OT things of sad beauty

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Ted wrote:
"And some of the saddest music I have ever heard is on a disk by 
Armenian duduk player Djivan Gasparyan called "I Will Not Be Sad in This 
World" - quite possibly one of the most profoundly moving CDs in my 
entire collection."

I love that record too, Ted..   In fact, I love it so much that I 
recently purchased and have been really shedding on a
 really professional duduk from the sadly lamented Rhythm Fusion in 
Santa Cruz.

3/4 of my entire collection came from that store, parenthetically,   and 
Dror closed the doors this week
after 20 years of being one of the finest ethnic music stores on the 
entire planet.   It's the end of an
era, but Dror found me a beautiful hardwood Duduk before he went out of 
business.

It's a fascinating instrument:   just playing the open holes like a 
recorder produces no useable musical scale
so everything is in half hole playing.

I owned a less professional one and it was incredibly difficult to 
play............it took more air than I really have
considering that I suffer from Reactive Airway Disease which limits me 
to 1/3 of the lung capacity of a normal adult male.
This new one is so well built and the double reed is a work of art,  so 
it's actually pretty easy to play and it has a timbre that is just 
beautiful.
I love the Duduk and it doesn't get better than Djivan Gasparyan.

Armenia, where this amazing instrument comes from has a very, very sad 
history of oppression and now, consequently, there are Armenians
spread all across the globe.   A beautiful musical culture (and a sad 
one, too).