Day 1 . . . The Return of the Akai

I met Otman thru Hide. I also met JuanMi through Hide, but that story is for next week. Otman Almerabet wrote a letter of support for my Fulbright application last year and has tried (patiently) to teach me about the music of Al-Andalus since I got to Granada. Born in Tetouan (Morroco) Otman has been playing the la'ud for 30 years, living in Spain since the 80s.



Like JuanMi, Otman is a builder and a player, guitarista/guitarero and laudista/laudetero, respectively. Otman runs the Dar Ziryab Cultural Center and head the Al-Tarab Ensemble, performing below at the Teatro Manuel de Falla in Granada.



Otman, like all good teachers, gives me books to read and music to listen to. Just before Sean moved out here from Boston, Otman gave me 2 burned CDs for us to study, in order to prepare ourselves for recording with him next week. The mixtapes featured laudistas from across the Arab musical world, recordings ranging from last 80 years.

Sean and I spent the first official day of work on the album listening to the mixes, sampling into the recently-arrived replacement MPC 2000xl (sad story, I'll explain later) and making beats. 6 skeleton beats in a 24hours, though just exersizes in practice, haphazardly cut+layered with Akai taps . . .

more to come... daily gnawledge bloggin for the month of april