The city used to be known for its jute mills until a couple of decades ago when the industry died out. And at one time, because local musicians were heavily into soul music, critics talked of the "jute mill gospel sound".

Local soul food delicacies include Arbroath Smokies (delicious smoked fish), and Forfar/Dundee Bridies - mince and onion in a D-shaped pastry (right) - almost identical to the Siberian cheburek.

(A larger version of this magnificent bridie-pic is at www.imagineering.co.uk/bridie/)

Although I grew up in a tenement like most Dundonians - mine had a great situation. There were jute mills (left) all round, but right opposite my bedroom window was Dudhope castle.

The river Tay rises in the centre of Scotland and after flowing through some awesome countryside it reaches Dundee. And after leaving the city, it continues to move steadily towards the east.

Webcam view of Dundee from the top of the Law - a volcanic plug in the middle of the city click here

Pic by Tara Darby

Since then, I`ve drummed and played the northern hemisphere the long way round from Vancouver to Vladivostok with a lot of jazz musicians and ethnic musicians including Russian gipsy diva, Valentina Ponomareva , the late Vladimir Rezitisky, Celtic musicians Dick Gaughan and Tomas Lynch, Tibetan and Japanese Buddhist monks, and Siberian shamans.

With Pictish stone at Aberlemno, near Dundee.

At the end of the 1960s I formed Talisker, a band set up to play jazz and Celtic music. We recorded a few albums and played round Europe. I moved to London and began opening up my music to influences further afield.

Back in the DDR - Talisker plays the Bauhaus, with Eugen Hahn, tour manager,centre.

I played with jazz/improv musicians like Maggie Nicols (pictured right in Vancouver) Elton Dean, Jim Dvorak, Larry Stabbins, Nick Evans, Tim Hodgkinson, Sylvia Hallett and Phil Minton and with folk musicians like Frankie Armstrong, Sainkho Namtchylak, and Scottish piper Dave Brooks.

I have also studied Celtic music in Scotland and in Ireland - and shamanic drumming and khoomei overtone singing in Tuva, on the Mongolian border. Since 1990 I’ve done regular tours of Russia, and in particular Siberia where I’ve played with a range of musicians in the area around Lake Baikal, and in Tuva and the Altai - also on the Mongolian border.

Valentina Ponomareva

One of my more radical projects was an album of socialist music with Scotland's strongest folk singer and musician, Dick Gaughan. It was a departure for Dick, not because it was a purely instrumental album, but because it was totally improvised.

Here's what Dick said about it: "The collaboration between Ken Hyder and myself was, on the surface, a strange one - but on closer inspection perhaps wasn't quite so strange after all.

"I had never really done much free improvisational playing but we jammed together whenever I was in London and did a lot of talking. Especially we talked about the use of traditional Scottish music as the launchpad for improvisational exploration and this album came out of those discussions.

"I found playing together an exhilarating experience and the concept of abandoning all conventional rules of melody, harmony and rhythm and stripping everything down to basic elements then reassembling them, concentrating entirely on expression, was a very liberating one and has had a strong influence on much of what I've done since in that most of the song accompaniments I do these days are improvised."

A link to Dick Gaughan's website.

I’m currently engaged in a range of projects ranging from the freely improvised to rhythmic music coming from funk and other areas.

"He has provided a blueprint for the increasing number of European musicians who have been incorporating elements of folk music into their jazz."
The Guinness Who’s Who of Jazz

"Ken Hyder's drumming always appears connected to the world beyond narrow musical concerns. It comes with a context, picking up on place, the past, people met and local practices.

"At the same time he favours strong, well-defined musical statements, entirely free from ornamental excess and fuss."
The Wire

"Hyder has one of the strongest strokes in jazz, deployed with an astonishing technique. Not for a moment does his polyrhythmic machine falter, his four limbs continuing to beat with an implacable precision"
Oest France

Further East

Southern Siberia

For a detailed article on one trip to the mongolian border - THE ROAD TO ERZIN

One of the many people impressive people we met in Tuva was a Lama, Kungaa Tash-Ool Boo. We first met in him 1992 on the day his temple - or khram -was opened and consecrated. Before that he had been studying to become a Lama, over the border in Mongolia.

He was warmly generous and had a particularly strong presence and he told us that his father had been a shaman. A few weeks later he wrote and said that in fact he had been an underground shaman for the last 30 years, dodging KGB officers who sent shamans to the gulag if they discovered them. He is also a painter and a magnificent stone-carver, and now carries on the local tradition of shamanism centred in Erzin on the Mongolian border.

Since then I made quite a few field trips back to Siberia to study shamanic music with several senior shamans.

Right, a shaman's mountain-top kamlanie ritual

The khram at Samagaltai.

Kungaa-Boo and his shaman's outfit. The Erzin shamans are the only ones in Tuva to wear black. The feather hat is similar to North American indian gear and it is highly likely the style came originally from Siberia

Kungaa's website.

The Siberian/Scottish connection is strong - you can now stock up with Irn Bru in Kyzyl, Tuva.

Click here for Novosibirsk museum site with shaman drums etc

Back To Ken Hyder's Homepage

Back To The Instant Jukebox