“Bruce Lee? That’s awesome.”

“Yeah…”, he said, “…and ‘Free Tibet’ is the other one.”

That’s a pretty close approximation to one of my first conversations with Karsh Kale — drummer, tabla master, producer, composer, and — at the time — my new neighbor introducing me to his cats. Karsh has since decamped to what I hope for his sake is a less shady building, but I still see him in the ‘hood from time to time.

A few months ago, I bumped into him on the street and asked him what he was up to.

“I’m actually working on a thing for Celebrate Brooklyn — it’s a new score for Enter the Dragon and we’re going to play it along with the movie”, Karsh said.

“Bruce Lee?”, I said. “That’s awesome.”

* * *

Bruce Lee is kind of a common touchstone for artists of all kinds — Lee’s book, Tao of Jeet Kune Do, is ostensibly a martial arts manual — but, to many, it is also a work of “Artistic Philosophy”. Lee’s struggles and reflections upon the act of “expressing one’s self honestly” have resonated with creative artists since it was first published in 1975. And as I got to know Karsh a little bit, I could see that influence expressed in his own work. I also got the feeling that, as kids, he was walking around looking like Slash at the same time that I was trying to look like Axl — but I never got around to asking him about that…

Anyhow, I saw the performance a few weeks later and I really enjoyed it! KK had to come up with something that was different enough from Lalo Schifrin’s original score to be interesting to music lovers — and visceral enough to be rewarding to Kung Fu movie fans.

I think he succeeded on both counts.

Here’s some video of Karsh and his collaborators Gaurav Raina and Tapan Raj (a.k.a., the Midival Punditz) working it out:

KK — if you ever release this, I think you’ve got some guaranteed sales!  (Are you listening Warner Brothers?)

And if you’re not familiar with Karsh’s work, pick up a few of his other albums and collaborations:

[asa_collection]KK[/asa_collection]