Re: Asian instruments

[Tim Nelson <tcn62@ici.net>]

>How do you think the indians would receive the looping tools to
>simplyfy/extend their music? Do they use any electronics exept for 
>straight
>amplification of their traditional work?

It's probably not the case with Indian classical music which has a great
respect for traditional technique and places a high value on the lineage of
the teacher, but Indian popular music is FULL of electronics. There's a
huge amount of recorded music available featuring the electronic tambura
which provides the drone formerly done acoustically with a regular,
stringed tambura, and the use of the sampler is increasingly commonplace in
"Bollywood", the Indian film industry. There's even a dance/techno genre
that sprang from Goa. Talvin Singh had quite a bit of success a couple of
years ago with an album called Anokha: Soundz of the Asian Underground that
has some pretty cool loop-based stuff; it's a compilation featuring
musicians such as State of Bengal, A.R. Rahman, Amar, Kingsuk Biswas (he
samples and loops his tablas!), Future Soundz of India and others.