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Earth Island Orchestra
(PLANET
ROCKERS)
Combining artists from Africa, India, Lebanon, Puerto Rico, Tunisia and the
United States, Detroit's EARTH ISLAND ORCHESTRA is truly an international musical endeavor. Representing world beat
music at its best, the musician weave a rich tapestry of sounds from many cultures, combining musical traditions with a rare
abandon, and with an innovative originality that draws upon the deep roots of tradition, honoring those traditions while pushing
them towards a distant horizon of some future poly-cultural world tribalism. The result is something uniquely new in music:
PLANET ROCK.
Musicians have borrowed freely from one another for almost as long as people have been playing music, with artists from
nearly every country drawing upon sounds and beats from around the world. EARTH ISLAND ORCHESTRA places itself squarely
in that tradition, combining sitar, nay and mijwiz with saxophones, electric guitars and various keyboards; mixing tablah,
jimbe and derbekkeh with congas, timbales and set drums to establish a unique kaleidoscope of world sounds. In achieving this
sometimes startling, always interesting "world mix", the group manages at the same time to produce a very
special expression of the unique cultural stew that is "American" culture—made up, as it is and has been for
nearly five hundred years, of the cultural gifts of both Native Americans and the many immigrants to America, resulting in
a cultural life of incredible richness and diversity. EARTH ISLAND ORCHESTRA seeks to celebrate that diversity in
music, and to celebrate the idea, through music, that not only can people from different backgrounds and origins live and
work together in harmony and brotherhood—or sisterhood—indeed our lives are all the richer for it when it happens. Expressing a deep respect and appreciation for both the diversity of humanity and the
underlying unity of what we all share, the EARTH ISLAND ORCHESTRA lets its polyphonic, polyrhythmic harmonies stand
as a metaphor for an ideal future condition of the human race, a future condition of peace, freedom, harmony and justice that
we are all under obligation to work to bring about on this planet, the only planet that most of us have ever known: the Earth,
an Island in space, that we share, with each other and with countless other species, and upon which we must learn to live
together, in peace.
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