Sharing some film and video documentation of the various music projects of Mustafa Stefan Dill (sarod, fretless guitar, oud) and Jefferson Voorhees (tabla, naal, tar).

Sama' Duo (Mustafa Stefan Dill, Jefferson Voorhees): transcultural improvisations

Burn your panpipe samples and scrub the dishes with your ambient synth pads: this is not your auntie's world music band.

Sama' Duo retains an improvisational focus, applying a deep core of both cutting-edge and ancient improvising methods within the musical traditions of India and the Middle East. The Duo reaches into the inner aspects of form and method from the established traditions, adds their previous experience as post-modern improvisors to the process and wraps it all with a rhythmically- driven, wide-ranging rock/funk ethos.

The group takes as its name a nuanced Arabic term that describes the spectrum of relationships between intense listening, spirituality, and music-making itself.

The Duo was chosen in 2006 to provide the music score for the independent film "Birth of a Pillow" by director Sharmy Pandey, from Kolkata, India. The film is a 47 minute feature with no dialogue, requiring a continuous music score that would amplify and emotionally detail the story to a very high degree.

The Duo's current instrumentation is fretless electric guitar and drum set, though they still use the sarod/tabla combination that marked their earlier phase, as well as the underutlilzed oud/gome combination.