6 January 2010, World Cafe

1 Gnonnas Pedro - Dadje von o von non (Analog Africa)

The last few years have seen a plethora of small labels emerging to lovingly unearth long lost vintage gems from West and Central Africa and its diaspora in the West Indies. Samy Ben Redjeb from Analog Africa chanced upon some recordings from Benin and found a rich seam that he has now begun to explore and expose to the world – under full licence from the artists or their publishers, it must be added.

“Dadje von o von non” is by Gnonnas Pedro et Ses Dadjes. Its lyrics are in Mina, a dialect spoken in Benin and Togo, and the song became the anthem of Togo’s national football team. It comes from Analog Africa’s “Legends Of Benin”, showcasing legends from the Benin scene between 1969 and 1981.

No obvious themes in tonight’s show – it’s really another exploration along sonic lines – with some loose geographic clusterings.

• Norway features quite heavily, inspired by the concert Mari Boine gave in Cape Town in late November last year.

• There is also music from Southern Africa.

• And some favourites of this show - Ethiopia, the Touareg and Sahrawi regions of north western Africa, and Central Asia.

Vokoka are a collection of musicians from all around Madagascar which grew organically when an aid worker, Sean Whittaker, teamed with up Nathalie Raomiala, the owner of Antananarivo restaurant Grill de Rova, to host a show in 2002. The show became a series of shows and then a recording project. This is Vokoka with a song called “Salama” written by singer Gabin.


2 Vokoka – Salama (World Music Network)


3 Raymond Mbele - Balela Ekhaya (Gallo Music)


From the 1990 collection of music from KwaZulu Natal first on Gallo and then Rounder Records, “Singing in an Open Space”, that was “Balela Ekhaya” which means “Write Home”. It’s the only song in Xhosa on the collection and was penned and sung by Raymond Mbele, who was discovered playing at a bus stop in the rural Eastern Cape by a producer for Gallo Records, David Thekwane. Mbele recorded an album’s worth of songs, was paid a flat fee and went to the mines with no forwarding address. Meanwhile the album sold quite well, but in the absence of Raymond the royalties ended up with one Robert Mbele, totally unrelated. If any listener has that Raymond Mbele LP, please contact us immediately.

We haven’t managed to track down Mari Boine’s new album yet, which is surprising as it features Cape-based Madosini and the acappella group, the Abaqondisi Brothers from Khaya Mandi, Stellenbosch. But here is something from her previous CD with the same guitarist and drummer from the band she had in Cape Town. This is the title track, “Idjagiedas (In the hand of the night)”. Gambian Sanjally Jobarteh plays the kora.


4 Mari Boine - In the hand of the night (Idjagiedas) (Universal Jazz)


5 Hege Rimestad - Towing the darkness (Grappa)


Hege Rimestad, the fiddle player in Mari Boine’s band in the 90s, arranged that traditional piece and she plays it with the other members of Boine’s band at the time. It is called “Rimfakse” or “Towing the Darkness”.

Boine was born in Samiland, the northern-most region of Scandinavia that also crosses into Russia. She incorporates the regional singing style called joik into her folky, jazzy style. We’ll hear unadulterated joik later in the show.

Slightly south of Samiland is another cultural region that spans across Scandinavia into Russia, Karelia, home to an ethnic Finnish minority. In the late 90s, Swedish/Finnish band Hedningarna headed off to the Russian part of Karelia. The singing in Karelia is just as startling as that in Samiland. Here is Hedningarna with the rather tweely titled “Forest Maiden”. The music is far from twee, though.


6 Hedningarna - Forest Maiden (Silence Records)


Ever wandered what happened to that branch of folky traditional Pedi jazz started by Philip Thabane and Molombo? No one of any consequence took over the baton until Tlokwe Sehume. He’s really taken the spirit of the music as a starting point and produced something altogether more porous, more boundless. A composer and multi-instrumentalist, he sings and writes in Sepedi, isiZulu, Xitsonga and Sesotho. Here is “Mankwelenkweditse” which features the sax playing of McCoy Mrubata.


7 Tlokwe Sehume and Medu – Mankwelenkweditse (Gallo Jazz)

8 Haruna Ishola and his Apala Group - Kise Tenu (IndigeDisc)


Haruna Ishola was a praise singer from the Ogun State in Nigeria. He died in the mid-70s, but still apparently enjoys mythical status in the area according to the wonderful sleeve notes on the IndigeDisc collection from which the piece we listened to is culled. The recording was made sometime between 1967 and 1971.

We can’t resist featuring Ethiopian music on this show. Why? The American film director, Jim Jarmusch, who can probably be held most responsible for the current wave of popularity of Ethiopian music because he featured Mulatu Astatke’s music in his movie, “Broken Flowers”, puts it very nicely in a recent interview in Wire magazine. He calls Ethiopian music “a little garden of eruption of music”. He says “it’s got an African thing, a kind of Middle Eastern thing, somewhere in there as well, and then that funk kind of sound, and jazz”. Here is Mulatu Astatke and the British band, the Heliocentrics, with “Anglo Ethio Suite”.


9 Mulatu Astatke & Heliocentrics - Anglo Ethio Suite (Strut)

10 Alemayehu Eshete - Kenoru Lebetchahe (Buda Musique)


From the Ethiopiques Series, that was Alemayehu Eshete with the piece “Kenoru Lebetchahe” – “If you live alone”.

Ali Farka Toure’s son Vieux Farka Toure is emerging as a talent and star in his own right. The track we are going to listen to now is “Fafa” from his second album, “Fondo”, which came out in 2009.

Also from the desert regions of Mali, but further north than Timbuktu from where Vieux Farka Toure hails, is Touareg group, Tinariwen. After Vieux, we’ll hear Tinariwen with “Tenhert”, which means “The Doe”, based on a poem by Mohammed Assori Ahmed, and is sort of rapped rather than sung to great effect as you’ll hear.


11 Vieux Farka Toure – Fafa (World Circuit Music)

12 Tinariwen – Tenhert (Independiente)

13 Group Doueh - Dun dan (Sublime Frequencies)


The Sahrawi are from Western Sahara, a disputed territory under Moroccan occupation. Unlike Tinariwen, Group Doueh are not keen to get into a studio to record and would rather stick with their home-based set-up, although the music is just as fiery. Luckily for us Hisham Mayet of Sublime Frequencies managed to persuade them to release some of their home recordings. We heard “Dun Dan”. As Mayet says “Fidelity be damned”.

We featured the Beijing-based band, Hanggai, last month. Here they are again with something called “Flower”.


14 Hanggai – Flower (World Music Network)

15 Christy Doran & Boris Salchuk - Chylgychyng yry (a herder’s song) (Melt 2000)


Boris Salchuk is a member the Tuvan group Shu De and in the “herder’s song” we’ve just heard, he teamed up with Christy Doran, the Irish-born, Switzerland-based guitarist who we spoke about last month.

Joik is the traditional singing style from Samiland, and here is Wimme Saari, like Mari Boine a broadminded collaborator, with “Morning Coffee”, his own song, sung in a pretty, austere, authentic joik style.


16 Wimme Saari - Morning Coffee (Rockadillo)

17 Frode Halti - Jag haver ingen karere (ECM)


ECM records a lot of Norwegian musicians. Accordian player Frode Halti collaborated with trumpeter, Arve Hendriksen, viola player Garth Knox and singer Maja Ratkje on the album “Passing Images”. The piece we’ve just heard was a traditional Swedish song “Jag haver ingen karare” or “No one is dearer to me” from a region called Smaland.

Almamegretta are a reggae band from Naples who sings in Napoletano, a regional dialect. Here they are with a track titled “Sanacore”, which was mixed by Adrian Sherwood, the magnificent English dub producer and owner of the On-U-Sound record label.


18 Almamegretta – Sanacore (BMG Recordi Spa)

19 Andy Palacio & the Garifuna Collective - Weyu Larigi Weyu (Day by day) (Cumbancha)


Heading off to the Caribbean after Naples, to Belize in fact, we heard Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective.

And now to Jamaica - King Tubby and Soul Syndicate with the track “Ethiopian Version” from the mid-70s.


20 King Tubby & Soul Syndicate - Ethiopian Version (Blood and Fire)

21 Jah Wobble - Tyger Tyger (Thirsty Ear Recordings)


Jah Wobble is a kind of global bass player who we’ve been playing a lot recently. This version of the William Blake poem, “Tyger Tyger”, is off an album of stuff inspired by Blake.

Levon Helm, the drummer from the Band, produced a fantastic record in 2007. This is “Calvary” from that record and is written by Byron Isaacs, the bass player for this album.


22 Levon Helm – Calvary (Vanguard)

23 James Yorkston & the Big Eyes Family Players - Low down in the broom (Domino)


A terrific arrangement of the traditional ballad “Low down in the broom” by the Scottish musician James Yorkston, here playing it with the Big Eyes Family Players.

Up until a year ago Michael Toye was a Cape Town-based musician. He now lives in Spain. The piece comes from a self-released CD called “Ithaca”.


24 Michael Toye - Under the hill (Michael Toye)