Album Notes

This 2-disc CD was recorded at the 2007 Park Avenue Festival. Culled from 8 hours of sun-soaked, sweat-drenched live performance from Rochester NY's premier dance-party band. The album is a tribute and monument to the late, great, Tony Cavagnaro: Round Mound of Sound, and friend to all.

The BuddhaHood presents an exciting, lively, energetic, and fresh-sounding repertoire of music. This 8 piece group includes the standard rhythm section with auxiliary percussion, steel drums, and horns. There are times when every member of the band picks up a percussion instrument and participates in a massive drum jam. Such an array of instruments allows the band a huge color palette, used to paint a dance-happy sonic environment for each song.

The members of The BuddhaHood are of vastly different musical backgrounds, creating a frothing melting-pot of ideas in which decades, even centuries of diverse musical influences converge to form tunes with innovation, nuance, and pure groove power. This could be the reason their music as a whole completely defies labels. The colorful repertoire displays influences of rock, funk, jazz, Latin American, Caribbean, African, and Middle Eastern sources. The tunes are all original, except for the handful of traditional African and Middle Eastern drum motives to which African dancers and belly dancers strut their stuff. Percussion plays an integral role in bringing the primal self closer to the surface through the repetition of ancient rhythms.

All this variety and craziness contributes to a dynamically colorful, electric show that attracts an audience as eclectic as the band itself. Each BuddhaHood performance bubbles along with unstoppable rhythm, and everyone gets caught in the flow. Once people start dancing, the groove never lets them stop. This band creates a fun, friendly, and open atmosphere, and you can never expect the same thing at any two shows. What you CAN expect is a performance full of surprises, many dancing bodies, perspiration, an elevated heart rate, and creative tunes that are as uplifting spiritually and emotionally as they are physically.