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Category: instrumental music

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#22 in series: Mount Chappell Island “1” + musical bonus)

Published June 6, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#22 in series: Mount Chappell Island “1” + musical bonus)

 

 

I took this post’s photo at 9.49 am on 18 March 2025, as we were walking along part of the southern portion of the western shore of Flinders Island.

Flinders is much the largest in the Furneaux Group, which sits at the eastern edge of Bass Strait, off the northeast tip of Tasmania’s “mainland”.

The Furneaux Group has circa 100 members; whatever shorelines you walk on Flinders Island, other islands are always visible.

The pictured “island in the sun” (whilst our vantage point was still cloud-shaded) is variously known as “Mount Chappell Island” or as “Hummocky”.

read moreFlinders Island, March ‘25 (#22 in series: Mount Chappell Island “1” + musical bonus)
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Word Power: “ Above all, the Liberals would do well to lose the sneer” + pertinent musical bonus.

Published May 8, 2025 by Pelidoug

Word Power: “ Above all, the Liberals would do well to lose the sneer” + pertinent musical bonus.

 

 

The headline above is the key sentence in an essay published on 04 May 2025.

That essay’s headline: Are the Liberals in danger of becoming the Kodak of Australian politics?

Yesterday’s Pelican Yoga post included its most telling paragraph.

It is a direct quotation from a speech delivered in 1946 by a young, multiply-wounded ex-RAAF pilot;  in 1949 he became a Liberal senator.

In 1968 he – John Gorton – became Prime Minister.

As the essay’s author observes:

His vision was generous, compassionate and cosmopolitan: of an Australia and a wider world “in which meanness and poverty, tyranny and hate, have no existence.”

read moreWord Power: “ Above all, the Liberals would do well to lose the sneer” + pertinent musical bonus.
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Deep South WA, Feb ‘25 (#42 in series: wave, with musical bonus)

Published April 26, 2025 by Pelidoug

Deep South WA, Feb ‘25 (#42 in series: wave, with musical bonus)

 

Western Australia’s south coast is mostly unspoilt, uncrowded, wonderfully wild.

However, in February 2025 sunshine, strong winds and big waves were generally “AWOL”, and the usually-brilliant, clear light was mostly flat, hazy and/or smoke-tainted.

This trip yielded an unprecedentedly low number of worthwhile opportunities for landscape/seascape photography!

Nonetheless, even on a “flat, grey day”…

read moreDeep South WA, Feb ‘25 (#42 in series: wave, with musical bonus)
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Deep South WA, Feb ‘25 (#22 in series: Porongurup “5”, with musical bonus)

Published April 3, 2025 by Pelidoug

Deep South WA, Feb ‘25 (#22 in series: Porongurup “5”, with musical bonus)

 

 

This post’s forest floor “natural abstract” was photographed a couple of minutes later than was the “5” Porongurup image.

Their locations were only a few footsteps distant from each other.

One of the world’s greater guitarists has (unwitttingly) provided a sublime musical accompaniment..

read moreDeep South WA, Feb ‘25 (#22 in series: Porongurup “5”, with musical bonus)
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Deep South WA, Feb ‘25 (#9 in series: fishing & fatherhood, with musical bonus)

Published March 17, 2025 by Pelidoug

Deep South WA, Feb ‘25 (#9 in series: fishing & fatherhood, with musical bonus)

 

“Stay here with Mom. Dad’s going fishing.”

In the pictured instance no such words had been spoken, nor contemplated.

It was a quiet delight to observe a father who so well understood that “joyful fishing is not just about catching fish”.

read moreDeep South WA, Feb ‘25 (#9 in series: fishing & fatherhood, with musical bonus)
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The greatest percussionist, period? Vale Zakir Hussain (1951-2024)

Published December 18, 2024 by Pelidoug

The greatest percussionist, period? Vale Zakir Hussain (1951-2024)

 

I do not believe in the notion that any single player/composer/writer/whatever kind of artist is – or ever was the best.

That said, Zakir Hussain was undoubtedly the most influential, most eclectically-inclined, and most ubiquitous hand-drummer/percussionist in human history.

(Jim McGuire took the photo of him)

Zakir Hussain died on Monday, in his adoptive home city of San Francisco.

He was born 73 years earlier,  in what was then Bombay, now Mumbai.

read moreThe greatest percussionist, period? Vale Zakir Hussain (1951-2024)
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“Jewel in the crown of Kashmir” (final chapter, with musical bonus)

Published October 23, 2024 by Pelidoug

“Jewel in the crown of Kashmir” (final chapter, with musical bonus)

 

 

 

I took the photo at 8.54 pm on 04 May 2024.

At that time my vantage point – an entertainment barge – was loud and lively, as the preceding several posts have illustrated.

However, if one looked out across the waters of Dal Lake – and up to the ridge overlooking its southern shore – the scene appeared utterly serene, unruffled, “silent”.

read more“Jewel in the crown of Kashmir” (final chapter, with musical bonus)
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Vale Toumani Diabate

Published July 25, 2024 by Pelidoug

On 19 July the world lost one of its most eloquent instrumentalists..

Malian kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate was 58; he died after a short illness.

He was not the only great kora player, but he was, unquestionably, the kora’s most prominent and most influential exponent; Toumani Diabate turned it into a “concert” instrument.

At age 22 he recorded Kaira – the world’s first absolutely solo kora album.

(oft-misdescribed as an African “harp”, the kora is in fact a harp-lute)

read moreVale Toumani Diabate
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