SubVersion Stop 7: Tings What I Listened To Today

I hardly ever have the inspiration to write at length about any particular music. Maybe I'll listen to something or other, like it, give it a metaphorical thumbs up, or a pictorial one if smileys are available, and that's enough. Which is what such threads as currently on your stereo are for: you list something that's currently on your stereo, or has just been on your stereo, to include other people in the listening experience, however tangentially. And maybe a name in a list does resonate with someone and they wave back, metaphorically or pictorially.

But then at other times you might want to say a little bit after all, to encourage people, to lead them on to listen to that something themselves, subsequently on their stereos. But to say only a little bit; no long evocative article taking people by the hand or anything. (As I said, I hardly ever have the inspiration to write anything like that. I just stare at the blank screen for a while and then go away and do something else.) But yes, just a little bit. So I started another thread on tings what I listened to today. It's a somewhat diffident title because, well, why should anyone care what I listened to, today or any other day? And yet sometimes I want to say a little something anyway. So I did, and do, sometimes.

And what I listened to today was:

Before the Revolution: A 1909 Recording Expedition in the Caucasus and Central Asia by The Gramophone Company.

Extracted from 78s stored at the British Library, it is merely an extract of the work of recording engineer Franz Hampe, who made over a thousand recordings of whatever and wherever on a 5000-mile trip across Central Asia in 1909, armed with whatever obscure technology they used back then.

For instance: track 19, recorded in Skobelev, with tanbur, two dutors, chang, gijak and doira. I don't know where Skobelev is and I've never heard of any of those instruments (well, perhaps the tanbur, if it's a variant of the Turkish tambur), but they made a fine sound together somewhere back in 1909. And the sound quality isn't bad either.

(Thanks to Naphta for leading me to this one.)