Takaka Library and Roots Bar

Alan and I have continued our musical collaborations in Takaka. On Monday 13th (me just back from Kaikoura) we played for an hour in the village library, something he'd arranged with them, part of a series of summer cultural events. There was a small audience, including a few puzzled-looking but attentive children. Alan sang a few songs accompanied by his guitar and my saz, and then I played a few tunes accompanied by his djembe. Very relaxed. I even managed to meaningfully drop the words "gibbous" and "corrigendum" into our between-song banter (it was a library after all).

Listen Here

On the Thursday he was playing the Roots Bar, selecting roots, dub and dancehall as DJ Galanjah. After an hour of lively roots selections, we morphed into the dub hour, with me playing over a preselected set of tracks. There was an LKJ, a Lee Perry, an Augustus Pablo, and a few tracks off each of Midnite's two dub albums. I chose them in order of ascending key so the whole set had an upwards sweep to it, and felt very relaxed with the whole thing. Craig who runs the place made sure we had decent sound and monitoring and was adding live reverb to the saz to great effect. Unfortunately it didn't get recorded. By the end of that, the clientelle had had enough alchohol to start coming in and skanking, and I happily joined them for two-and-half-hours of Alan's conscious dancehall selections. A great night.