I love this brand of drumming, broadly defined as frame-drum, and generally of the Arabic world. I'm no musicologist conversant in the analysis of complex rhythm-izing, so I'll just assure you that you will love it as I do, if you have any sensitive foot-tapping in your body somewhere.

This is one of those great sets of compositions that ferment in your ears, if you will, acculturating the soul to exotic textures and languages of beat and melody. It is one of the few CD's I have that I feel so at home with, and yet intrigued by, (relaxing yet stimulating, comforting yet provocative) that I can play it night after night as I go to sleep and traverse the drumming dreamworld.

Also check out the video(s?) Velez has done -- even more fun to WATCH.

This hand drum based music pulses and percolates like the best Sumerian jazz ensemble you never heard, with spicy violin and whistle adding to the mix and a sputtering, then loping, trombone coming into a rhythm that's sometimes almost reminiscent of Captain Beefheart's happy turns, that is if the Captain was an acoustic artist. Now I know that was quite the run-on sentence, but maybe that's exactly the point-- this music flows like ancient rhythmic seduction... par excellence.