ReOrientate

Like telepathy, the magic of music... a United Nations force of traditional instruments like the guzheng, bamboo flute, hand drums, erhu, plus electronic loop workstations... surprisingly unexpected percussion rhythms, much dance of the imagination, thick with the Latin flavor of flamenco guitar... makes you plant yourself in the festival party on the dance floor with the chorus cheering “dance!”... in the space of 6 minutes 35 seconds ReOrientate takes the crowd along the treasure trip from Brazilian samba carnival to Indian Bollywood.

– Respect Music Magazine [translated from the Chinese] - Respect Music Magazine

[The Sindhian, on Indian newstands nationwide]

Seema Ramchandani in conversation with Heer P Kothari, explaining the potential of music without boundaries

PDF: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20751006/ReOrientate_The_Sindhian.pdf - The Sindhian [on Indian newstands nationwide]

[The Sindhian, on Indian newstands nationwide]

Seema Ramchandani in conversation with Heer P Kothari, explaining the potential of music without boundaries

PDF: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20751006/ReOrientate_The_Sindhian.pdf - The Sindhian [on Indian newstands nationwide]

[Culture Hong Kong, issue 73]

FLAMENCO AND EASTERN MUSIC might seem like an odd pairing. But a diverse cross-cultural group of musicians came together to form the musical collective ReOrientate during the past year, and have been performing their unique, infectious brand of world music to a growing number of Hong Kong music fans. As they prepare for their upcoming schedule, Culture speaks with ReOrientate’s De Kai, about how it all got started and why it works so surprisingly well.

CULTURE: How did the idea of fusing flamenco with Eastern music come about?

It may sound surprising but we are actually bringing flamenco back to its oldest roots in east Asia. Flamenco’s home in Spain lies in the far west of Eurasia, where the gypsies finally settled after crossing the Strait of Gibraltar from Africa.

All of our tracks grow from some flamenco seed. But for us, music is conversation, and we want to encourage conversation between many cultures. So we stretch the boundaries to bring in other musical traditions. For example, flamenco conventions are full of call-response dialogues, and we extend this by doing a lot of call-response play between different musical traditions. In Listen (To Each Other) the vocals form a multilingual English, Chinese, and Hindi conversation. Flamenco, Chinese, Indian, Latin, African, Arabic, Turkish, blues, soul, funk, electronica... we don’t play by the rules of only one tradition.

CULTURE: Blues, soul — where does that fit in?

It’s a natural fit. In a lot of the musical traditions we draw from, the songs express longing, love, laments... Just as flamenco was an outlet for the oppressed underclass of Spanish gypsies, blues was an outlet for the oppressed underclass of African Americans. Sufi love poems like those in Wiggle and A Mi Pascale express longing with verses (roughly translated) like Come my healer, forsaken, I am sad / Your love has made me dance like mad—which echo exactly the sentiments of both the flamenco soléa and the blues that track is built on. There’s a universality to cathartic song traditions like these. They heal the spirit; they transform existential pain into joy, strength, and dance.

Both flamenco and blues are full of highly syncopated rhythms and non-Western European scales and harmonies. People don’t usually notice that the Chinese pentatonic scale is actually a subset of the blues scale. Incorporating a blues base alongside flamenco builds a bridge for many people to hear that Eastern scales like Phrygian and Chinese scales can be just as universally accessible as blues scales have become.

CULTURE: How do people react to your unusual sound?

One happy thing we’ve discovered is that everyone, whatever their background, seems to find some familiar anchor point in our songs, which creates a bridge for them to hear the other elements. So our songs are often heard quite differently by different individuals.

CULTURE: How did ReOrientate happen?

We love that ReOrientate could only have happened in Hong Kong. The make-up of the group reflects the diversity that is Hong Kong. Award-winning erhu player Rupert and zheng player King Chi both hail from the HK Academy of Performing Arts. Our French-Italian flamenco dancer Ingrid teaches at HKAPA as well. Vocalist and duff player Seema—who burst on the Indipop scene when she won India's first-ever reality TV talent hunt Popstars on Channel V to form the band Viva!—was born and raised in Nigeria. Flamenco guitarist Serge is French-Greek. Flamenco percussionist, keyboardist and electronic music composer
De Kai—myself—was born and raised in the US. But music is a natural language that lets us celebrate what is universal among all of us.


Keep up with ReOrientate at http://www.reorientate.info and http://www.facebook.com/reorientate. - Culture Hong Kong magazine

The 9-piece collective Reorientate drew the crowd into a party frenzy, with “The Power of One” using a variety of instruments including flamenco drums, guzheng, electronic beats, creating a carnival atmosphere immediately bringing to mind samba dancers! “The Cuckoo Says” again transformed the latin air, the flamenco guitar and keys intertwined with Indian vocals hinting at psychedelic mysteries. MIDI, snakes, flamenco dance all in the mix.

Reviewers Pick:

The Bollands – The Song That Keeps Her Up
ReOrientate – The Cuckoo Says
Operator – Ear Poison

– Bitetone, Hong Kong online music magazine [translated from the Chinese] - Bitetone [HK's online music magazine]

The 9-piece collective Reorientate drew the crowd into a party frenzy, with “The Power of One” using a variety of instruments including flamenco drums, guzheng, electronic beats, creating a carnival atmosphere immediately bringing to mind samba dancers! “The Cuckoo Says” again transformed the latin air, the flamenco guitar and keys intertwined with Indian vocals hinting at psychedelic mysteries. MIDI, snakes, flamenco dance all in the mix.

Reviewers Pick:

The Bollands – The Song That Keeps Her Up
ReOrientate – The Cuckoo Says
Operator – Ear Poison

– Bitetone, Hong Kong online music magazine [translated from the Chinese] - Bitetone [HK's online music magazine]

Brilliantly recorded

– Phil Whelan, Morning Brew - Morning Brew, Phil Whelan

A truly mighty voice with both soul and an edge... great drums and rhythms... surprising and arresting flamenco-influenced dancing... an ambitious project altogether... always entertaining

– The Underground HK - The Underground HK

A truly mighty voice with both soul and an edge... great drums and rhythms... surprising and arresting flamenco-influenced dancing... an ambitious project altogether... always entertaining

– The Underground HK - The Underground HK

Stands out musically compared to pretty much all the other bands which have played the Underground, for the group would not be out of place playing in the auditorium of the City Hall during the Hong Kong Arts Festival. The music/set could only be described as “world fusion”... played out on instruments ranging from ancient China to modern Cupertino, with a flamenco dancer to boot! The set started with a short seductive Spanish number, which left the audience, who probably was not expecting anything like it, completely gobsmacked — you could see the look of intense focus on their faces, and continued with a set which completely mesmerised the entire Hard Rock from start to finish... the mixture is a key to making ReOrientate such a delightful act, and clearly a lot of thought has gone into achieving that sound... add a vocalist with a phenomenal voice, accompanied by the dancing and clapping of a flamenco dancer, gave rise to a performance that led the audience by the nose from start to finish.

– The Underground HK - The Underground HK

Stands out musically compared to pretty much all the other bands which have played the Underground, for the group would not be out of place playing in the auditorium of the City Hall during the Hong Kong Arts Festival. The music/set could only be described as “world fusion”... played out on instruments ranging from ancient China to modern Cupertino, with a flamenco dancer to boot! The set started with a short seductive Spanish number, which left the audience, who probably was not expecting anything like it, completely gobsmacked — you could see the look of intense focus on their faces, and continued with a set which completely mesmerised the entire Hard Rock from start to finish... the mixture is a key to making ReOrientate such a delightful act, and clearly a lot of thought has gone into achieving that sound... add a vocalist with a phenomenal voice, accompanied by the dancing and clapping of a flamenco dancer, gave rise to a performance that led the audience by the nose from start to finish.

– The Underground HK - The Underground HK