Saturday nights in Austin, most folks want to hear some of that good ol' Texas music. They might be the kind that go for a honky-tonk Telecaster, or maybe they're one of those rip-roaring Tejano accordion types. But all agree that there just ain't nothing like Texas music…like when the fella in the corner breaks out with a little of that sweet Southern sarod, or when his buddy rounds it out with a little of that down-home dumbek soul. Yep...a Lone Star beer and a wailing oud. Now that's Texas.

Okay, so maybe an oud (a Middle Eastern lute) or a dumbek (a goblet-shaped drum from the same region) aren't generally what comes to mind when folks think of Texas music. And it's true that most Texans wouldn't have recognized the business end of a balafon (a West African wooden xylophone) back when the cowpokes were serenading the coyotes with their lonesome guitars, or even a little later, in the days of Western swing or Stevie Ray Vaughan's Southern blues. But these days, a new generation of musicians who call Austin home are looking farther afield for musical inspiration. Some are delving into their own ethnic backgrounds, while others are reaching out to traditions completely foreign to them. In either case, they are breaking away from the rock-blues-country mold for which Austin is renowned, and putting the "world" into the Live Music Capital of the World.

Don't let the term "world music" fool you, however. The 1001 Nights Orchestra, Oliver Rajamani, Ghandaia, Del Castillo, Easy Motion Tourist, and others may look to every continent on the planet for their inspiration, but they're just doing what musicians have always done: mixing and matching and coming up with something new. The result is a flourishing of music that is as much the unique product of Texas as it is the heritage of the whole melodious world.

Kamran Hooshmand and the 1001 Nights Orchestra

When the Paramount Theater wanted to show the 1924 classic The Thief of Bagdad, they knew exactly how to turn the "silent" film into the live musical experience that pre-talkie movies were intended to be. To accompany Douglas Fairbanks' swashbuckling and Julanne Johnston's swooning, they hired the 1001 Nights Orchestra, an eight-piece Middle Eastern ensemble, to weave together instruments and songs from Arabia to Armenia to Afghanistan.

The 1001 Nights Orchestra is led by Kamran Hooshmand, who sings and plays several stringed instruments. He says that while many people think of world music as a phenomenon of the last decade or so, musical mixing actually has very deep roots.

"The current popularity of world music is only the most recent version of something that happened many times before," he said.

Growing up in Iran in the nineteen-sixties, Latin music was all the rage. Hooshmand remembers his father returning from trips West with the latest recordings of rumba, tango, and cha-cha. The genre was so popular that many Iranian musicians recorded popular Latin songs with Persian lyrics. When Hooshmand settled in Texas, he was occasionally surprised to discover some songs he knew from his childhood were originally Mexican, not Iranian.

Hooshmand adds that the fact that the styles blended so seamlessly is testament to an even earlier period of world music. It was the Middle Ages, when Arabs brought Persian musicians with them in their conquest of North Africa and Spain. He says the mark they left on Latin music is clear.

"While Western music has two main modes, major and minor, Eastern music has hundreds of modes," Hooshmand said. He explained that a mode is essentially a scale that is often associated with a mood, like how a song in a major key sounds "happy" and minor sounds "sad." "There are some modes that 'sound' major as well as minor, and you can find them in both Middle Eastern and Latin American music."

The result is a happy-sad sound that is well-suited for the impassioned, the melodramatic, and the flaming pit of despair-but is in no way plodding or blah.

"Iranian music is sad, but the songs always make up for it, either in rhythm or lyrics," he said. "(In the United States) people often think everything should be bright and happy, but over there it's more about exploring the sadness. It's not a depressing sadness, but a very deep sadness that becomes productive. A very beautiful sadness that moves forward."

Hooshmand explored these connections with Mexican musician Javier Palacios in a CD titled Ojala, swapping verses in Spanish and Persian to songs that originated in both countries. While the duo has lately been on retreat from live performances, their CD is sill available through the 1001 Nights Orchestra web site. (See accompanying article, "World Music in Austin.")

It is 1001 Nights Orchestra that Hooshmand performs with most these days, although the fact that they do not perform more than about once a month is a testament to the challenges of performing world music. Delicate acoustic instruments are inappropriate for a noisy bar, but their sensitivity to temperature and humidity makes outdoor venues a stretch as well. Add to that the difficulty of scheduling rehearsals for eight musicians, all involved in multiple musical projects, and all playing a bevy of instruments that must be transported, packed and unpacked, and tuned for each use. Hooshmand says he alone had to tune more than one hundred strings on his hammer dulcimer, santour (a Persian dulcimer), saz (a Turkish lute with a long, slender neck), oud, rabab (an Afghan lute), and guitar for the Thief of Bagdad show. Whew. But despite the difficulties, Hooshmand is positive about Austin's world music scene.

"There's definitely a scene going on," Hooshmand said. "It's great because we can work together and experiment and learn from each other. It's unique to Austin, and very valuable."

The 1001 Nights Orchestra will definitely continue contributing to that scene, particularly at the Cactus Café and Bertram Hall above the Clay Pit Restaurant, for Hooshmand considers performance an important way of reaching out to the community.

"It's very important to us to make Middle Eastern music part of the scene," he said. "The media are so full of negative images of Middle Eastern cultures, and by performing we can introduce people to another side of the Middle East, the side that's ancient, beautiful and poetic."

Del Castillo

Sometimes Del Castillo call their music "nuevo flamenco," and sometimes they describe it as "an amalgamation of everything we've ever listened to," but any words seem insufficient to capture the high-energy swirl of genre-blending involved in one of their shows. Each song reflects a different facet of the six members' wide-ranging musical preferences: a song with a steady, pounding rock beat will follow one propelled forward on Afro-Cuban congas, or loping along on bluesy walking bass. But whether a song veers over into funk or sits a spell in the blues, eventually it returns to a single musical feature-the precise flamenco guitar work of brothers Rick and Mark Del Castillo.

"The only commonality our songs share is the Spanish lyrics, and that we're playing nylon-string guitars and acoustic instruments," explained Rick Del Castillo. "Everything else is a free-for-all."

Those Spanish lyrics are written and sung by the gangly, madly gesticulating Alex Ruiz. With his fringed scarves fluttering, his mouth open wide in a howl of lovelorn agony, and his hand arched over his head in a gesture half-flower, half-claw, he seems a lost cousin of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler-albeit from the Seville side of the family.

According to Rick Del Castillo, Ruiz writes the lyrics in part because he is the member who speaks Spanish the most fluently. Del Castillo explained that growing up in South Texas, he and his brother generally responded to their Spanish-speaking parents in English. By the time they were adults, their understanding of Spanish far outstripped their ability to speak it-a fact they are currently working to change.

"There's just a beauty of singing in Spanish that you can't capture in English," Rick Del Castillo said. "There's a certain elegance that gets lost in the translation."

Language is only one kind of discovery the project has fostered. After all, while Brownsville may be part of a broad Latin culture with strong musical ties to Spain, the South Texas border is by no means a flamenco heartland. Steeped in rock and blues, the Del Castillos didn't even start dabbling in flamenco until they were adults. But once they devoted themselves to the genre, they realized that their Mexican heritage had already familiarized them with much of the feel they were going for.

"On the one hand it's fun and exciting and new," said Rick Del Castillo, "But at the same time it's also like coming home to something that's always been a part of you."

But if flamenco is part of them, then so too are jazz, funk, blues and rock. Drummer Mike Zeoli, a classically trained percussionist, shares Del Castillo's rhythmic duties with Rick Holeman, who mans a second set of drums that include timbales, bongos, and congas. He says that this kind of genre-mixing and experimentation makes perfect sense these days.

"We live in a very exciting time when more and more people are traveling, using the Internet, meeting new people, and sharing ideas about different cultures and languages and foods and textiles and music," he said. "People are exploring more. That's what Del Castillo is doing: exploring what our sound is-and it's whatever we want it to be."

Apparently it's what a lot of other people want it to be, too. The band won seven awards during the 2003 Austin Music Awards, and the band enjoyed enthusiastic crowds at their regular Steamboat gigs, before that club closed last month. Zeoli says the crowds turn out because of the unique niche the band fills.

"What we're doing is adding a new spice to Austin's musical palette," Zeoli said. "Austin has lots of singer-songwriters, rock, rockabilly, and country. But we're offering a different flavor to the plate. Lots of people are curious, and enjoying what we're cooking up."

Oliver Rajamani

Follow Del Castillo's nuevo flamenco back down to Brownsville and back across the Atlantic and you'll get to the land of "antiguo" flamenco in Spain. Keep moving east, through Europe and the Middle East, and eventually you'll end up somewhere in North India, where the Gypsies have their roots. Move a little further south to the green hills of Tamil Nadu, the state on the very southern tip India, you'll find where Oliver Rajamani was born.

Rajamani's music traces this route back and forth and back again in mostly original compositions on the guitar, oud, and sarod (a guitar-like instrument from South India). It's a journey that begins in his family home, where he learned music from a young age. That music was raw, rhythmic folk songs, far different from the Indian classical music with which most Americans are at least passingly familiar (think Ravi Shankar). His family's preference for folk music is partially due to religion-the Rajamanis are Christian, while much of India's classical music is explicitly Hindu-and partly to class.

"Classical music was originally only sang by high-class people, the Brahmins," Rajamani said. "My family was not high class, so my family worked within the folk tradition. Unlike religious music, folk songs are about things like love, or your village or the harvest."

Rajamani began expanding his musical repertoire as a scholarship student in a Quaker school, and in college he devoted himself to learning the music of the Gypsies, or Roma, as they call themselves. This involved learning Arab music, which influenced the Gypsies as they moved through the Middle East, as well as flamenco, a genre the Roma essentially created in Spain. The more he studied, the more he recognized connections to Indian music.

"(South Indian) folk music has a lot of Gypsy qualities to it," he said. "The singing styles are similar, and so are a lot of the scales and rhythms. There are songs you can play on a flamenco guitar and people will think it's a flamenco song, when actually it's an Indian folk song."

Thus, Rajamani's driving, extended jams are built on elements of Indian folk songs, Arab melodies, and flamenco, all accompanied by a barrage of hand drums and Rajamani's bittersweet voice. Despite the styles' similarities, Rajamani says that each has its own distinctive sounds.

"Flamenco singing is very expressive. It takes Indian and Arabic styles and adds its own quality of pain," he said. "Indian and Arabic music have pain, but it's things like the pain of lost love."

In contrast, the pain in Gypsy songs is flavored by centuries of persecution and outsiderness.

"I compare it to the blues," he said. "It's very guttural. The feeling of it is very raw and deep and visceral."

"They scream a lot in flamenco," he added.

But Rajamani also makes it clear that he is doing very much his own thing.

"My music is not any one pure tradition," he said. "But at the same time, it all comes from tradition-the Middle Eastern tradition, the Roma Gypsy tradition. To that I'm adding my own heritage."

But he also admits it's sometimes difficult to find suitable venues for his brand of world music, which is about sitting down and listening as often as it is about getting up and dancing. And he adds that some people's expectations of Austin's music scene keep some people from realizing the diverse musical offerings available to them.

"We can't play places where it's just about being loud and drinking," he said. "Also, world music isn't really the thing in Austin. People expect singer-songwriters and country and things like that."

Nevertheless, Rajamani plays regularly at venues including the Clay Pit Restaurant, the Cactus Café, and Ruta Maya, making Austin the most recent stop on a musical migration that stretches literally halfway around the world-and has picked up souvenirs the whole way.

Easy Motion Tourist

If the Gypsies and the Arab empires were responsible for their own waves of world music, so too was the forced migration of Africans across the Atlantic. It takes no degree in ethnomusicology to recognize African rhythms in Caribbean or Latin music. But less well known is the fact that these New World genres, from Cuban son to reggae and rock, crossed back east once again to Africa. The result is Afro-pop: catchy guitar and bass lines bouncing atop a foundation of Western and African drums, topped with vocals ranging from ethereal to playful to raw. And on yet another transatlantic crossing, the genre can be heard in Austin from an ensemble called Easy Motion Tourist.

Like other world music groups, Easy Motion Tourist is all about exploring tradition. It's just somebody else's tradition they're exploring. But while the band, which takes its name from the title of a song by Nigerian superstar King Sunny Ade, does not have a single member of African descent, it does have a deep respect for West African pop, especially the hypnotic, psychedelic works coming out of Guinea and Mali in the nineteen-seventies. According to percussionist Dennis Rathnaw, who started the band as a University of Texas ensemble, their sound may challenge what many Americans think of as African music.

"When people think of African music here, generally it's about tons of drums and wild, flailing dancing," he said. "In the realm of African music that's just a very small niche, but it gets taken out of context and exploited here. In other parts of Africa, vocal traditions are the basis for everything. And then after that, the most important thing is stringed instruments."

Thus, Easy Motion Tourist does not pound, drive and flail as much as it swings, floats and grooves. In gigs at the World Beat Café and Flamingo Cantina, its two guitars, three singers, two percussionists, a bass and a horn section layer and intertwine, building toward a deep, seductive belly-funk. Rathnaw says the fact that all of their songs are covers, learned by ear through commercially available recordings, does not detract from the emotion in the least.

"I come from a jazz background where interpreting other people's compositions is very relevant," he said. "It's all in what you bring to it or what you do with it."

However, figuring out by ear a repertoire of ten-minute, polyrhythmic jams is not without complications. The singers, for example, must learn and perform lyrics in languages they don't understand. This was nothing new to Meera Chandy, whose family trained her in classical Indian music from a young age, teaching her songs in six languages every morning before school. But it a new experience for Karin Akre.

"It turns into an entirely different way of singing, one that is all about the sounds rather than the meanings behind them," said Akre. "In a way it's freeing, because you can just appreciate those sounds. I'm sure there are beautiful sounds in English, too, but I think you sometimes miss out on them because you only think about the meaning."

However, a recent private performance for an African history conference gave them their first experience playing for a large audience of Africans with the potential to understand their lyrics-and shudder at their pronunciation.

"I was really nervous that people would be offended and think we were just throwing around their music," said Akre. "But everyone seemed so happy to hear us singing their songs, and afterwards they came up and told us what some were about."

Their repertoire, they now know, includes a tribute to stringed instruments and praise to the grasslands of Mali. It also includes one piece about a wife's duty to honor her husband.

"I'd like to know a little more about what that last one's saying," said Akre. "It could be beautiful or it could be awful."

But whatever the challenges of playing covers, the band is happy with the kind of creation that comes through interpretation, rather than writing songs from scratch.

"We're about exploring and celebrating African music," said Akre. "I really enjoy it because I'm learning a lot about singing and (about) different things my voice can do. It really stretches my experience."

Ghandaia

Ghandaia is a big band with a big sound. They wear big matching soccer jerseys and they move the crowd in a big way. Their music draws heartily and enthusiastically from Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, and reggae traditions to create the original music that singer-guitarist Alex Marrero calls "Latin funk."

Of course, the musical styles they work with were multi-layered works of fusion even before the Ghandaia boys got their hands on them. Samba, for example, has its roots in the European marches (think John Philip Sousa) played by brass bands that upper-class Brazilians hired to perform for Carnival. Somewhere around the turn of the century, folks from the poorer neighborhoods, where polyrhythmic traditions from Africa lived on, decided that the oompah-pah needed a little more shish-bang-boom, and samba was born in a big way. Then, in the nineteen-sixties, Brazilian musicians shook things up by blending funk and soul from the northern hemisphere into the mix. Now, in the twenty-first century, Ghandaia can take this funky African-John Philip Sousa mélange, toss in rhythms and styles from across Latin America, and come up with something all their own.

The band's origins go back more than a decade, to when Marrero and bassist Pablo Larios were growing up in Mexico City. That's where they met singer Federico Geib, originally from Brazil, in 1991, and the three began collaborating on music that drew from all their influences, be they rock, funk, samba, or jazz. But it wasn't until they all ended up in Austin that Ghandaia emerged as a full-blown incarnation with enough members to achieve the sound they wanted.

"There's a lot of things going on (in our music) and if you don't have enough people, the sound is just not there," Marrero explained. "For example, to get the Afro-Cuban sound, the bell patterns and conga patterns and bass notes all have to come together in very particular way."

Marrero admits that going big, while simultaneously going eclectic, is not without its challenges.

"It's a challenge to do so many things that don't necessarily go together," he said. "When you're following an Afro-Cuban piece with a samba or a bossa nova, and going from there into reggae or funk, it's a real challenge to make it come together seamlessly. If you don't do it right, it can really sound jumbled."

But when you do it right, the sound is an overwhelming wave of rhythm, topped with lyrics in Portuguese, Spanish, and English. It's a sound that gets people dancing at clubs including Antone's, the Flamingo Cantina, the Vibe and the Mercury. But like many other world musicians, another of Marrero's challenges is also finding suitable venues.

"It's increasingly difficult to find places to play," he said. "A lot of places are shutting down, and plus the economy's not ideal right now."

One of their regular venues, the Empanada Parlor, is no longer in existence. But echoing other world musicians, Marrero thinks the groups currently introducing Austin to world music will help make things easier in the future.

"I don't know if you'd call it a full-blown (world music) scene," he said. "It's a handful of groups doing something other than the traditional rock, pop, blues and country you'd expect from Austin, Texas. It's not fully developed, but it's something that's growing, so hopefully it'll blow up."

And in the meantime, Ghandaia will spread their message of unity, tolerance, and equality-and multicultural booty-shaking-to anyone who will listen. It's just another custom blend to come out of that great, grinding Cuisinart we call Texas music.

Rachel Proctor dreams in 9/8 time. You may e-mail Rachel at rproctor@goodlifemag.com.

World Music in Austin

Sick of the two-step? Bored with the blues? Ready to throttle the next singer-songwriter who thinks you care about his innermost feelings? Fear not: Austin has plenty of places to get in touch with your polyrhythmic side.

Venues that frequently feature world music

Bertram Hall above The Clay Pit Restaurant, 1601 Guadalupe St., http://home.austin.rr.com/claypitshows, Mailing list: manu@claypit.com

The Cactus Café, In the Texas Union, 24th and Guadalupe, www.utexas.edu/student/txunion/ae/cactus, Mailing list: cactus@mail.utexas.edu

Featured groups

The 1001 Nights Orchestra
Frequents the Cactus Café and Bertram Hall.
Next show: An evening of love songs from the Middle East, Southwest Asia and around the world: including a special set of Afghani folk songs performed on the rabab.
Cactus Café, July 24, 8:30pm
www.kamooli.com
Mailing list: 1001nights@kamooli.com

Del Castillo
www.delcastillomusic.com
Mailing list: signup@delcastillomusic.com

Easy Motion Tourist
Frequents the Flamingo Cantina (505 E. Sixth Street) and World Beat Café (600 W. MLK Blvd.)
Mailing list: galaxaphone@yahoo.com

Ghandaia
Frequents the Vibe (508 E. Sixth Street), Antone's (213 W. Fifth Street), and the Flamingo Cantina (505 E. Sixth Street).
www.ghandaia.com
Mailing list: info@ghandaia.net

Oliver Rajamani
Frequents the Cactus Café, Bertram Hall, and Ruta Maya (3601 S. Congress Ave.).
www.oliverrajamani.com
Shows: debb@art-n-music.com; 512-474-2235

And don't miss

Atash-A five-person Middle Eastern ensemble whose fierce vocals and rhythms demand attention. Arrive early to their regular Friday gig at the Red Fez (209 W. Fifth St.) to stake out sufficient hip-shaking room. www.atash.net.

Grupo Fantasma-High-energy Latin cumbia and funk that will knock your socks off your feet, out into the parking lot, and into the Southern hemisphere. www.grupofantasma.com.

Sambaxé-Stripped-down, percussive northern Brazilian music for dancing, dancing, and more dancing. 512-328-1731.

Teye and Viva El Flamenco-A classically trained flamenco guitarist, wailing vocals, driving percussion and an ensemble of dancers collaborating to produce a foot-stomping, skirt-swishing good time. www.teye.com.

La Tribu-From merengue to pachanga, La Tribu delivers big-band Latin dance music sized triple-extra large. www.tribumusic.com.

-Rachel Proctor