Lotus Music
Peter Dickson : Talking to God -Indian Latin Jazz- (IND/AUS,2000)**'
Indian born guitarist Peter Dickson had some history in other music genres, but at a certain stage, he became more interested in flamenco.
Overall his guitar play style is very much influenced by Django Rheinhardt, and brings mostly a lightweight blend of flamenco with Latin Jazz. Only two tracks show some use of Indian musicians. The first track, “Melancholia” (with Indian musicians on violin, tabla clay-pot, jews harp, flute and female vocals) does not take the step towards a real creative blend, but stays in the light and happy latin-jazz mode. I like best “Chicka’s Kiss” with acoustic guitars and tabla mostly, and with some bass, percussion and Indian flute. Here the guitar style is mixed more nicely. Peter improvises on the tabla rhythm a bit, following some chords which fit intuitively to some Indian principles, then adds parts of flamenco(-jazz) improvisations. This track for me shows the most creative ideas. In general Peter follows too much an obvious road of traditions, without adding much of his own vision. I also very much doubt his and a general accepted idea of a flamenco origin in India. Comparing both musical forms in public happened after flamenco and Indian music had similar attention. There’s much more evidence some origin lay in various Persian traditions, mixed with a couple of other influences (see my remarks on the flamenco-fusion page). The creative process in the obviously trained play of Peter technically is somewhere, but the vision still is too young to convince me of something more than just an “ok and nice”.
