Bird’s-Eye: A trio of perspectives: your Tikkunista editor writes about Kartick and Gotam, two Israelis who create a textured bed of electronica over which Indian musicians lay sheets of wonderful sound. David Byrne, (ex-lead singer for the Talking Heads and international musician extraordinaire) gives a TED talk on the historical relationship between music and architecture, and the Guardian updates you on the conflicts surrounding Taqwacore (Islamic punk rock music).

* Business Class Refugees: Kartick & Gotam Peter marmorek, Tikkun Daily Blog

Business Class Refugees is a new and extraordinary music, created internationally, in ways that simply haven’t been possible till now. It comes out thirty years after “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” the pioneering Byrne / Eno collaboration which used electronic ambience, and world music behind sampled vocal tracks, but could only be assembled painfully in the studio through analog trial and error. Kartick and Gotam, known as K&G, also weave a beating net of electronic ambience, but overlay it with a stunning selection of Indian and south Asian musicians as foreground. And they do it live with visuals as well….

* David Byrne: How Architecture Helped Music Evolve Video On Ted.Com

As his career grew, David Byrne went from playing CBGB to Carnegie Hall. He asks: Does the venue make the music? From outdoor drumming to Wagnerian operas to arena rock, he explores how context has pushed musical innovation.

* Conservative Islam Collides With Punk Asif Akhtar  The Guardian

Nearly a year after its release, the controversial documentary titledTaqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam seems finally to have triggered a response from the conservative clerics it censures, after the film was screened at Lahore’s National College of Arts. The documentary follows a group of Muslim punk bands inspired to unite under the banner of “taqwacore” and tour the United States after reading Michael Muhammad Knight’s novel based on fictionalised Muslim punks with alternative views on Islam. During the course of the story they discover diverse Muslim cultures including African-American Muslim communities. They also make an appearance at an Islamic convention in Chicago, challenging the closed-minded approach to the religion… This is the point where these two opposing views of Islam come face to face, where the radical message of taqwacore meets the equally radical reaction of what might be called “fatwacore”. …This is a conversation that Islam needs to have with itself, and it will certainly take more than just one documentary. Conservative Islam needs to confront the proliferating diversity of Islam, and needs to come to terms with the fact that subjective interpretations of the religion cannot be limited.