Good thing I was listening to NPR while a sponsor message came on, telling of a night of traditional Scottish folk music to be performed at the newest museum in the Phoenix area: The MIM. The band Old Blind Dogs were to take the stage on Friday night at the Musical Instrument Museum and so I finally headed over to the MIM’s website to look for tickets. WOW! Old Blind Dogs wasn’t the only act of interest to me but they were the first show I bought tickets for. Besides the occasional performer from India and the Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed performance a year ago, there has been little in the way of world or experimental music to be heard here in Arizona during the last three or four years. That is all about to change.

First off, Old Blind Dogs. They opened with Terror Time which may have been appropriate as we were their first audience on their U.S. tour. The drummer wasn’t on stage, he wasn’t even in America as he was tending to a medical emergency, but that didn’t distract from the performance. The truly great thing about this concert was that it took Caroline and me back to Europe where we would often stop to listen to buskers – ah, the good old days. The guys played just shy of two hours with a fifteen-minute intermission between the sets. The simplicity of the music and the expert musicianship made for a great night out, I would wish for more nights in the desert like this.

Luckily, I won’t have to wish too hard anymore. The Musical Instrument Museum on the corner of Tatum and Mayo Blvd just opened in late April, so I thought I had plenty of time before the museum got up to speed and started featuring artists or special exhibitions, but I was wrong. From over two dozen performances scheduled between now and the end of August, we chose six shows to attend; Tuvan throat singers Huun Huur Tu performing with electronic musician Carmen Rizzo, Japanese taiko drummers On Ensemble who are mixing traditional drumming with hip-hop rhythms, and a turntablist, we’ll stop in to see Etran Finatawa from Niger performing a kind of Nomad’s blues, kora musician Toumani Diabate performs in August, and the last show of the series for us will be oud master Rahim Alhaj. Click the links to watch a video of each act on YouTube.

There is a strict no photography and no cell phone or text messaging rule at the MIM but the house photographer Jimmy C. Carrauthers of Great Leap Productions was kind enough to send me the three photos above. I couldn’t choose one, so I posted them all. Thank you, Jimmy.