Hani Naser

"EL RAYO NEXT," by Paul Weideman
Published: April 3, 2009

To multi-instrumentalist David Lindley, Hani Naser's ability to play reggae on Arabic drums explains the relationship the two musicians have shared for almost 20 years. "It's pretty much one of the things I've
been doing for a long time, taking more than one musical culture and putting them together, and he can do that really well," Lindley said.

Lindley, Naser, and John Densmore share the stage [with the Hani Naser Band] at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on Saturday, April 4. "I think the first half will [feature] Hani and I," said Densmore, best known as the drummer in the 1960s rock band The Doors. "The second half will be David and maybe also David and Hani or David and both of us. The sky's the limit."

Lindley began his career in the early 1970s playing acoustic and
electric guitar, slide guitar, fiddle, and mandolin on sideman duties with such musicians as Graham Nash, Linda Ronstadt, Maria Muldaur, and John Sebastian, and he had a 10-year stint with Jackson Browne
beginning in 1971.

A native of Southern California, Lindley had his own band, El Rayo X, during the 1980s. He met Naser in 1990, and the pair toured the world
together for six years. Lindley has collaborated with experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser on several albums, including a series of
recordings with musicians in Madagascar.

In a phone interview with Pasatiempo, Lindley talked about the similarities between the music of Japan and Hawaii and about Romanian Gypsy music. He opined that much of what we now call "world music" (with
exceptions like Irish music and the Indian ragas of Ravi Shankar) was virtually unknown until the last two decades.

"There was some stuff around, but it was really obscure and hard to find," he said. "You had the John Edwards Foundation at UCLA and the ethnic record stores in Berkeley. I still have [lots of] vinyl,
including records from pre-Ayatollah Iran with amazing musicians and labels you can't read. Now it's all accessible on the Internet, with oud
forums where you can hear samples and find out what kind of picks and microphones they're using..."

For the Santa Fe gig, Lindley said he will probably have several Hawaiian guitars, at least two electric ouds with different strings and tunings, and perhaps a couple of stringed instruments from the Near East and Eastern Europe: the saz and tamboura...

An oud player and percussionist, Naser was born in Jordan and came to New York as a tot. One of his only memories of Jordan is of his
grandfather reciting poetry as he rhythmically ground coffee beans.

Suddenly, it seems to him now, Naser was growing up in New York City in the '50s, hearing Cuban music and jazz and Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.
Small wonder he would mix genres in his own music, playing in a rock band called Wild as the Wind.

"I'd go home, my parents would be speaking Arabic and my mom would have classical Arabic on, and before I realized it, the rhythms, modes, scales would be just coming out of me when I was
playing in my band."

After he moved to California at 17, Naser went on to make music with Bonnie Raitt, Jim Keltner, Los Lobos, Lou Reed, and Nubian oud virtuoso Hamza el Din, among others. He was featured on "A Wish," El Din's final album.

Naser still likes mixing it up. "World music to me is what music is all about. We've heard the cliché 'no borders,' but it's so true. I never really differentiated between Middle Eastern music, jazz, flamenco, blues, and rock 'n' roll. I had my rock band in New York, but
it was a parallel universe, because I was playing percussion and oud. Then I'd be doing a solo oud concert and someone would ask, 'Didn't I
see you last month in Canada with the Violent Femmes?'(2009)"

Naser, who periodically conducts workshops on "The Healing Powers of Rhythm and Music," said he will play percussion and acoustic and
electric ouds at the Lensic and trade licks with Densmore.

"In the last few years, Hani and I have done several gigs together," Densmore said. "He will accompany me on all the various dumbeks and
percussion instruments he plays so masterfully, and I play a hand drum and do poetry. That's what I'll do at the Lensic, and I accompany him sometimes on a hand drum while he plays oud."

Densmore grew up in Southern California. In his teens, he was really into jazz drummer Elvin Jones. In the early '60s, he joined Rick and the Ravens, a band with keyboardist Ray Manzarek, Manzarek's brothers, and a Florida singer named Jim Morrison. Out of that came The Doors, which had a famous run from the mid-1960s until Morrison's death in 1971.

In the two decades after that, Densmore expanded his interest in jazz, world music, and reggae, and he got into acting and playwriting in Los Angeles. His 1990 autobiography, "Riders on the Storm: My Life With Jim
Morrison and The Doors," was well received. And he recently formed a band called Tribaljazz that gives him th - The Santa Fe New Mexican

"Absolutely stunning, Hani Naser's percussion work is a perfect compliment to David Lindley's multiple stringed instruments."
- Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times

"In a perfect world all concerts would be like David Lindley's and Hani Naser's... extraordinary!!!"
- Los Angeles Times - Los Angeles Times

"Master improvisationalists, Naser and Lindley never give the same show twice...but for 5 years they've sustained one of the finest ongoing jam sessions in the music business."
- Paul Harrar, The Union - The Union

Lindley also thinks he's done some of the best playing of his life with Naser, whose drumming follows Lindley's every nuance, while also prodding him into new musical flights. Those are moments of transcendence for Lindley. "The best times you play are when you don't even remember what you were doing. In a way you can't participate in it, you can't listen to it the way an audience listens to it. I can remember several times when we really got going, me and Hani, when we went into another place. We couldn't believe it, and also couldn't remember it.
That's the good stuff. That's what we try for."
- Jim Washburn, Los Angeles Times - Los Angeles Times

"His musical talent and eclecticism are unwavering."
- Jim Washburn - Jim Washburn

"He's really really good. One of the best there is on these instruments. This guy doesn't play one inflexible thing. He listens to what you're doing and embellishes on that and takes it to different places. We're always throwing things back and forth and seeing what happens. It's not only a little more live, it's a different way of playing. You have to think, see, play, improvise and arrange all at the instant, which is really fun and musically rewarding." - TBA