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Tarab - Travels with my guitar

Carl's book 'Tarab - Travels with my guitar' is available in all good bookshops in Australia and New Zealand from July 1 2008 or on line through Transit Lounge Publishing or Boomerang Books


Read Carl's Roadstories

 

Carl Cleves

Carl Cleves, Flemish songwriter and guitarist with The Hottentots, ethnomusicologist and traveller, will release 2 new solo albums and a book of road stories in 2008.

'ALL ALONE' is Carl's first solo album of story songs since his 1980s Brazilian releases. The album is populated by refugees, addicts, a child beggar, a drunk driver, the smell of money, the tears of broken hearts, the rage of obsession and the joys of solitude & travel. His song, "The Rose of Kordofan" from 'ALL ALONE' was chosen from amongst thousands of entries to win the national Australian Songwriters Award for BEST LYRICS.

'TARAB - Travels with my guitar' is Carl's first book of road stories and will be published by Transit Lounge and will be in all good Australian bookshops from July 1 2008. A new CD of songs related to the stories in the book will be released jointly.

From the Sudan to Northern New South Wales, Tarab is an epic, mesmerizing tale of high adventure and the search for meaning. Carl Cleves escapes national service in Belgium to live in South Africa at the height of the Apartheid era. So begins the adventures and quests, wanderings and narrow escapes, mishaps and illuminations of a guitar-toting troubadour in his roles as young beat poet, law student, single father, ethnomusicologist, relief worker in India and recording star in Brazil. Cleves's page turning memoir is no simple music biography, but rather the story of an artist's quest for Tarab: a place where music and poetry bestow true bliss upon the lucky one.

Carl's nomadic past results in highly original songs which have won many awards in world & roots categories - most recently, MUSICOZ & Australian Songwriters Association - BEST FOLK SONG AWARDS.

Carl's unmistakable guitar style was learnt from Brazilian players, bluesmen, Bert Jansch & Caetano Veloso, from the American banjo and the arabic oud. Traces of Brazil, Africa, folk and blues are the spice in the stew of Carl's songs which range from polyrhythmic exuberance to intimate subtlety, the personal to the political. Poetry and emotion.


contact: Carl Cleves, PO BOX 1492 Byron Bay, NSW, Australia
+ 61 2 66 808878
carl@carlcleves.com

myspace: www.myspace.com/carlcleves

youtube: www.youtube.com/CARLCLEVES

 


New Releases

All Alone

buy CD here: www.indie-cds.com
or now internationally available and downloadable through CD Baby

listen


Tarab Travels with my guitar

buy CD here: www.indie-cds.com
or now internationally available and downloadable through CD Baby

listen


For album track lists and discography
click here