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PGM 734R "DISTANCIAS" : Week of July 31st...

When Columbus sailed to the new world for the king and queen of Spain in 1492, he couldn't have known that he would begin the most successful transfer of culture in history.

Today, Spanish is the 3rd most spoken language in the world, the guitar is one of the most popular instruments, and the Latin sensibility in music has brought us great popular dances, the fiery compas of Flamenco, the airy charm of Andean mountain music, the restrained passion of tango, and the relaxed sensuality of the Brazilian ballad.

On this 25th anniversary retrospective transmission of Hearts of Space, it's a journey in the Latin soundscape called DISTANCIAS, featuring the wonderful Argentiian musician GUSTAVO SANTAOLALLA. Additional music is by OSCAR REYNOLDS, JASON McGUIRE, SOULFOOD & BILLY McLAUGHLIN, ANDRE GERAISSATI and BENEDETTI & SVOBODA.

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PGM 882 "HANG GLIDING" : Week of July 24th...

What looks like an elegant flying saucer, sounds like a more melodious cousin of the steel pan drum, and is the first new musical instrument of the 21st century?

Give up? It’s the latest member of the idiophone family, the hang — spelled h-a-n-g and pronounced "hong."

Invented in Bern, Switzerland in 2000 by veteran steel pan makers FELIX ROHNER and SABINA SCHÄRER, hang means "hand" in the Bernese Swiss German dialect. After several generations of intense development, it's become a highly refined instrument tuned to a pentatonic minor scale and played…with the hands.

The hang has become something of a phenomenon among the worldwide community of resonant percussionists, and you're about to hear why. On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, we ride the warm, harmonic tones of the hang on a delightfully hypnotic journey called HANG GLIDING. (Sorry, couldn't resist).

Music is by ALAN TOWER from 
MUSIC FOR ANIMALS; the centerpiece of the program is three extended contemplative improvisations for hang, electric guitar and loops by Sicilian-born musician LAURA INSERRA and ambient guitarist DARREN GIBBS, from MUSICAL INCENSE, VOLUMES ONE and TWO; and at the end of our journey, music for multiple steel pans and steel pan and dilruba (an Indian stringed instrument) by Germany's gift to contemplative world music, STEPHAN MICUS — from TO THE EVENING CHILD.

A rhythmelodic journey for resonant steel: HANG GLIDING…on this edition…of Hearts of Space.

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PGM 881 "SUMMERTRONICA 4" : Week of July 17th...

PHOTO: INFLATABILL/FLICKR

It's probably a reaction to our increasingly safe, predictable, scheduled lives, but a longing for the ecstatic, the primitive, and the archaic has been sweeping through Western music for almost a hundred years.

IGOR STRAVINSKY's "Rite of Spring" — a fertility ritual — with its intense dissonances and pagan polyrhythms, took an opening shot across the bow of civilized European art in 1913. Its premiere, famously, caused a riot.

From the polite 19th century Romantic fascination with the "noble savage," through R&B and the rock 'n' roll stance of "Elvis the Pelvis," to the trancey ethnic rhythms of today's techno-tribal dance and ambient music — we continue to seek the energy and the release...of the ecstatic.

On this transmission of Hearts of Space, another techno-triba-delic journey called SUMMERTRONICA 4. Music is by DREAM JUNGLE, TUU, JORGE REYES & PIET JAN BLAUW, TONY GERBER, RESONANT DRIFT, DAN POUND, and KEVIN BRAHENY.

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PGM 880 (a tribute to) ALI AKBAR KHAN : Week of July 10th...

When the history of North Indian music in the 20th and  21st centuries is written, one of the giants of the story will be ALI AKBAR KHAN, who passed away at his home here in Northern California on June 18th, 2009, at the age of 87.

By any measure Khansahib, as he was called by his thousands of  students and admirers, was an extraordinary musician who led an extraordinary life. On this special transmission of Hearts of Space, we celebrate his life, his playing, and his enormous contribution  to contemporary music.

It was ALI AKBAR KHAN and his fellow student RAVI SHANKAR, with the help of violinist YEHUDI MENUHIN, who truly brought Indian classical music to the west beginning in 1955. Menuhin called him "an absolute genius...perhaps the greatest musician in the world."

ALI AKBAR KHAN was born in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) in 1922.  At the time, his father ALLAUDIN KHAN was already a major figure in Indian music, and was established as the chief musician at the court of the Maharaja of Maihar in central India. It was here that Ali Akbar Khan grew up and became his father's student.

Hindustani music traces back to Vedic times over 3000 years ago and was originally based on the singing of sacred texts. This legacy gave North Indian classical music a serious, devotional quality, but eventually the full range of emotional experiences were incorporated into the music.

In Indian music, the system of ragas or "seed compositions" on  which the player improvises, has developed over many generations of oral transmission. Raga is the basis of both performance practice and the teaching tradition embodied in the musical guru/disciple relationship. Ali Akbar Khan received this tradition from his father and passed it on to generations of students during a lifetime of teaching, concertizing and composing.

His father Allaudin Khan, who lived to be 110(!) and is said to have played over 200 instruments, decided that young Ali Akbar would concentrate on just one: the sarode, a fretless Indian instrument in the lute family descended from the Persian rebab, with 25 strings — 4 main strings for melody, 6 for rhythm, and 15 drone or sympathetic strings for harmonics and ambience. The instrument is made of teak, with a goatskin diaphragm stretched over a resonator, and a polished metal fingerboard. With his sarode, his tradition, and the power of his teaching, Ali Akbar Khan...moved...the world of music.

While each raga is designed for a specific time of day, on this program we feature selections from several ragas from Ali Akbar Khan's dozens of recordings: a Morning Meditation from the album  JOURNEY; two alap movements or slow introductions — Rag Shri from ALI ALKBAR KHAN PLAYS ALAP, and the alap from Raga Gauri Manjari; and the most famous of his original compositions, Raga Chandranandan from SIGNATURE SERIES, Volume 1. Finally, the evening raga Darbari Kanra, from the album GARDEN of DREAMS. In tone, technique, phrasing, mood and depth, you'll hear the work of a master musician at his peak.

 A tribute to ALI AKBAR KHAN...on this edition...of Hearts of Space.

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New version of our custom Flash Player (again)

Some of you may recall that we did this update on June 24th and documented the new features and fixes here.

Despite our efforts to think of everything that could possibly go wrong, a few bugs slipped through. They were causing enough problems that we rolled back to the previous version of the player so we could fix them, rather than inflict them on you, our beloved users.

We fixed the bugs and made a few more minor tweaks, and on Monday July 6th at 2PM Pacific we rolled out the next version of the HOS Flash player for good — or at least until the next one. For those who follow these things, it's version 2.7.4, which you can see by right-clicking anywhere in the player area of the site.

If you are reading this after the update, you don't have to do anything — the new player loads automatically when you come to HOS.com. If you were already on our site during the update, some browsers are stubborn about re-loading changed files with the same name. Please clear your browser "cache" by following the instructions in our Help! section (link in top menu bar, on the right) under TECH SUPPORT> TROUBLESHOOTING> EMPTY BROWSER CACHE.

As always, we solicit your comments and suggestions for any and all improvements to the operation of the service.

:: SH

PGM 844 "AMERICAN CROSSROADS" : Week of July 3rd..

Every July 4th, we celebrate America's independence with food, fun, and fireworks. For as long as most of us can remember, everything that's good about America — our diversity, freedom, individuality and self-assurance — has been proudly on display.

This year, our celebration is tempered by a growing awareness of the great challenges we face in national, global and even planetary affairs. You have to look back to the 1930s to find a comparable period, but even those challenges seem limited by comparison.

So this year we celebrate the founding of America with the knowledge that American ideals and the American character are being tested. If Americans can respond positively to the challenges we face, we may look back on this period as the time of America's maturity.

American music today reflects the maturing of our melting-pot of cultural traditions— hymns, folk and popular songs, blues, jazz, electronica, maverick classical, ethnic rhythms, and immigrant genres — a complex panorama of musical sources, freely invented and reinvented. On this transmission of Hearts of Space, we listen for the reflective side of the American soundscape, on a program called AMERICAN CROSSROADS.

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