Cretan Tradition

Ross Daly may seem to be an unlikely name for a recognised master of Cretan national music but this Irish born musician has lived on the island for more than twenty years after exhaustive travels and research throughout the Near East and Central Asia. This disk, Selected Works, is a kind of best of compilation. Daly has been championed in the UK by the Radio 3 programme Late Junction but his disks aren't that easy to track down. There are six extended instrumental pieces, mainly featuring traditional Cretan and Greek instruments but with occasional touches of further afield in the percussion and a sitar used on one track. Daly himself is adept on many stringed instruments, particularly the Cretan lyra. Amongst fairly common instruments like the oud and the saz and conventional instruments like the violin, double bass and clarinet, we also get cura, rababa, sarangi, bendir, laouto and naqarat. These require some research on the net to find out exactly what they are but the sound world isn't as alien as it may sound with improvised riffing on a generally soulful ( will avoid that word "bluesy" ) feel. Most of the pieces are Daly originals but strictly in the Cretan tradition. A fine reminder that there is more to the music of Greece than Zorba and also that, despite the cultural legacy it gave the west, the country has as much in common with the east.