Today, having *finally* got some payment for at least one of the jobs I've been doing lately, I celebrated by popping around the corner to the music store "Just Jazz" (that's 'Bare Jazz' in Norwegian, by the way, which, come to think of it, almost could do just as well in English).

Well, I listened to four or five CDs, but couldn't find anything I wanted. So I asked the owner (she's a professional jazz saxoponist herself) if she had any suggestions. I told her what I wanted: Some easy, harmonic, a bit funky music. Fusion, or something like it.

She handed me a double CD, which she said was direct import from USA. The artist is Victor Wooten, a bass player, and the record is called 'Yin-yang', the two CDs named Yin and Yang, respectively. Yin is instrumental, Yang has vocals, too. I listened to it, and liked many of the tunes instantly, so I bought it.

Back to work, on with the headset. When song #8 comes up, I suddenly hear babyspeak. Then, the babyspeak returns, now with Wooten's bass playing in unison with the baby's voice, and with chords added!

This is a real "ear-opener" to the fact that our voices actually has melody. It's so easy not to notice, because we're too busy and used to trying to filter out and piece together what the person talking wants to say.

There's something special, different, something to this music that touches strings inside me that ordinary music doesn't. Or maybe it does, but not as directly. Maybe this means that we tend to like music that resembles voice/speech patterns...

I want to share this experience with you. In light of the recent Napster debate here in RinkForum, I'm a bit nervous about putting a link to an mp3 file here, but I'll do it in the message text (no direct link, in other words, you'll have to copy and paste), and I'm going to leave it there for just a couple of weeks, max. It's just over 2 Mb in size, so most of you should be able to download it pretty fast.

I give you also the link to Wooten's site, specifically the page where he explains a bit about the song.

Here's the link to the mp3 file on my site:
http://home.eunet.no/~stoeylen/audio/kalia_speaks.mp3

I really recommend the rest of this double CD, too. I think it's very nice already, and I expect it to grow on me a bit.


Trav"I'm just doing this because I'm so totally fascinated by this, and I'd also like to point out that this is the first time I've made an mp3 file ever!"holt