I thought I'd give y'all an upbeat nugget for the holiday season.

I met this lovely duo in Samarkand where they competed for a prize at the Sharq Taronalari festival. They invited me to videotape their rehearsal, which turned out to be lucky for me, as I have not been able to obtain any of the footage from the main stage of the Festival, even though it was promised to me many times over!

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Malagasy music. And as soon as I heard these two musicians, I knew there was something sweet and special about them. I crossed my fingers that they would get some sort of prize, and they did. Despite the extraordinarily political machinations of the prize-giving, they placed third!

"Talilema" is Talika and Kilema, both from Madagascar, now living in Europe. They are both engaging, lovely people.  And I think you will agree that you can enjoy this informal performance and not miss any amplification or further instrumentation. It works just fine as it is. They should be stars.

The song is about keeping your spirits up through your troubles. Is it right for this time of year or what?

I hope this music brightens your days. Have a great holiday!

To find out more about Talilema click here, or visit their Myspace page.

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com.

The Sharq Taronalari festival/competition takes place every two years in Samarkand and draws artists from all over the word with an obvious concentration on Central Asia. Personally I do not approve of musical "competitions" but that reservation can be overlooked given the spectacular setting of the Registan for the main venue, and the opportunity to experience the Uzbeki culture and people. This year saw Jivan Gasparyan the younger win the UNESCO prize there. He gave a wonderful performance for which the festive lights in the Registan were hushed to a dreamy ultramarine blue.

The name of Jivan Gasparyan (Sr.) has been synonymous with Armenian duduk for over 60 years. His exquisite tone, control and interpretations have garnered him countless accolades. Now in his eighties, he had the pleasure of being in the audience during his grandson's award-winning performance.

The duduk is a simple instrument; but deceptively so, in that it requires an embouchure (and diaphragm) of steel plus circular breathing to elicit its haunting, cool sound. The younger Jivan has all these attributes, as well as technical agility, as this piece demonstrates.

I was covering the festival, toting my trusty camcorder, and had the good fortune to arrange this spontaneous shoot with Gasparyan Jr. in a room just adjacent to the hotel kitchen. My thanks to his two stalwart accompanists, and to my various friends who guarded the doors and kept waiters and dishwashers at bay.

Gasparyan senior was there too, and at the very end of this video you can see Jivan Jr. slide his eyes sideways, to see if his grandfather approved of the performance.

He did.

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com.

I can hear it already: This is not real world music!!!

But wait, aren't the blues "world music?" As Link's resident expert, I say "yes, they are!"  Of course, that's me singing the song I wrote, so I have a vested interest in bending the category (maybe). But no less a luminary that Howard Mandel, President of the Jazz Journalists Association saw fit to carry this on HIS blog. So there. 

Here's the scoop on how this all happened:

Getting laid off because of a recession can really get to you, no matter how busy you make yourself. My partner Bruce Arnold had been writing songs for his new lap steel, and this one, called "Up the Spout" (a Midwestern depression term) just spoke to me. I wrote a melody and words and voilá.

Occupy Wall Street happened right around the time we were shooting the video, so I went down there and got shots of some of the more poignant people and signs... what can I say, they were more sympatico than I thought they'd be, and every one of them could have been you or me. Much has been said against the demonstration, but I for one am glad that someone is expressing the outrage that Americans should be feeling about being used and abused by a system that is badly out of kilter. Do I have the answers? As Mr. Mandel sagely pointed out in his blog: "Nobody should expect policy answers from a blues."

Lyrics to "Up the Spout"

It's a bitter wind, and it ain't no breeze
It shakes the windows and it takes the trees
And it blew me away
I love my work. It's what life's about-
that wind came and blew it all Up the Spout
Yes it blew me away.

Now here I sit... what shall I do
That wind left me here without a clue
Yes, it blew me a way
You were the boss, yet here we meet
Yeah, we both lost on that windy street
Yes it blew us both away

That wind don't care -- we're all just dust
and it' happening to all of us
It's blowing us away
Now with a little luck I'll make it through
But when that wind blows it's gonna come for you too
It's blowing -- It's blowing us away, Up the Spout
Blowing us Up the Spout

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com.

This video has been a long time coming. The back story: I've known guitarist/writer Banning Eyre for years and of course, his and Sean Barlow’s tireless efforts with their baby, Afropop Worldwide. I've followed their travels and travails, and admired their dedication and perseverance. I always wanted to collaborate in some way, and I got my chance when Banning called me up in the summer of 2010 and told me he was going to visit a great guitarist who was in town, to record him for a radio show, and would I like to come along? As we drove up to the Bronx, Banning filled me in on how he had first met Badian, and I got a feeling for why this interview was going to be special for him.

After a rather steep climb up to a rambling house on a hill, we were greeted by the elegantly clad Badian, and his regal wife. Banning set up his gear in the sunny backyard, and recording commenced. As I shot the performance I realized that the technique Badian used was unlike any I had seen before. One hears rippling melodic lines coming out of koras and ngonis, but transferring that sound to the guitar requires a great delicacy and precision utilizing both the up stroke and the down stroke of the "picking" fingers. Badian’s technique is utterly fluid in this way. Thank goodness for a good zoom on my camera; I was able to get nice close-ups of his hands.

Badian was in town for a month playing for the various celebrations within the West African community in the Bronx, which at this point is considerable. I can only imagine how wonderful the music must be at these events. but you will never see this kind of thing covered in Time Out or any publications of that ilk. You just have to be hooked into the scene. Banning and Badian had much to say to each other (mostly in French so I got only the gist of many names, and being brought up to date on everyone's doings), so I just concentrated on shooting. When I got back to my house I reviewed the footage and considered how to use it... for my Huffington Post vlog? As an exclusive here on my own site? To post on guitar sites? I was in a quandary. In the midst of this indecision Banning called to say he had footage of Badian from 1996 that he had been saving for all these years and maybe there was a bigger story to be told. Could I hold off on posting until we could put something like that together?

So I held off for over a year. Banning was off and running with countless Afropop Worldwide projects and trips, and working with his own band, Timbila. But after he returned from a music collecting trip to Egypt, he was back with a vengeance, wanting to get the project up and out. So here it is at last, after hours of footage in many formats sifted through, and condensed into 15.5 minutes.

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com.

Maria Pomianowska Plays the Suka

I met Maria Pomianowska in Samarkand, where she attended the Sharq Taronalari festival as a guest speaker. But as you can see, this woman could well have been not only one of the musicians performing, but one of its finest. I heard her jamming out on the terrace of the Afrasiyob hotel, and immediately knew that I wanted to get her and that unusual instrument of hers alone for a solo videotaping. We found a room between the basement floor lobby and the kitchen that had decent acoustics and was reasonably quiet (considering its proximity to the kitchen). I just said "play" and off she went. The room was not that well lit, so please forgive the somewhat grainy image.

Maria's credentials are impressive. She graduated in cello at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw. There she was granted a scholarship to learn the sarangi under the guidance of maestro Pandit Ram Narayan in India. From 1997-2002 she lived in Japan, and in 1999 she started composing cross cultural works which were commissioned by cellist Yo Yo Ma. In her continuing efforts to find connections between Asian music with her own cultural heritage, together with Dr. Ewa Dahlig and violin maker A. Kuczkowski she managed to successfully reconstruct a Suka from Bilgoraj, which is what you see and hear in this video.

There are many kinds of "fusions" happening in music these days. Maria seems to be her own personal reactor, following her love of western classical music to an equal devotion to Indian classical music, and then adding a dash of Polish gestalt to the mix.

Ms. Pomianawska teaches music and runs a festival of world music in Warsaw. For more information on this amazing woman and musician, click here.

For more of Michal's original music videos, visit inter-muse.com.