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about

"Holy Rope" is a metaphor for the piece of twine I've used to snare my 16' frame drum featured on this track. Inspired by the masterful and spiritual frame drumming of the First Peoples on the traditional territories now known as Canada. Aboriginal peoples from northern Manitoba to Athabasca territory in northern Alberta, where I had camped, exhibited their powerful and endangered musical traditions. The use of a piece of twine or rope over caribou and buffalo hides struck a particular tone of nostalgia within my own ancestral memory as a musical being. Most well-known to North Africa, the tar frame drum is one of many snared frame drums in the deep Mediterranean musical heritage. The buzzing vibratory emittance that issues from a snared frame drum as similar to the First Peoples of Turtle Island as in the Mediterranean moved me to ecstatic prayer through drumming at Indian Beach campground. As I joined Dene drummers, I was moved with singular intention towards a spiritual fusion of sound, harmony, and ecstasy.

So the musical interpretation to the piece, "Holy Rope" lyrically carries the meaning and message of the experience of intercultural spiritual fusion music. Begun, "the executioner's raffle" signifies the great life-or-death gravity of the drum, as for many, the lifeblood of tradition, voice and inner fulfillment. The use of a shaker stands for the regular heartbeat rhythm that is carried by traditional Aboriginal drummers, who then commonly sing with syncopated bravura over a simple, steady rhythm. So, in this case, the shaker represents the rhythmic attuning of the First Peoples of Turtle Island, while my snared frame drumming represents the lyrical rhythmic temperament of my own Mediterranean heritage as the descendent of a Greek Jewish lineage.

lyrics

Holy rope glean
Setting off the executioner’s raffle
In a dream state turning the mind
To a pentatonic, indigenous scale
To the antique buzz in our lonely natural surroundings
That prepares a decadent life

Amidst the misty hilltop laughter
That echoes in the contemplative breath on high

credits

from Evocations: district​.​Columbia, released June 18, 2013

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Rusty Kjarvik image

Rusty Kjarvik Brooklyn, New York

My ancestors are from the lands in and around what is now Norway, Poland, Germany and Greece. They lived above the Arctic Circle, spoke Yiddish, were Romaniote Greek, English settlers during the revolutionary war of America, and from Germany pioneered in 19th century Alberta, Canada where they also took Blackfoot names. They were buried in religious fame; and so I also go by Menachem ben Asser. ... more

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