Harry Manx has been called an “essential link” between the music of East and West, creating musical short stories that wed the tradition of the Blues with the depth of classical Indian ragas. He has created a unique sound that is hard to forget and deliciously addictive to listen to.

Harry has performed across Canada, into the USA, Australia, France, Singapore and Spain. He has appeared at festivals, world-class theatres, concert halls and infamous Blues clubs around the globe. Playing the Mohan Veena, lap steel and guitar, Harry quickly envelops the audience into what has been dubbed “the Harry Zone” with his warm vocals and the hauntingly beautiful melodies of his original songs.

Blending Indian folk melodies with blues, a sprinkle of gospel, and compelling grooves, Manx’s “mysticssippi” flavour is evocative and hard to resist.

Titles include: Can’t Be Satisfied, Sitting On Top of the World, Working On The Railroad, Goodtime Charlie, Baby Please Don’t Go, Afghani Raga, Oh Death, Crazy Love, Spoonful, Tijuana, Bring That Thing, A Coat of Mail, Steal Six, Only Then Will Your House Be Blessed and Don’t Forget To Miss Me

Review: And you thought listening to hypnotist Harry Manx flick unearthly notes from beneath a shivering slide was a trip. Wait until you see how the guitar whisperer works his juju on this studio-performance DVD. He'll lay an acoustic guitar flat across his lap and zip a steel bar over the strings, squishing out whines and whirls that trace their roots back just as much to classical Indian ragas as to Delta blues. That's how J.J. Cale's “Tijuana” morphs into an East meets-West chimera, what shoots a faint sliver of Bombay down the spine of “Sitting On Top Of The World” and the source of a new shiminy-n-wobble attitude for “Baby Please Don't Go”. Then, to really bIow minds, he'll glide along his gentle giant known as a Mohanveena, an archtop that's been Frankensteined into a sitar-ish 20 string orchestra. Sound swirls, as waves of little vortices spin out through everything from “Spoonful” and the stone-cold plea for “Death Have Mercy” to Van Morrison's “Crazy Love”. Besides making guitars chant along with his dusty voice, Manx also divulges surviving a Willie Dixon encounter, fills in the details of apprenticing in India under the Rajasthani tutelage of Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, and offers a quick primer on Indian slide-guitar principles. Whatever gets “Manx'ed” – blues, ragas, poetic originals, like "A Coat Of Mail" or the self-described “rocker” “Steal Six” – gets transcendentally transformed.  – Bluesrag/Dennis Rozanski

80 Minutes
vestapol 13110dvd  $24.95