Music Review: Bob Brozman Orchestra - Lumiere

A couple of years ago I received a CD in the mail with some of the finest blues guitar work I had ever heard. Slide work on National Resonator guitars that could make you weep and picking that was absolutely extraordinary were sufficient to make me think that Bob Brozman should be ranked as one of the world's top guitar players.

Latter that year I received a DVD from the same company (Ruf Records) of Bob in concert in a German nightclub. Nothing in that performance did anything to make me change my mind about his abilities except maybe to hold him in even higher esteem. The DVD also included an interview with Bob and I liked what he had to say about music and the state of the world.

By the time I watched the DVD, I had found out quite a bit more about Bob and the extent of his musical expertise. Not only was he an astounding blues guitar player, but he had also played music with musicians from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, with stops in the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Japan. I had barely heard of Reunion Island let alone known they had their own remarkable musical heritage, and yet there was Bob's smiling face looking back at me from the cover of Dig Dig.

This was the CD where he joined forces with Rene Lacaille from Reunion Island to play the music that is unique to this island in The Indian Ocean. Papua New Guinea, Hawaii, Okinawa, and everywhere else it seems there was music to be played, he had been, studied and learned how to incorporate it into his music.

Eventually there comes a point where you have to decide what you are going go do with all this accumulated knowledge that will do it proper honour. Of course he had already made albums with the people who taught him the various styles of music, but what about combining all the music and the instruments into one album of music? Would it even be possible?

Article Author: Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of the recently published What Will Happen In Eragon IV? and has had his work published in print and on line all over the world. The not so long-haired Canadian iconoclast writes reviews and opines on the world as he sees …

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