TOPOGRAPHIES OF THE DARK

Release date: January 2008

Recorded in Santa Fe, New Mexico on the occasion of Accra Trane Station’s first visit from Ghana to the U.S., Topographies of the Dark is a musical exploration in dialogue with sculptural paintings made in Accra by visual artist Virginia Ryan. Her textured assemblages in overlaying densities of black are featured in the accompanying booklet.

ACCRA TRANE STATION:
Another Blue Train

Release date: October 2007

1957: the year of John Coltrane’s classic Blue Train LP and the independence of Ghana. Coltrane was well aware of freedom coming to the former British Gold Coast. But he didn’t know that Ghana also had a Blue Train, a slow train of the night that connected the key cities of Accra, Kumasi, and Takoradi. Accra Trane Station marks this fiftieth anniversary Ghana and Coltrane confluence with an improvisational train ride into the blue diasporic night of African jazz, featuring Nii Noi Nortey’s afrifones, Nii Otoo Annan’s African Percussion Kit, and Steven Feld’s rhythm box bass.

EXPOSURES:
A WHITE WOMAN IN WEST AFRICA

Release date: June 2007

Exposures: A White Woman in West Africa is a photographic book by visual artist Virginia Ryan. The 60 images of herself in diverse domestic, private, and public situations were taken by African and non-African acquaintances and passersby between 2001 and 2005, when Ryan lived and worked as an artist and member of a diplomatic mission in Ghana.

THE CASTAWAYS PROJECT

Release date: January 2007

The Castaways Project was initiated by visual artist and writer Virginia Ryan in 2003. Since that time she has made c. 1000 sculptural paintings, each 9.5 x 11.5 inches, from washed-up materials collected along local shorelines around Accra, Ghana. All the works are white-washed and flicked through with grey-gold, resonant with the colors of foam and sand as the waves break on the very shores from where the inhabitants were once taken and enslaved to build the new world. The works fill walls and rooms, creating an environment concerned with washed-in and washed-out history and memory of displacements, gold and slavery along the one-time African Gold Coast.

THE TIME OF BELLS, 4
Soundscapes of Italy, Denmark, Finland, Japan, and USA/Iraq

RELEASE DATE: SUMMER, 2007

The first two volumes of The Time of Bells explored how church, animal, and ceremonial bells ring the time of day, season, ritual, festival, work, and social life in Italy, Greece, France, Finland, and Norway. Volume three took the project to Accra, Ghana, to discover bells as musical instruments ringing the time of traditional, contemporary, and pan-African diasporic styles. Volume four returns to Europe, with animal, church, musical, and sleigh bell selections from Italy, Denmark, and Finland. Additionally, the research expands into new geographic and symbolic terrain: the time of annual ritual bells in Japan, and the role bells play in heralding world peace in Japan, the USA, and Iraq.

ACCRA TRANE STATION: Meditations for John Coltrane

Release date: January 2007

From Ghana, a tribute to the 40th anniversary of John Coltrane's classic Meditations featuring multi- instrumentalists Nii Noi Nortey and Nii Otoo Annan.

SUIKINKUTSU : A Japanese Underground Water Zither

Release date: August 1, 2006

Suikinkutsu, literally "water-zither-cave," is a unique instrument associated with washing for the Japanese tea ceremony. Water drips from a chozubachi stone basin into a partly-filled underground ceramic bowl. The dripping sound, resembling a koto zither, is then projected up through bamboo tubes into a garden, where water may symbolize spirit, purification, solace, and reflection.

THE TIME OF BELLS, 3
Produced by Steven Feld
and Nii Noi Nortey

RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER, 2005

The Time of Bells 1 and 2 explored how church, animal, and ceremonial bells ring the time of day and season, ritual and festival, work and collective social life in Italy, Greece, France, Finland and Norway. Now the project turns to bells as musical instruments in Accra, capital city of Ghana, the former "Gold Coast." In Accra one commonly hears musicians instruct that "the bell is the keeper of the time" in traditional drum and dance ensembles. And eminent scholars of Ghana's music, like J. H. K. Nketia, John Chernoff, and John Collins, have analyzed the authoritative power of rhythm in the interaction of bell and drums. But bells do much more than keep ensemble time. Listen here as bells of different sizes, pitches, and timbres make time multiple. Interacting with voices, wind, string, percussion and reed instruments - including car horns and jazz saxophone -bells ring the vibrant time of traditional, contemporary, and Pan African diasporic styles now resounding in Accra.

IRAQNOPHOBIA/WAKE UP DEAD MAN

RELEASE DATE: JUNE, 2005

Alex Coke's WAKE UP DEAD MAN and IRAQNOPHOBIA are deep meditations on human rights, peace, and social justice. For all their sensuous aesthetic appeal as contemporary ensemble jazz, these compositions are also critical works of musical citizenship. Like Alan Pogue's stunning photographs which accompany the presentation, they directly confront the brutal circumstances of life in prisons and war zones. They cause us to ask about the pain and misery of these places, and in doing so they advocate for compassion and human dignity.

THE TIME OF BELLS, 2

RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER, 2004

The ringing of European city and village bells has long shaped civil and religious time - daily time, seasonal time, work time, ritual time, social time, collective time, cosmological time. In these six compositions you'll hear how bells sound the time of authority and disruption. You'll hear how hand bells, animal bells, church bells, time chimes, and carillons interact with other time and space-makers, from birds to plaza fountains and cell phones, from walking and running feet to parades and urban traffic, from choirs and bagpipes to brass bands, DJs and amplified sound systems. Most of all you'll hear how bells ring a deep European history of gathering participants and calling in equal measure for prayer, protest, and carnival.

The Second Baghdad - Rahim AlHaj

THE SECOND BAGHDAD

Rahim AlHaj began playing the oud at age nine. It was evident early on that he had a gift. He is a graduate of the prestigious Baghdad Conservatory, where he studied under the great Munir Bashir and Salim Abdul Kareem. Rahim is among the most accomplished oud players of his generation. His original compositions delicately introduce modern concepts into the tradition of Iraqi oud playing. This CD is a compilation of Rahim’s compositions reflecting his feelings for his country, Iraq, his city, Baghdad, its people, and its rich Sumerian past.

The Time of Bells - Steven Feld

THE TIME OF BELLS, 1

RELEASE DATE: JANUARY, 2004

The ringing of European village bells has long shaped civil and religious time – daily time, seasonal time, work time, ritual time, social time, collective time, cosmological time. In these six soundscape compositions, including a suite from France, bells ring the time of day, the time of prayer, the time of festival, the time of transhumance, the time of festivals and rituals, the time of location, from seaside to mountains. Simultaneously sounding a present and past, the time of bells is both their resonant moment and their remarkable technological and social history.

Iraqi Music in a Time of War

IRAQI MUSIC IN A TIME OF WAR: RAHIM ALHAJ LIVE IN CONCERT, NEW YORK, APRIL 5, 2003

RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 1, 2003

A live concert by exiled Iraqi oud virtuoso Rahim AlHaj, who speaks about and performs his music at the moment when bombs were dropping over his family’s city, Baghdad, and the American-led invasion and planned occupation of Iraq was so largely uncontested. The CD is a remarkable testimony to how music can advocate for peace andcompassion in a time of war.