[Harp-L] Greetings from Manila



I've just finished a great 10 days in India as part of my 2.5 month long
Asian/Australia/NZ tour. Am now in the Philippines for a few days before
visits to Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Oz, NZ and Indonesia.

Just caught up with a few posts on Harp-L and wanted to add my condolences
to Michael Polesky's family on his sad passing. I only met Mike a couple
of times but we had a healthy email friendship due to his buying a couple
of my custom chroms (a low B CX12 with Suzuki reedplates was one, I
think!). He was, as everyone has said, a really sweet and gentle man and
we'll miss him.

On a happier note, I love William Galison's paean to the harmonica - great
song, Will!

Regarding muting the harmonica, put a sock in it! Literally! - I've found
that holding a sock or similar material behind the harp mutes it quite
effectively, enough to avoid annoying neighbours. Harps with closed covers
mute more easily than ones with side vents.

I'm loving Asia! It's only the start of the tour, but the countries are so
different and it's refreshing to traverse between these ancient but
vibrant cultures with such a diversity of languages, religions, foods etc.
The people are very warm and keen to hear new sounds, and I'm loving
smapling their culture, especially the amazing cuisine. After 10 days of
delicious spicy Indian food it is surprising to find that Filipino cuisine
is quite mild, but very interesting (I had some tasty snails and offal
soup last night :-)

I'm enjoying playing solo plus with local musicians, and getting an
enthusiastic reception for the wide mix of material I play. My use of
effects, loops and beatboxing are going down well with the younger
listeners especially. They really dig my English rap song "The Old Nep
Tune" - weird to be singing about a Whitstable pub in Bangalore, but it
works!

Heading for Cebu today, will log in occasionally along the way. Greetings
to all,

Brendan




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