[Postcard2] Fretboard Journal Podcasts

[Jake London]

I listened to three of these today. For people who enjoy interesting 
discussions of music and specifically guitars, I highly suggest you 
check them out. There's a good David Lindley interview, one with the 
John Roderick of Long Winters, and one with a guy who wrote a book about 
Martin Guitars (blocking his name).

One of them also mentions Barry's book about Jimmy Rodgers.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Fretboard-Journal

JL

Brad Bechtel wrote:
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/20/BAIN18AJ79.DTL
> 
> Ali Akbar Khan, the revered Indian-born musician who moved to Marin 
> County and popularized his country's music for successive generations of 
> Americans, died Thursday night at his San Anselmo home from 
> complications of kidney disease. He was 87.
> 
> Along with sitar player Ravi Shankar, with whom he performed and 
> recorded, Mr. Khan was responsible for bringing classical Indian music 
> to the attention of audiences worldwide. Mr. Khan was a master of the 
> sarod, the fretless 25-string instrument that produces a panoply of 
> evocative sounds - from dronelike touches to complicated twangs that 
> seem to reverberate from the ether. Guitarist Carlos Santana once said 
> that a single note of Khan's sarod "goes right to my heart," while 
> classical violinist Yehudi Menuhin - who prompted Mr. Khan to first 
> visit the United States in 1955 - once called the sarodist "the greatest 
> musician in the world."
> 
> Like Shankar, Mr. Khan crossed over into pop culture popularity. In 
> 1971, he teamed with Shankar to open George Harrison's 1971 Bangladesh 
> fundraising concert at New York's Madison Square Garden. On stage at the 
> concert, Mr. Khan sat cross-legged next to tabla player Alla Rakha and 
> Shankar - a 20-minute performance with an ascending musical climax that 
> had the audience interrupting with applause and standing on its feet. In 
> gratitude, Mr. Khan tucked his hands in front of him in a classic 
> namaste bow.
> 
> "Khansahib" to his admirers, and "baba" to his students and offspring, 
> Mr. Khan founded the Ali Akbar College of Music in Berkeley in 1967, 
> moving it to Fairfax in 1968 and then to San Rafael, where Mr. Khan was 
> teaching until two weeks ago. Although confined to his home as his 
> kidney disease worsened in the past two weeks, Mr. Khan was giving 
> lessons until the night before he died, said Alam Khan, the sarodist's 
> 26-year-old son, who also plays the instrument.
> 
> "We put him in a chair, and from the chair, he told us to bring a 
> harmonium (an accordion-like instrument), and we played it, and he began 
> to sing to us and began to teach," Alam said on Friday. "The whole room 
> was filled with students and family. We were all weeping."
> 
> Mr. Khan, who had been on kidney dialysis for five years, last performed 
> in public in 2006 in Berkeley, said Alam, who - along with Khan's other 
> surviving offspring - will carry on the family's centuries-long musical 
> heritage. The Khan family traces its musical lineage more than 500 
> years, to the mid-16th century musician Mian Tansen, who was the favored 
> Delhi court singer of the Mughal emperor Akbar. Mr. Khan's father, the 
> sarodist Allauddin Khan, lived to be 110 and was - like Ali Akbar Khan - 
> one of Indian music's most widely hailed figures.
> 
> Ali Akbar Khan first played the sarod at 3 years of age, and - under his 
> dad's strict tutelage - was soon practicing 18 hours a day. One of Mr. 
> Khan's proudest moments came when his father gave him the title of 
> "Swara Samrat," which means "Emperor of Melody." Mr. Khan put up many 
> photos of his father at the Akbar College of Music, where more than 
> 10,000 students have taken classes since it opened. It was Mr. Khan's 
> teaching at the college - more than his scores of acclaimed concerts and 
> recordings around the world - that gave him the greatest pleasure, said 
> Alam.
> 
> Mr. Khan received a raft of prominent awards in his lifetime, including 
> a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (commonly called a "genius grant") in 
> 1991, and a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for 
> the Arts (that was presented to him by Hillary Clinton at the White 
> House) in 1997.
> 
> Mr. Khan is survived by his immediate family - Mary Khan, his wife of 
> more than 30 years; Alam, who turns 27 on Monday; son Manik, 23; 
> daughter Madina, 17 - and children from two previous marriages.
> 
> In April 2002, Mr. Khan's family, friends and fans crowded into the 
> Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium for an 80th birthday bash that 
> featured dancers, musicians, and speeches - all given while Mr. Khan sat 
> in a wicker chair on stage. Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, who took 
> drum lessons at Mr. Khan's college the first year it opened, said at the 
> celebration that, "All the people who studied there - it changed all our 
> lives. Khan embodies the pure spirit of music; it's not just the notes, 
> it's the spirit. Every time I listen to him, he takes me there."
> 
> That spirit will continue in the more than 100 recordings that Mr. Khan 
> left behind, and in the many musicians - like Alam and Hart - who will 
> continue to play concerts in memory of Ali Akbar Khan.
> 
> The funeral is Sunday at noon at Mount Tamalpais Mortuary and Cemetery 
> in San Rafael.
> 
>