Ceyleib People
Tanyet

LA RECENSIONE

I present to your attention another of the forgotten gems, which has not yet been reviewed, perhaps it did not deserve it? Or maybe it is not for everyone?

This time we go to America and I present to you "Tanyet" by the Ceyleib People.

Cover with a stunning psych-decoration! For a work born in 1967 and printed in 1968 where we find a young Ry Cooder (Ry Cooter) on guitar with his already unmistakable style, accompanying a group of almost unknown musicians. The group was formed for the occasion in Los Angeles for this unique whimsical and marginal experience. In this record it is immediately apparent that the spiritual fathers are two sacred icons of 20th-century music: the lamented Ravi Shankar (he had opened a school of Indian music in 1967 in Los Angeles) and Captain Beefheart (timeless frek genius, who influenced the music to come perhaps more than Zappa) for a challenging result of very interesting psych-raga-hippie. I don’t think you can get bored with an album of only 21 minutes in total of psych-underground experimentation, composed of moments of Indian music with sitar and bucolic flute alternated with a gritty and ramshackle base of undistorted guitars on a carpet of classical violins on the mellotron. Music of contrasts and stylistic overlaps with a single vocal appearance of a child at the end of the first side, which concludes with a classical quotation accompanied by totemic drums. The second side resumes with sitar and continues with the usual Beefheartian cadenced rhythm with various instruments entering and exiting and a finale of trumpets. Colorful music, creative, free-form, form directed on rails of understanding, almost improvised. A manifesto of those years open to new experiences.

My proposal is born not so much from the artistic-musical value of the work itself, but from the historical document it represents, just to make it clear once again what the air was like in those days in one of the most important places in the world for music and hippie culture.