Sitar Music-World Jazz and Traditional Healing Sounds - Stephan Mikes - News/Videos http://stephanmikes.com/news.html Stephan Mikes: News/Videos Jannis' PHPRss class - http://www.jannis.to/ Thu, 29 Jul 2010 03:16:10 -0700 Spill Some Oil- Revised http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#23 Last night in Studio C at Legendary Criteria Studios/Hit Factory in Miami, we had the first session to revise


the Ordinary Language song "Spill Some Oil" which we originally cut in 1989 for the Exxon Valdez Disaster,now revised for the BP Gulf Catastrophe. Lead vocalist GB cut the new verses, and I added a new tamboura track.


 A video is in production, watch for more news and the final track here...

]]> http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#23 Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700 Sitar Music-World Jazz and Traditional Healing Sounds - Stephan Mikes - News/Videos WLRN Video http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#22






]]> http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#22 Sun, 28 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700 Sitar Music-World Jazz and Traditional Healing Sounds - Stephan Mikes - News/Videos New Video from Berber http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#21






]]> http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#21 Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800 Sitar Music-World Jazz and Traditional Healing Sounds - Stephan Mikes - News/Videos New Times Article http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#20 By Jim Murphy
Published: November 9, 1995
Call it karma or chalk it up to sheer luck, but things have a way of working out for Stephan Mikes. For example: Ten years ago, while he was living in Jupiter, Florida, Mikes paid $300 for a secondhand sitar, then shelled out a few extra bucks for a beginner's instruction book. It was the fulfillment of a desire that had been sparked two decades earlier when Mikes first became aware of the sitar through the East-meets-West musical experiments of such bands as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Yardbirds. "They were using it kind of as an effect, but it was enough to grab me as a teenager," notes Mikes, who has played an assortment of instruments in rock bands dating back to the Sixties. "I've always had an affinity for playing lots of different things. I got a hunch I could do it."

Keep in mind, the sitar is an incredibly complicated instrument, with nineteen strings, sliding frets for endless tuning variations, and a tonality that's based on a completely different scale than that of Western music. Even the physical dimensions of the sitar are sufficiently intimidating to scare off most neophytes. Measuring about four feet in length, the instrument can be properly played only when the musician is seated -- often for hours at a time -- in a half-lotus position, an extremely demanding posture that requires considerable flexibility. Yeah, whatever, figured Mikes, who took his newly acquired sitar and started plinking out what he knew best -- blues scales. "I thought I was doing fine that first week," he recalls, "and having a blast."

Here's where the karma kicked in. Three weeks later, as Mikes was sitting in a meditation class, in walked none other than Roop Verma, a master sitarist who studied under legendary Indian musicians Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan (remember, this is all taking place in Jupiter). Verma noticed a sitar propped against a wall and asked who it belonged to. "I said, 'It's mine,'" recounts Mikes, "and from that moment on we were hooked up."

Verma went ballistic the first time he heard Mikes's blues-inspired noodlings, but agreed to provide the aspiring sitarist with classical instruction in return for recording time in a small eight-track studio Mikes had set up in his house. It was a win-win situation: Verma got to record four albums' worth of material; Mikes, after four years of intensive training A "It took me two years just to learn how to tune [the sitar] properly," he points out -- became proficient enough with the instrument to make a living from it.

Indeed, Mikes, who moved to Miami in 1992, is, as can best be determined, South Florida's only professional sitarist (which means he makes enough money through performances and recordings to support himself, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter). In addition to appearances in predictable places such as ethnic restaurants, coffeehouses, and bookstores, Mikes has wielded his sitar in such unlikely spots as the rock dive Churchill's Hideaway in Little Haiti, trendoid dance clubs on South Beach, and, improbably enough, at local conventions and home shows. "Somebody said, 'Oh, you should check this out, they're looking for music,'" Mikes explains of how he lined up his first home-show gig. "I was really dubious, but I called the guy up and he was interested. We did the first one, and it just blew me away." How's this for good karma? In his first appearance at the South Florida Home Show, Mikes sold close to 150 cassettes. "This is, like, real Middle America-type stuff," he observes of the home-show crowd. "And they liked it."

Middle America, schmiddle America. The fact is, by playing an instrument that developed well outside the melodic boundaries of Western music, Mikes may be the ultimate crossover artist. For proof, look no further than his third and most recent release, The Good, the Bad and the Karmic, on which Mikes successfully fuses the sitar's distinctive sound and winding Eastern melodies with a wide range of musical styles. "Medium Rara" builds upon Haitian Vodou drums; "Andean Dub" incorporates a strong reggae pulse; and several cuts are rooted in Afro-Cuban rhythms. The name of the album derives from the fact that, as Mikes explains, when panpipes and a moody synth announce the title track, "the image we had was, like, a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western."

Despite such humorous overtones, Mikes -- who converted to Hinduism around the same time he started playing the sitar -- is careful to note that the instrument has serious spiritual implications. "[Playing the sitar] is actually a meditation," he observes. "When you're in training you're practicing like seven days a week, eight or ten hours a day, so it's a spiritual practice just doing scales." So Mikes is especially wary of what he calls "the cheese factor" when he in blends various musical styles with the sound of the sitar. "People may misunderstand to a certain extent because they see me doing things like this, and if they're coming from a very spiritual place, they may think it's blasphemous," he says. "But that's the chance you take. Every form of music is a combination of things that come from other places."

While he prefers to fashion world music hybrids, Mikes is also adept at playing ragas -- meditative, improvised pieces traditionally associated with the sitar that can last up to two hours. But dogma is simply not in the classically trained musician's repertoire. "Take what you want out of it," Mikes shrugs. "This is my philosophy. You can use it as background, or if you really want to get deep into it, the levels are there. Of course, the feedback I get from the people who buy the albums are a wide range of remarks: From 'Gee, it's real relaxing background music,' to 'Wow, man, I did some 'shrooms the other night and got into it real heavy.'"

Considering all of the styles in which Mikes has dabbled, there is one glaring exception, which may be explained by Verma's initial reaction to Mikes's fumbled audition a decade ago. "The blues is one I haven't done yet," he admits. "But I've experimented with it, so probably I'll have a blues piece on the next album." It figures. With Mikes, what goes around comes around.

Stephan Mikes performs from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. at CocoWalk, 3015 Grand Ave, Coconut Grove, every Sunday in November.]]> http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#20 Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700 Sitar Music-World Jazz and Traditional Healing Sounds - Stephan Mikes - News/Videos Reviews and Quotes http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#19
"For fans of psychedelic world music, this one's a must . . ."

-- Dennis Walkling, JAM Magazine, 5-star (highest) rating

"The sitar is back. And one of its new, contemporary masters is Stephan Mikes . . .
(He) has created a compelling East-meets-West musical fusion using the sitar and other Eastern instrments along with pedal steel guitar and synthesizers. The sounds may be foreign but the compositional structures are familiar and include pop-like melodic hooks you can hang your head and heart on."
-- Scott Benarde, Critics' Choice, The Palm Beach Post

". . . The result is a collection of accessible originals, featuring simple, appealing melodies and rhythms, which
at turns produce meditative or uplifting feelings."

-- Laura Wilansky, Cafe Society, XS Magazine

And, on The Good, the Bad and the Karmic:

"By playing an instrument that developed well outside the melodic boundaries of Western music, Mikes may be the ultimate crossover artist. For proof, look no further than his third and most recent release, The Good, the Bad and the Karmic, on which Mikes successfully fuses the sitar's distinctive sound and winding Eastern melodies with a wide range of musical styles."

-- Jim Murphy, New Times

?With a slew of Eastern-style instruments, Mikes combines the best of all worlds and creates a masterpiece -- highlighted, of course, by the sitar. Soothing, spiritual and somewhat transcendental, The Good, the Bad and the Karmic
was created to take you away and it will.?

-- DJ Justice, JAM Magazine

"If you picture a film in which Tom Cruise molds the use of Eastern powers for romantic purposes -- 'Zen and
the Art of Finding a Chick,' if you will -- this could be the soundtrack."

-- Bob Karlovits, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Also, about Dakini Beach :

"A master at blending cool Indian inspired ragas with upbeat instrumental world jazz, Mikes is at his best on Dakini Beach, his latest album . . ."

-- Robert Silverstein, 20th Century Guitar
And most recently:

" 'Secret Songs' continues Mikes blend of the sitar with Western sounds and genres --
stringlike keyboards and lap steel guitars make appearances -- to build contemplative melodies that retain the mystery and exoticism of Indian music while also dabbling in jazz, blues and trip-hop."
-- Rene Alvarez, Street magazine

"A great chill-out album filled with world beat sitar sounds and subtle yet effective percussion and electronica, 'Secret Songs' is like an audio travelogue filled with magical, mystical sounds."
-- 20th Century Guitar]]> http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#19 Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700 Sitar Music-World Jazz and Traditional Healing Sounds - Stephan Mikes - News/Videos New Video "Starwalk" http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#18 ]]> http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#18 Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800 Sitar Music-World Jazz and Traditional Healing Sounds - Stephan Mikes - News/Videos New Video "Parallel Grooves" http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#17 ]]> http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#17 Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800 Sitar Music-World Jazz and Traditional Healing Sounds - Stephan Mikes - News/Videos New Vid from Hookahville by VJ11 http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#15 ]]> http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#15 Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0700 Sitar Music-World Jazz and Traditional Healing Sounds - Stephan Mikes - News/Videos Hookahville to Harrisburg http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#14 Peace,Love and Music at Hookahville!
Special thanks go out to Steve of
Legend Valley and Ekoostic Hookah
for inviting me to play. I had a Sitar
Side stage where I played afternoon
'tweener sets and the highlite was the late night set with my good bud
Dana Keller on pedal steel and insane, trippy video projections
by our new friend Rob from Ann Arbor. My road manager Bruce said that his favorite part was when Lisa Simpson morphed into a
monster during "Shiva's Bolero"
It's hard to say which was more fun though, the late night set or
the guest peformances I did with
four different bands, each with unique styles. On Friday I sat in with the MOST excellent jam/bluegrass band Hot Buttered Rum.
I played on their song "Sweet Honey Fountain" which has a very trippy Eastern break in the middle, and the traditional bluegrass song "Norwegian Wood"
With six stringed instruments on stage, including fiddle, banjo, mandolin,guitar, bass, and sitar, we thought it was a possible world
record for most twang on stage at once. The result was labled
HinduGrass.
Saturday was very busy starting
out the day was a sit-in with the
MacPodz from Ann Arbor,who lable their music as "Disco Bebop"
These guys Rock and can make a 23 beat pattern dancable! I started their first song with the Invocation Raga Kalyan, which then morphed into a very heavy groove!
Later in the day I did a short Afternoon solo set on the Sitar Stage, and then watched excellent sets by the Wailers and Rusted Root. After that is when things got very interesting. A last minute hookup resulted in me getting to sit-in with Ekoostic Hookah during thier last set of the
weekend.They graciously gave me lots of space, and we possibly went where no sitar has gone before. Sitting on a high riser surrounded by smoke, it looked like I was floating on a cloud above the band as i played.
Then it got even MORE interesting as I got a chance to play with one of my Favorite new
bands, the most excellent TEA LEAF GREEN from San Francisco.
We did a ripping version of their song "5000 Acres" and then went into "Morning Sun", where the band surprised me with extended space and I had a lot of fun trading
lines with Trevor on keys.
We had scheduled one more late night set with video, but after TLG we were all toasted, and the energy started to dissipate, and Hookahville 27 wound down to the end.
On Monday, it was East to Harrisburg for a day playing at
the Harrisburg Artsfest. Thanks to all my friends and fans who waited patiently for my late arrival on Monday. A very secial thanks to my great friend and benefactor Vishnu of Passage to India. If you are in the area don't
miss a chance to eat at what i consider to be the best Indian restaurant in the country.
More later,Peace Out!]]> http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#14 Tue, 29 May 2007 00:00:00 -0700 Sitar Music-World Jazz and Traditional Healing Sounds - Stephan Mikes - News/Videos Whats Up http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#13 I am currently getting ready to leave for Ann Arbor and Hookahville
(that actually sounds like fun!) this week after 2 private gigs at Ngala
and Vizcaya. Hookahville is going to be VERY cool with my own side stage for the entire festival. Joining me will be my good friends Dana Keller on Dobro and Pedal Steel guitar
and Dave Simon master of sax and flute.Also possibly an appearance by Daveed Korup, percussionist
extrodinaire www.drumfest.com

Also check out my new myspace
page at www.myspace.com/stephanmikessitaristcomposer
I'll be putting up new pix and music regularly.

namasté
Stephan]]> http://stephanmikes.com/news.html#13 Sat, 12 May 2007 00:00:00 -0700 Sitar Music-World Jazz and Traditional Healing Sounds - Stephan Mikes - News/Videos