They have a little workshop in Berne Switzerland where every Hang has been created since they began selling the Hang in 2000. If you want to purchase a Hang, be prepared to be wait listed for a year or two and then you have to travel to Berne to pick the Hang up because Rohner and Schärer don't do mail order and don't even advertise because the customer seeks them out. Early in 2009 Rohner and Schärer sent a notice to wait listed customers that we "will not be able to sell you a Hang this year", indicating that a break for a few months would be taken to develop and research the Hang further. To prevent price gouging on the resale market, Rohner and Schärer have reserved the right (
as a condidtion of the sale) to buy back any Hang at retail value should the customer decide to sell the instrument.
The Hang is technically a drum but as you can hear from Davide's playing there's a lot more to the Hang that banging a drum. The Hang is in the same musical percussion family as the vibraphone, the Caribbean steel drum, the African talking drum and Maylasian gamelon drums. All of these percussion isntruments have a variable pitch. Of course some folks will tell you that techincally the piano is a percussion instrument because a small mallet inside the piano hits a string each time you strike a key on the piano. As Davide Swarup demonstrates there are endless tonal possibilities depending on how and where you strike the Hang drum with your hands.