Bob Brozman's New Ruf Records CD

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Ruf Records announces a January 15, 2008 release date for world-class multi-instrumentalist Bob Brozman's latest CD, Post Industrial Blues. The new album features a passionate Brozman playing and singing at his improvisational best. He plays a variety of National guitars, as well as Hawaiian guitar and ukulele, banjo, dobro, and an assortment of stringed instruments from all over the world, ranging from the Okinawan sanshin and Greek baglama to the 22-string chaturangui and 14-string gandharvi from India

A master of many world music styles, Brozman brings a multitude of influences to Post Industrial Blues from India, Africa, the South Pacific, and the Caribbean, but anchors it all with the rootsy sound of blues and Americana. His choice of additional percussion - including an array of non-traditional instruments such as a knife blade, grass clippers, disassembled marimba pipes and a broken toy piano - give the music an almost otherworldly feel at times, but Brozman brings it all back home in his own inimitable style. The new album also reunites him with bassist Stan Poplin and drummer Jim Norris, both mainstays of his earliest albums from the 1980s.

Throughout Post Industrial Blues, Bob Brozman enhances the stunning instrumental performances with many original and contemporary lyrics, including songs about American geo-politics (”Follow the Money” and “Crooked Blues”), Hurricane Katrina (”Look at New Orleans”), modern travel (”Airport Blues”), immigration and war (”Three Families Blues”), and the world's orphans (”Lonely Children”). All demonstrate the universality of the blues as interpreted by Brozman. He also delivers his own unique take of The Doors classic, “People Are Strange,” creating a renewed spirit of the song that pays homage to its roots while redefining it through experimental instrumentation and intonation.

Bob Brozman was born in New York and has been playing guitar since age 6. Profoundly struck by Delta blues as a child, his burning curiosity led him to a lifelong study of ethnomusicology and guitar music from the world's frontiers of colonialism. He recorded his first albums in the 1980s, including several American releases of vintage blues and jazz music. Throughout the 1990s and the current decade, Brozman has been intensely prolific, releasing several internationally acclaimed CDs with artists from many other cultures around the world. During a period of just four years ending in 2004, five of these collaborations placed in the Top Ten of the European World Music Charts - an unprecedented feat for any international artist.

Brozman is a passionate and tireless performer, with an almost super-human tour schedule that takes him to every corner of the globe. A respected educator and author, he has directed music for film, radio, television, and the stage; and he has produced albums for a number of artists including the Asylum Street Spankers and Ledward Kaapana. Brozman rediscovered the legendary 1920s Hawaiian artists the Tau Moe Family, recording a landmark album with them which won the Library of Congress Select List Award. In addition to his own recording and touring, Brozman co-founded International Guitar Seminars, bringing students together to study with some of the top guitarists in the world. He is also an adjunct Professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, where he lectures on ethnomusicology and is continuing research on the music of the South Pacific islands.

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