New Zealand

I've been in New Zealand/Aotearoa for almost three weeks, have been keeping the online time to a minimum, so there's rather a lot of musical blogging to be done now...

So far there's been

• a brief, jetlagged, but rather nice saz and guitar session with Alan the night I arrived
  
• joining Alan on busking missions to Nelson (with his Buddhist guitarist friend Ian and Ian's son Julian) and on the streets of Motueka, where I've been staying
  
• a session with Helen (one of the early Dongas Tribe people I met up in North Wales back in 1993), her husband Chris, Alan, Ian and Saan (a German friend of Alan from the nearby Riverside Community who he's trained up to play nyabinghi drumming)
  
• A couple of pre-Treewalk programmes on local community station Fresh FM, hosted by Alan (as DJ Galanjah) with me playing some saz, interspersed with deep roots music
  
• The Treewalk! I'll have to write more about the Treewalk soon, cos I've been playing more music than I have in years, playing as well as I ever have, collaborating with all sorts of musicians, and recording all sorts of good stuff in the process. Just walked back from a weekend out at Riverside back to Motueka with Alan, now catching up with cyber-reality. Last night it was plugging into Little Dread's desk and jamming saz over a roots reggae and dub selection with ecstatic dancing and drumming going on in the Community Hall

So...much more to come, including recordings. We're going to compile a Treewalk CD for everyone involved and possible future fundraising. Quite a lot of MiniDiscs to get through! Sitting here in a Motueka cybercafe, I'm listening to something recorded down by the sea on Thursday evening with Kristina and Paul from Trewavas Street, plus an angelic choir of six womens' voices and Alan's rock-solid rootical 'binghi beats on his little African djembe.

Quite a lot of digital photos were taken en route by various other people, so some of those will eventually find their way here.