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Teed Rockwell : Hindustani Raga (US,2006)****
Teed Rockwell studied Hindustani music, with an open eye for renewal and with an open explorative vision, to create a vivid contemporary version of traditional Indian classical music. In the liner notes he mentions how other masters tried new instruments, like Prasanna with his electric guitar, L.Shankar's double necked violin, Kadri Gopalnath's saxophone, U.Sriniva's mandolin, Abhijit Pohankar's electric piano, and Vishwa's Mohan Bhatt's and Debashish Bhattacharya's Indian slide guitars. So far, I only searched for Indian guitarists and slide-guitarists, (just look back on these review pages, like here). Teed Rockwell himself is another surprise with a distinctive vision. He plays the Warr guitar, which is a customized version of the Warr Raptor, a touchstyle fretboard guitar which evolved out of the Chapman Stick. A sitar and a sarod and many raga-guitars have strings for the melody and some others for the drone. The stick however, which is played with two hands at once for the tone settings, gives more control and variation when fusing notes on different octaves with different techniques like bending, sliding, muting, adding trill or not, which adds in this way rich overtones and changing qualities on certain notes instead of the more steady and constant drones on the sitar and the sarod. This way, while keeping a certain quietness in the melodic evolution, other rich qualities can be developed simultaneously. The album contains two long raga's with one part in jugulbandi (in-conversation-technique) with tablaist Debopriyo Sarkar. With his technique, in clear melodic lines with some minimilized-to-the-essence enriched qualities, it is understandable how he received much praise and appreciation from many Indians who said his style gave them a greater appreciation of their own traditional music.
Teed Rockwell studied under sarod players Ali Akbar Khan and Ustad Ali Akbar Khansahib and under luthiers Mark Warr and Stephen White and touch style Hindustani music blender Daniel Schell.
