The Tiger

When I first came up with the idea for a children's album of world music songs for our school, I spoke about it with my friend Sarita who, apart from being an amazing human being, is a gifted actress and storyteller. I asked her if she would contribute a piece to the album and a couple of weeks later we sat down in the playground with a tape recorder and she told me the story of her trip to the forests of Rajasthan, India, to save the tiger. It's a fascinating story and I know you'll enjoy hearing it.
We decided to develop it into a music piece and I came up with some cool tabla and percussion tracks and a melodic chorus. But when we recorded Sarita telling the story in the studio, it no longer felt like it needed a sung vocal.
At the time I was looking for an Indian fiddle, and Ross (Bonadonna, engineer) suggested his friend, the Indian classical violinist Trina Basu. I went to hear Trina that weekend in a concert with her teacher Sri Vittal Ramamurthy and loved hearing her play, and she graciously agreed to be part of our project.
I searched for a lot of sound samples to accompany the story. The water and jungle sounds were not hard to find, but it took a bit more delving to find a sample of the kind of bird one would actually find in the forests of Rajasthan, which I eventually found in the oriole that now sings in the track behind Sarita. I also located a peacock and then a really annoying New York City traffic snarl that we used for Sarita's return to Manhattan.
Melvin Gibbs is a world class bass player who happens to be a parent at our school and his track added immensely, in some way taking the character of the tiger and making the piece complete.