Tony Duncan includes strands of four western Native American nations in his background. He is Apache and Arikara, Hidasta and Mandan. He plays the Apache flute, incorporating both Northern Plains and Southwestern styles in his work as a musician, a pow wow dancer, and a world renown hoop dancer.

Darrin Yazzie is born for two clans of the Navajo people, Water’s Edge and Coyote Pass. Guitar is his instrument, one he took up as a teenager while growing up in Arizona. With it, he’s found ways to compose music which shares his understanding of landscape and heritage as means to nourish the spirit.

Jeremy Dancing Bull is of the Arikara and Hidasta people. Growing up in North Dakota, he was inspired by the heart beat sound of Native drums, and learned from his father, also a drummer. Dancing Bull found that he could play any rhythm he heard, and was able to improvise freely as well.

These three men have come together as the group Estun-Bah. On the original music they have created for their album From Where the Sun Rises there is a true conversation among their instruments. Yazzie’s guitar often takes the introduction, as on Spirit of Mother Earth, leading into Duncan’s soaring flute lines weaving in and out of the colors added by Dancing Bull’s drums. At other times Duncan’s flute takes on a bird like note while guitar and drum deepen to a rich melody. These are band members who clearly listen intently to each other, and to where the music leads them. As a result, they have created an album of contemplative music which honors Native traditions of the southwest and takes them forward as well.

Let’s talk about city hotels for a moment, shall we? Particularly, let’s talk about the view you get from your room, which, in the very same hotel, can be one that make you want to catch your breath—or a view that makes you hope to never draw another breath again.

Which reminds me of my favorite bad view story. It was at budget hotel in Hong Kong, and the windows were sealed shut and frosted over. Upon investigation, it turned out the room overlooked a graveyard. Very bad feng shui!* Much better at the Grand Hyatt where I stayed later on that trip:

My favorite good view story at the moment is the one I enjoyed at the InterContinental Paris Le Grand a few years ago. It’s right across the street from the Opera Garnier, and in fact was commissioned because of the Opera, as part of Napoleon III’s wholesale revision of Paris as a city, under the direction of Baron Haussmann. The hotel opened on May 5^th, 1862—actually thirteen years before the Opera’s grand opening— and it was the largest hotel in world at the time.

The hotel has gone through several décor changes, not the least of which occurred when it served as military hospital during World War I, and when it was occupied by the Nazis and then by American troops during and after World War II, respectively. Throughout it all, the Garnier Opera dominated the view, designed to be a monument to the glories of French art, luxury and pleasure, its elaborate exterior loaded with sculptures, medallions, rose granite, gold and ivory. I imagine that the Opera provoked many different reactions from viewers at the Le Grand building over the years, as history worked its many changes around the building.

When I gazed out at it, taking in the Opera, and the cars and the crowds, it inspired an unusual reaction in me: it made me want to get a hair cut. I’ve just written about it at The Smart Set. Views can do more than just affect one’s breathing, it seems.

*Actually, I have learned that this is called Sha Chi, or “killing chi”.
_{Photos by Alison Stein Wellner}

The Blog4NZ campaign was a roaring success with travel bloggers around the world enthusiastically posting articles about New Zealand travel.

And what stories they had to tell, covering everything from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island. Here’s just a small sampling of the many, many articles that were posted under the Blog4NZ banner last week.

10 Reasons to visit Central Park New Zealand

Day-tripping Through New Zealand’s Glacier Country

Driving Across New Zealand on Arthur’s Pass

Stargazing at Mount John, Lake Tekapo

Exploring the Volcanic White Island

New Zealand musucians: Maori songs, opera, Robert Burns, and Scottish fiddle

Rebuilding After the Christchurch Earthquake

Eight Ways to Go Downhill in New Zealand

Caravaning Kiwiland

Remote Places to Visit

The Magical Caves of Waimoto

Raglan Eco Escape

Land of Middle Earth

Defying Gravity in New Zealand

Tiritiri Matangi – A Twitcher’s Paradise

High tea in a central Hawkes Bay homestead

Ingredients for a perfect New Zealand road trip

Black water rafting in the Waitomo glowworms caves of New Zealand

A toast to New Zealand

Gardens for a change

Visiting the vineyards of Central Otago way down south

These 21 articles are only a small portion of those posted as part of the Blog4NZ campaign. The Blog4NZ facebook page are plenty more to choose from.

………………..

Blog anniversary giveaways

Don’t forget,  as part of Perceptive Travel Blog’s 4th birthday celebrations last week, there are a number of great blog anniversary giveaways on offer, including a “Austin pack” (two music compilation CDs and an Austin music lover’s T-shirt, courtesy the Austin Convention and Visitor’s Bureau,) a copy of Tim Leffel’s The World’s Cheapest Destinationsguidebook or one of the short-sleeved versions of our comfy Perceptive Travel T-shirt from our Travel Tease store.

There’s still time to enter – just leave a comment at this post from Sheila Scarborough to join in.

Dean Magraw is a Minnesota based guitarist whose diverse interests and well honed skills have led him to play with Americana heartland songwriter Greg Brown, fiery fiddle based Irish band Altan, and jazz organist Jack McDuff. You may have heard him on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion, as well.

Marcus Wise is a professional tabla player. Thirty years ago he became one of the first professional musicians in the United to focus on this traditional Indian percussion instrument. He has worked with artists in jazz, Indian classical music, r and b, and pop.

Wise and Magraw have been what they describe as musical brothers for more than thirty years. The two had recorded an self titled album together twenty five years ago, and had done tracks for another project they had never gotten around to finishing.

Then Magraw was diagnosed with a life threatening disease that required a bone marrow transplant. Reflecting on his life as his health situation unfolded, Magraw realized that one of the things he really wanted to do was go in to the studio with Wise and finish that old recording. They only needed, they thought, about fifteen more minutes of music to have it wrapped up. What happened was something else.

“There was some big hearted muse that appeared in that studio,” Magraw said. “Marcus and I have ben playing together for years, but during this project, we listened to each other in a way that was really new. We spent time in silence, hearing the notes, feeling them. The music just seemed to play itself.”

That meditative and receptive atmosphere comes through clearly on the tracks on How the Light Gets In. That’s not to say they are all quiet tracks — Entrainment, for example, has a driving rhythm, and Delphonic finds them gliding through a six beat structure. There are quieter pieces, too, such as the reflective one called Jade.

As it turned out, they didn’t go back to the older tracks at all. “Recording with Dean when he was being physically, mentally, and spiritually challenged, watching him pour all his soul into that crystallized moment, was one of my great crossroads,” Wise said. “Both our musical ideas kept evolving until we happily realized a whole new CD.”

It is music that will not sound quite like anything you’ve heard before, most likely. Rhythm and beat, flowing lines and driving ones, perhaps the best description of it is chant without words. “We really didn’t do much polishing on this record,” Magraw said. “Four sessions, and that was about it.”

That is in part why they chose to title the album from a line in an old Leonard Cohen song they remembered, one which celebrates the thought that the cracks and imperfections in things may turn into sources of new inspiration.

This is Perceptive Travel’s birthday week — we are turning four years old, and you could be in with a chance to win several fine gifts for yourself. Leave a comment at this post from Sheila Scarborough to join in.

and

you can keep up with the adventures we share at Perceptive Travel by
subscribing to Perceptive Travel’s RSS feed.