Sandy Bull with Bill Higgins – Fantasias For Guitar And Banjo

Sandy Bull’s cult classic debut album Fantasias For Guitar And Banjo opens with the 22-minute long epic “Blend,” which some consider one of the greatest acoustic guitar tracks of all time. Influenced by sharing an apartment with Nubian oud master, Hamza El Din, Bull developed an unorthodox approach to stringed instruments fusing American folk traditions with Arabic and Indian music. Using alternative tunings for banjo and acoustic guitar, Bull creates a drone effect, similar to that of a sitar or tanpura. His interest in drone, he says, is due “to the fact that it is so simple an effect and yet there is something eternal about it, sort of a foundation of music. I find it – and the kind of undulating rhythms which go with it – very moving.”

Recommended – Full Listen