Search - Jon Hassell, Ry Cooder, Ronu Majumdar :: Hollow Bamboo

When Ry Cooder isn't getting down with the aged Cuban musicians of the Buena Vista Social Club, he's getting serene with Indian flutists and vina players. As he did with the well-known A Meeting by the River with Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Cooder teams up with Indian musicians in open-ended improvisations that are New Age music for people who don't think they like New Age. Melodies ebb and flow, rhythms are gentle tabla beats or floating pulses, structure is often amorphous. Ronu Majumdar is actually the leader on these sessions and he's a formidable player of the bansuri flute, an Indian bamboo instrument that's capable of the most sublime and sensual melodies. Majumdar gets all that. Except when he plays oud on one track, Cooder sticks to electric guitar, gently fingerpicking tremolo-drenched backings to Majumdar's ruminations. The sessions for Hollow Bamboo emerged out of those for Jon Hassell's 1999 album, Fascinoma, and shares that CD's musicians. Hassell plays trumpet on a couple of tracks, his breathy, slurred lines echoing Majumdar's melodies. You won't need incense for this CD. It's wafting right up off the disc. --John Diliberto