Image by Dariusz Sankowski from Pixabay
One of the things most people love to do in the summer is travel ... Covid-19 put a cramp in a lot of our styles, but best believe I find a way through music to get on the road! Some of these are places I will never go, but we will still get there together!
A piano solo from Duke Ellington like no other ... imagine a long, peaceful drive through the mountains, with the air a little chill still, and clouds forming just a little, but then turning the corner and seeing a sun-drenched green valley, and that long, ever-warming descent ... from the time you glimpse it to when you are finally in it, that is Duke Ellington's "Warm Valley," presented here with just him playing the piano ... so beautiful...
As long as we are traveling with the Duke, we might as well join the caravan ... I love here that he has gone into an "Eastern" mode, C Phrygian Dominant, to get us that sense that we have gone to a different locale ... not just a summer trip, but a journey of purpose through lands in which summer reigns everlastingly, through the desert, to oases, to great cities of Africa and the Middle East, together ...
... and speaking of purposeful journeys, one that brings together people of the world is the Hajj, here memorialized in music by Abdullah Ibrahim ... all the different people from all the different places, held together by the one theme of devotion that is calling them onward in this pilgrimage ... you will hear them all!
Just so we know on the legal part .... the linked videos are not owned by me, I am sharing just the link to the copyright owner's video. No copyright infringement is intended.
Used under fair-use section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976.