south african jazz master abdullah ibrahim

music runs like a spine through the core of my existence, affirming, describing, challenging my knowing and understanding of who i have been, who i am , and who i will become. as with all things, my tastes have changed over the course of my life - indeed even in the course of a day the range of music i listen to could reasonably leave the accidental onlooker with a lot of questions.
there are constants, musicians whose music has spoken to me over the course of my life because they have chosen, or been chosen to be dynamic conduits for what we know as music but which i suspect is something so much greater that it actually couldn't be named.

a few thoughts on music from musicians . . .
     
“music is the wine that fills the cup of silence” robert fripp

"one of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn't if you knew better."
brian eno

"i cannot say what I think is right about music. i only know the rightness of it."
keith jarrett

“it is relatively difficult to write about matters of a spiritual nature in popular music. there are many obvious pitfalls. i attempt to focus on love, to merge the experiences of love, human and divine. this creates an ambivalence that allows for multiple readings." david sylvian

the following is one of an incidental series of entries in a catalogue of musicians whose music and thinking and lives have affected mine. these are musicians whose work and lives have spoken to me and continue to speak to me.

abdullah ibrahim, also named dollar brand. an excellent biography of abdullah ibrahim can be read over at junior's webpage
i first heard him on a sackville records recording made in toronto and then at almost the same time i came across a release that had a tune entitled shrimp boats on it that was so beautiful, so simple, so obviously african and so very human that it made its way to my record player over and over. i hope that you click on the link and give it a listen and experience the same wonder and charm as i did.

here he is in a one minute sample unravelling two braided south african tunes at once -