Track Listings (7) - Disc #1| All Artists: Tom Rossi Title: Salma Har Members Wishing: 0 Total Copies: 0 Label: Ajna Music Original Release Date: 9/22/2004 Release Date: 9/22/2004 Genres: International Music, New Age, Pop Style: Meditation Number of Discs: 1 SwapaCD Credits: 1 UPC: 641444950621 |
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Search - Tom Rossi :: Salma Har
 | Tom Rossi Salma Har Genres: International Music, New Age, Pop
It was a poet from Brooklyn who wrote "I am large, I contain multitudes," so it's only fitting that Tom Rossi's basement in that same New York borough manages to encompass the entire world. Salma Har, recorded in his cella... more » |
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Product Description It was a poet from Brooklyn who wrote "I am large, I contain multitudes," so it's only fitting that Tom Rossi's basement in that same New York borough manages to encompass the entire world. Salma Har, recorded in his cellar on Seventh Street is indeed a global mosaic, a border-dissolving symphony of tones and beats and harmonies from Africa and Asia and the Middle East, South America and the Caribbean and points unnamed. Rossi himself was born in Texas, raised in Massachusetts, and went to college in the Pacific Northwest, but a moment of transformation came in a village of unpaved roads and mud huts in Togo, West Africa, where Rossi grasped the raw psychotropic power of music in voodoo ceremonies: "That's when rock & roll was never the same for me. A rock concert could never hold a candle to a voodoo ceremony. It feels like the earth has opened up and you're sitting next to the heart of the earth and it's just pounding." Already an accomplished guitarist, Rossi kicked his polyglot education into a high gear. He went to Ghana to enroll in a drum and dance school run by the master percussionist Mustapha Tetty Addy, and eventually found his way to Cuba and Brazil. He marinated in African, Haitian, Cuban, and Brazilian rhythms while working at a dance studio in Manhattan. He taught himself the kalimba, a South African thumb piano, during six months of recuperation from surgery. Then he spent six years studying the healing arts in NYC, giving his globe-trotting sonic database a purpose: moving both body and spirit. And in the end, the instrument that Tom Rossi might understand the best is the one that thumps squarely in the middle of your chest. This is music for, as that Brooklyn poet Walt Whitman once put it, "respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart." Listen closely; Salma Har contains multitudes. Jeff Gordinier (Details, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly) Similarly Requested CDs
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CD ReviewsMusic to Stir the Heart & Soothe the Soul Skate Guru | N.Y.C. | 12/17/2004 (5 out of 5 stars) "Unique & versatile -this album can serve as soothing meditation music or good listening that reaches out to touch your soul. The blend of harmonics & rhythmics is a result of the melding of the essences of the music of many cultures skillfully woven into an original art form that is uniquely Rossi's." Very interesting, and growing on me by leaps and bounds Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 10/24/2005 (5 out of 5 stars) "This is music I really wanted to like a lot. And initially, I have to admit I was a bit underwhelmed--I was only going to give it three stars. But the more I've listened to it, the more I'm becoming a fan: the sheer beauty and breadth of vision, not to mention attention to the tiniest sonic details, make this a very special disc. Tom Rossi certainly has what it takes to pull something like this off--world travel to places like Togo, Ghana, Turkey, Cuba, Salvador, Bahia, and Brazil; proficiency on a wide ranges of instruments, including piano, guitar, various flutes, bass, clarinet, kalimba, and about a dozen different percussion instruments; study under such masters as Mustapha Tetty Addy, Giovanni Hildago, and Papa Ladji Camara; not to mention study at Berklee, scoring films and composing for theatrical and dance productions, and accompanying a wide variety of world-music ensembles in and around New York. And, truth be told, there's really not anything quite like it out there. This is certainly one of the most eclectic discs ever recorded, blending everything from exotic world-percussion to ravishing wordless SoCal harmonies to lap steel guitar stylings to Malian kora to bata drumming to dreamy faux Middle Eastern musings. Once you get on board with the vibe--for me, after an initial response of being somewhat skeptical that it was all too poppish/New Agey--it generally works quite marvelously. If there is the occasional lapse into sentimentality and cheese, Rossi can be forgiven for the conceptual scope and the generally pulled off uniquely beautiful soundscape. About the only criticism I have is that it sometimes sounds a little too slick. I believe this could be corrected if he actually recorded with a working band, because the tracks most prominently featuring a number of different players work best. Yes, he plays enough instruments to be a one-man band, but nothing beats actual interaction with fellow players in real time. In any case, this is a really good first recording. The aesthetic reminds me of Fraser Fifield's great disc, Honest Water, even though it sounds little like that album. Interestingly Fifield, another hugely talented multi-instrumentalist, has been gigging with his own band for about the last year or so, and has a new recording (not yet heard by me) with that new group. I'm anxiously looking forward to the next offering by Tom Rossi." The best album of the year! Tim Rossi | Wilmington NC | 12/30/2004 (5 out of 5 stars) "From start to finsh this album is full of great relaxing and inspirational music. I think that Tom Rossi simply out did himself. I extremly recomend this album to anyone interested in experiancing a new cultural experiance."
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