| 'Three Amigos' Join Forces by Tara Bradbury Bennett The Telegram, St. John's, Newfoundland August 8, 2003 |
| As his last name suggests, Jim Fidler was born to be a musician. Being musical is in his family's genes. "The name goes back a long ways, and refers to people who not only play the fiddle but who are kind of like minstrels," Fidler said. During his childhood, the St. John's native studied classical piano and music theory at the Maritime Conservatory of Music in Halifax , and taught himself to play a number of other instruments, including drums, guitar and whistles. He has gone on to produce and arrange songs for bands such as The Masterless Men, Great Big Sea and The Celtic Connection, and has released two solo albums. Fidler is currently a member of Musaik, a band he co-founded after a chance meeting with musicians Lekbir Halili and Thierry Artur in St. Pierre in the early 1990's. "Myself and my wife Lillian first went to St. Pierre about 11 years ago," explained Fidler. "It wasn't long before we met Lekbir, who owned a bar there, and Thierry, and the three of us started playing together. We became friends and over the years have been going back and forth between St. John's and St. Pierre. Fidler, Halili and Artur first got the idea to record an album just over a year ago, and spent months working on it, all the while involved in separate projects. The CD, entitled In This World, will be released at Club One on Sunday evening. Each of the songs on the CD was co-written by the three musicians, with the exception of Jacamo, a popular tune composed and sung by American James Crawford in New Orleans in the early 1950's. Fidler describes Musaik's music as having a combination of styles. "We're really mixing styles on this CD," Fidler said. "There's reggae, North African pop music, Eastern European, Middle Eastern and Brazilian influences in there as well as New Orleans jazz and Celtic. It comes from the world. "The music people listen to in Brazil for example, in comparison to here, is a lot more open. People there listen to music in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French, whereas here, if it's not in English, it doesn't exist. For the past 10 years, the three of us have been sharing our experiences and our music comes from that." Although Fidler, Halili and Artur pool their experiences on the Musaik CD, the three of them agree that certain familiar elements shine through. "Even though we combine different styles on the album, you know it's still coming from Jim," said Halili, in a mixture of French and stilted English. "He does a lot of foreign style music, but his spirit will always stay the same. This is good." "That's true," agreed Fidler. " You can hear all of us on the CD. We work together. It's three amigos, not three egos." Two songs on In This World - Raai Raai and Salama - deal with world peace and social awareness, and were written by Musaik before the tragic events of September 11, 2001. After the terrorist attacks, the musicians say the songs became even more meaningful. "For a couple of months after September 11, we were thinking and really re-evaluating what we were doing with the album, but then we decided if anything, it would be even more poignant," Fidler said. "We want to send out a message, and that is for people to educate themselves and for them to think before they start hating others." Fidler, Halili and Artur describe their message the best on the back of the CD cover: "We all imagine that somewhere there is a peaceful corner of the earth free from hate, prejudice, war and politics, but as we look high and low, we see strife ands human suffering…this inner peace is within all of us and as we find it, one by one, we bring peace into this world." |
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