Time: 7 p.m.
Tickets:Tickets $35 Advance, $37.50 Online & $40 Door
Available at Blueprint Lethbridge, CASA & www.geomaticattic.ca
http://harrymanx.com
“Mysticssippi” blues man Harry Manx has been called an
“essential link” between the music of East and West, creating musical
short stories that wed the tradition of the Blues with the depth of
classical Indian ragas.
Biography
Harry
forged this distinctive style by studying at the feet of the masters,
first as a sound man in the blues clubs of Toronto during his formative
years and then under a rigorous five-year tutelage with Vishwa Mohan
Bhatt in India. Bhatt is the inventor of the 20-stringed Mohan Veena,
which has become Harry’s signature instrument.
Even though he had played slide guitar for many years before arriv
ing
in India, he started back at the beginning under Bhatt’s tutelage, even
re-learning how to hold the bar. From there, Manx learned Eastern
scales and eventually ragas, deceptively complex and regimented musical
patterns that form the basis of Indian composition.
He spent three
to four hours each morning practicing in Bhatt’s home before returning
that evening for a jam session with the tutor, his sons and various
other fellow musicians. “Sometimes I’d throw in some blues licks in the
middle,” he says, “and everyone would fall over laughing and enjoying
themselves. And I thought if I can get Indian people to enjoy Western
music like that, then maybe I could get Westerners to enjoy Indian
music, too.” Harry decided to explore this thread of connection between
the two musical traditions.
His signature style follows in the
footsteps of such pioneering work as that of Joe Harriott and John Mayer
and their Indo-Jazz Fusions in the 60s, John McLaughlin’s work with
Shakti in the 70s, and Ashwan Batish’s innovative Sitar Power debut in
1987. Manx’s Indo-blues hybrid seems destined to be the most universally
appealing yet.
Born on the Isle of Man, Manx immigrated to Ontario
with his parents when he was six years old. He started doing sound at
age 15 and gradually worked his way up to becoming a regular sound man
at the well-known El Mocambo club in Toronto, where he worked with a
slew of blues legends. While Manx doesn’t consider himself to be a blues
artist per se, he does admit that blues is at the heart of much of his
work. “I’ve always had one foot in the blues from those days … what I
got from those artists is a groove that’s fairly similar to theirs.
That’s what I’m particularly interested in … the groove, and that’s the
way I play blues today”