TAG is Tradition at the Forefront
To drive the electronics from traditional instruments. To mark of our prints, the sounds passed to the filter of the electro. Reversing the pole of notions… Bringing our roots to the top… To be proud of our ancestors and open to others.
Allaudin Khan, 1972
You have to remember that on Hendrix’s first album, his record company wrote on the cover “we are not responsible for the sound of this album”, because it was so new, this way of distorting things on purpose. We always tried to avoid that.
Mad Sheer Khan, 2007, Extract from an interview with the newspaper Ethno Tempo
At that time, we were looking for the purity of the sound. And precisely, when you listen to natural sounds, water flowing from a waterfall, waves or lightning, there is phasing, natural distortions, there are feet hitting the rocks. I’m very aware of all these sounds that have been translated by amps, which to me are really close to nature. When you take a tube and put water inside, you listen and you hear the most beautiful phasing that we did in the 1970s. I find that there is a natural and urban universe in Hendrix, a pacifist and anti-racist dimension that is very important because, as a black musician, he made the right choice to play with two white musicians, at a time when the problem of racism was very present in the United States with Malcolm X, with the Reverend Martin Luther King. And so for me, in my encounter with HENDRIX, it was symbolic. And then when I was young, my mother listened to Oum KALTHOUM very often and Farid EL ATRACHE on the radios that we picked up from Cairo, and surprisingly sometimes the STONES and the BEATLES came to mix with the airwaves and we had a kind of natural mix which arrived and I found that fabulous to hear guitar chords and rhythms of Ringo STAR in the middle of the songs of Oum KALTHOUM. So, for me, this mixture is also a little bit my childhood, that is to say the fact of associating traditional instruments with an urban culture, which is that of the rock; it is a thing once again which is very natural. And I want to express it while respecting the place where I come from, like the shape of my instrument and the way of playing it which remains very traditional, very classical; but from the sensor, the resonance that I give it is very urban. So, in fact, it’s a question of respecting one’s roots and remaining oneself, and opening oneself to other cultures by immersing oneself in them. Those dimensions are very important to me.
LITTLE LEXICON
Tag ( tàg ) n.m. (Tradition Avant Garde). Originating from the underground and founded by Mad Sheer Khan, tag is a music that transposes traditional instruments by shifting them into another culture. It translates the idea of a successful immigration, integrating its environment while respecting its original form. Thus, reversing the pole of the notions and contrary to the sampling, the machines and their electronic universe are driven by acoustic instruments. The TAG movement is the expression of an uninhibited immigration that uses the musical instruments from their countries of origin to associate the tools offered by the latest technological discoveries. An acoustic tradition that uses the electro-culture to express its urban environment from the window of its origins.
MY INSTRUMENTS
Creations and contemporary prototypes instruments
Synthesized Guitar quarter tone (1980) - On a base of GR 500 Roland (first synthesized guitar - 1980) the neck was remade in copper by Jaccobacci (rip) in 1980, the fingerboard was fretted to the quarter tone by his care and the body was cut in drop of water by preserving the electronic Japanese of Roland (6 strings).
Electric Saz (1986 - stolen in 1992) Made of balsa wood, neck and half flat body the saz is equipped with two hand wound pickups. The structure of the neck remains classical (3 double strings).
Ud Electric (1988 - stolen in 1992) On the basis of a Gibson, a fingerboard without a bar has been installed and the body cut into a drop. The instrument is equipped with American electronics. Thanks to the talent of DNG, the top was covered with a patchwork of Indian silk and varnished (6 double strings), thanks to Greg and Do (rip)
Dobro-Sitar(1996) - Commissioned by Mad Sheer Khan and sumptuously realized by Philippe Dubreuille. The principle of the instrument is the combination of a dobro resonator and a sitar bridge allowing the indi-buzz vibration. 7 symphatic strings enhance the resonance of the harmonics. (7 strings).
Sitar guitar (1997 - stolen in 1998, found in 2011) Created by Philippe Dubreuille for Mad Sheer Khan, this instrument is equipped with 24 sympathetic strings that cover the back of the guitar. The neck has 6 strings + 3 bass strings stretched in the void above the neck.
Traditional
Dilruba (late 19th century) - This North Indian violin is a combination of sarangi and sitar created at the end of the 19th century at the request of an Indian princess who wanted to play the sarangi without damaging her fingers (sarangi players have the skin at the edge of their fingernails or the fingernails, depending on the technique, torn by playing their instrument). Dilruba means the sound of the heart (24 strings)
Esraj - Similar to Dilruba but with a different body and 4 less sympathetic strings (20 strings)
Tar - Persian lute with a body made of mulberry wood and a neck made of walnut and bone. It is an instrument whose body in the shape of eight is a symbol of infinity. The bridge is placed on a very thin skin. The mezrab (pick) is made of thick copper and produces a fine and crystalline sound on the 3 double strings. In Persian "tar" means "string". The guitar (6 strings, from the Persian chichtar which gave chitaria and then guitar) and the sitar (3 strings in Persian) have the same root (a Persian instrument is called the sêtar, from sê = three and tar=string "three strings")
Santur - The santur can rightly be considered as the ancestor of the piano. Each note has four strings arranged on a trapezoidal soundboard. A santur has 24 notes in three octaves. It is played with the help of two sticks which have the same function as the hammers of the piano. The santur is a Persian instrument that can be found in China and very recently in India. Ancient frescoes and Persian miniatures show ancient traces of the santur. The cymbalum is of the same family.
Tampura - The tampura is an instrument of accompaniment of Indian classical music creating a continuous drone on which the song where the instruments play ragas.
Percussions
Dum-dum - West African (Mali and Senegal) bass drum Hollow wooden column on which goat skins are stretched at both ends The sound is low, deep and dull.
Tablas - Tablas are composed of two percussion instruments with a black pad glued to the skin. They are played flat, the tabla, made of wood and higher pitched, is played with the right hand. The baya, made of metal, lower and rounder, is played with the left hand. It is an instrument originating from Afghanistan, created by Amir Koushro (13th century)