BOOKS
TARAB - TRAVELS WITH MY GUITAR
Release date: February 2014
‘By any measure, Cleves deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Thesiger, Burton and Newby. He is an astute observer, a passionate participant … ’ Bruce Elder, Sydney Morning Herald
‘An extraordinary tour of wild times and wilder places. I have laughed, gasped and loved very startling page. ’ Jeni Caffin
Singer, songwriter and guitarist, Carl Cleves, would, even as a child, entertain his siblings and schoolmates with his vivid imagination and captivating stories. After many requests from his friends and fans, Carl decided to write a book.
TARAB narrates the adventures and quests, wanderings and narrow escapes, mishaps and illuminations of guitar-toting troubadour and songwriter Carl Cleves in his many roles as young beat poet, law student, single father, journalist and ethnomusicologist, inmate of hospitals, relief worker in cyclone-struck India, antelope trapper in Uganda, encyclopedia salesman in Bangkok, ‘back to the land pioneer’ in Australia, band leader and recording star in Brazil.
This memoir runs over three decades and includes quests with his "she was not a screamer" partner Beatrice, during the revolutionary independence years of the late sixties in Africa and on the hippy/ spiritual trail in India in the seventies; escapades with his young son Tashi during the eighties in South America and North Africa; tales of calamities and survival set in the interior of Brazil, the Himalayas and on the east coast of Australia.
From the Sudan to Northern New South Wales, Tarab is an epic, mesmerising tale of high adventure and the search for meaning. Cleves’s page turning memoir is no simple music biography, but rather the travel story of an artist’s quest for tarab: a place where music and poetry bestow true bliss upon the lucky one. It’s by turns philosophical, funny, adventurous and insightful.
Fully revised and expanded, this new edition of Tarab is a must read for all lovers of travel literature. It includes Cleves’ time in Sydney working at the late Petersons’ Music Shop in George Street and his early years living in Northern New South Wales at the height of the back to the land movement.
Available at all good bookshops
and on online.
SOUNDTRACKS OF MY LIFE
A blended memoir with a sweeping musical world history, enriched with cultural and historical detail and philosophical observations. It has the markings of a classic in the field of music and will be a must-read book for anyone that loves music and travel. It has a distinctive conversational style and rhythm, a literary prowess and a wondrous feel of stream-of-consciousness.
“What an overflowing cornucopia of stories and unheard-of musical styles you have produced. Absolutely awe-inspiring - your musical knowledge, adventures, friendships, and writing ability. ”
Param Berg
“Your trilogy is stunning, amazing, confronting, inspiring, so loving, caring and supportive towards indigenous cultures. Your episodes of sheer resilience, fierce individualism, illuminated obstination to live, love and play will always be in my heart.”
Monique Lavail
Available at all good bookshops
and on online.
DANCING WITH BONES
I barely drew breath while reading these pages, so exotic was the imagery and intense the adventure. Yet again, as in Tarab, I marvelled at the fact that he is alive to tell the tale. You must read it for yourself. Dancing with the Bones is funny, it’s moving, it’s breathtaking, it’s tender. I dare you not to love it.
Jeni Caffin - Byron Bay Echo