Update 2025 Madmen, Saints, and Fools

Well, our third effort seems to be very popular. The band is actually coalescing into something with legs for live performances at the same time. Here is a piece featuring Tony Khalife on tabla, synth, and chanting and myself on guitar and drones that we started working on when Tony lived her win my studio for 10 months at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. It took me about 4 years to learn to play the ideas we came up with in an order that made compositional sense. The piece is dedicated to John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussain of Shakti, who both inspired Tony from an early age and then me, as well. Tony had given John a shirt made of Syrian Silk as an homage to a master in the early 80s while at the Guitar Institute of Technology in LA. We decided to name thus fusion “raga” after it. It is entirely in 7 with the tempo jumping from 108 bpm to 112 after the “alap”. I am extremely proud of the chord sequence in the Alap and want to tip my hat to Rick Vandivier for helping me suss available colors while studying some of Shakti’s work in Emaj7. The piece is mostly Emaj7 ionian but does feature a flat 6 (C instead of C#) throughout for tension and further color. Without further ado, please enjoy.

https://youtu.be/P24BhO8gzO4