Thanks to GOLD TONE for their help in getting 4 brand new Wood Song guitars and groovy ukuleles to our friends at Eratap Village, Vanuatu. Our friends at HOMESPUN TAPES donated the instructional DVDs below. This completes one of our followup projects from our January tour with American Music Abroad. It ain’t easy to ship …
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National Reso-Phonics Paul Lestock Martin Photos Above by Michael G. Stewart My personal relationship with the tenor guitar began in about 1960. My hero was Jimmy Dodd and I loved all the kids on the TV show “The Mickey Mouse Club”. All …
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Our amazing adventure was made possible by the U.S. Department of State and American Music Abroad. Cathy happened upon an email notice for online applications for the program and the trio decided to go for it. We were contacted that we had been chosen our of 288 bands to audition for the next level, with …
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Vabukori Village & Farewell Party On Sunday, January 28, we were picked up by our Embassy driver, Jimmy, along with Natalia and Natasha, headed for Vabukori Village. The drive went through the city and over rough, potholed, rocky roads and we were joined by a second Embassy security vehicle. People are always walking on the …
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How to get to Papua New Guinea from Vanuatu. Fly Vanuatu to Sydney, stay overnight, then Sydney to Brisbane, AUS to Papua New Guinea (PNG). Not easy, but to get to these small countries in the Pacific, Australia is the transfer point. We made it to Port Moresby, PNG and were greeted by Regis from …
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The world gets bigger and smaller at the same time as we continue our travels and programs with American Voices Abroad. We went from the bustling big city of Kuala Lumpur, full of major brand stores, shopping malls, hotels and a friendly cosmopolitan vibe to VANUATU. To get there, fly from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney. …
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January 11-15 Kota Kinabalu was cozy and quiet compared to the sprawling city of Kuala Lumpur. Here traffic jams are constant. There are Mosques and Temples all over the city and high-rise buildings touch the sky. We’ve come to term each new location as time for the “reset” button- new Embassy folks, new concert sponsors …
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Jan. 7-10, 2013 We arrived in Kota Kinabalu near midnight at a tiny airport. Security recognized us as the American celebrities and escorted us out of immigration to our hosts, Wing-Fong Chew from the U.S Embassy and Roger Wang from SPArKS (Society for the Performing Arts, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah). (http://www.sparks.org.my) It took us 30 seconds …
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Hong Kong is so famous and HUGE in our minds that we didn’t realize it’s a very small city, only 140,000. With a short 6 hours to explore on this stopover, we hopped a tour bus to pack in the sights. We visited an old fishing village – a lifestyle that is slowly dying out …
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We left Chengdu for Kunming on Wednesday morning, but after taking off, the flight returned to Kunming because of heavy fog. We made friends in the airport pulling out our ukes and having a string band jam with Babs to teach our consulate entourage the beginning steps of clog dancing. Eventually Air China moved all …
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December 29-31 Washington DC to Detroit to Tokyo to Shanghai to 4 hrs. sleep in hotel to Chengdu from Dec. 29-31. We arrived in Chengdu in Sichuan Province at around 11:30am with a 3:30 sound check ahead of us. Where to start? Noodles. So many noodles and so little time. Our guide, Eli, took us …
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