This show is dedicated to Charlie Gillet – the grand uncle of world music djs - who died a few weeks ago. Links to his website are available on this blog.
1 Oumou Sangare – Wele wele wintou (World Circuit)
Off Oumou Sangare’s great 2009 album entitled “Seya” that was the tune “Wele wele wintou”. A song against forced marriages. The album is thick with luminaries from the Mali scene, and that track features the legendary guitarist, Djelimady Tounkara.
2 Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou – Se ba ho Composed by Amoussou William – legendary trad singer (Analog Africa)
The opening track on Analog Africa’s collection of Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou material “From the vaults of Albarika Store, 1969 to 1979” had label head Samy Redjeb and his Beninese sound team’s jaws dropping to the floor. It dates from the early 70s and is set to a “sato” rhythm, which draws heavily on traditional vodoun rhythms from the region. Vodoun rhythms were strongly present in Beninese daily life at the time. You can watch a movie of that song being performed on Analog Africa’s blog – check out the link.
3 Franco – Quatre Boutons (Sheer Sound)
From 1965, that was Franco and TPOK Jazz with the song “Quartre Boutons”. It’s a comic, slightly racy ditty about a woman who attracts many men, including lovers of her friends and has sassy answers for all. She asks her detractors to ask the men about why they are attracted to her. The four buttons refer to a certain item of men’s apparel which is unfastenable, although we are not sure about which precise item she is referring to.
One of Franco’s long-time guitarists, Simaro (or Simon Lutumba Ndomameuno) played guitar – reverb-drenched, with a very smeary, shimmering break – all utterly fresh sounding to our ears. Simaro was with TPOK Jazz from 1963 until Franco’s death in 89.
The tune comes off a quite magnificent collection “African Classics – Franco” locally released by Sheer.
4 Christy Azuma & Uppers International – Din Ya Sugri (Soundway)
Christy Azuma and Uppers International played music strongly influenced by the music of the upper regions of Ghana – in 1974 a backwater, but a backwater earmarked for tourist development. The Uppers International were drawn from all over Ghana as the house band of a hotel in the upper regions gearing up for the tourist onslaught. Their residency, however, banished them, more or less, to obscurity. Soundway, on their collection, “Ghana Special”, have dug them out.
5 Ali Farka Toure – Cherie (World Circuit)
Speaking of obscurity, in 1984, when the track we’re about to hear was released by French Sonodisc on the album entitled “Red”, Ali Farka Toure was basically languishing in it. Some years after its release, the godfather of world music DJs, Andy Kershaw, came across the album in a bargain basement bin in Paris. He managed to convince World Circuit to get Ali Farka Toure into their stable on the strength of this album and another released more or less at the same time, “Green”. From “Red”, this is the song “Cherie”.
6 Mahlathini Indoda & the Mahlathini Band – Kudala Besibiza (Soweto label)
From 1975, that was the famous Zulu groaner Mahlathini without the Mahotella Queens, when he called himself Mahlathini Indodo. Mahlathini, or Simon Nkabinde, was very proud of his rural heritage – “mah” refers to someone who was just emerged from the bush. On this track he plays with the groundbreaking Makgona Tsohle Band – his backing band for many years – which basically pioneered the classic mbaqanga sound, and were probably mbaqanga’s best players. They were the backing band for many mbaqanga hits.
You can download the whole of this Mahlatini album from the Electric Jive blog – check out the link. Electric Jive’s sister site, Matsuli, is also worth a visit. Our next two tracks come from either Electric Jive or Matsuli.
7 Soweto Boys – Loading Zone (Soweto label)
A year before the Mahlatini track came out, the Soweto Boys released an extremely catchy bunch of sax jive tunes on the Soweto Label. Sax jive grew out of the penny whistle jive, and by the mid 60s had evolved into mbaqanga, having added electric bass and guitar to the line-up.
8 Abafana Be Nala – Wesayoni (Mabob Records)
This track comes from 1976.
9 Akli D – Tabrats (Le Message) (Because UK)
Akli Dehlis is a Berber. A few years ago he produced a lavish album with Manu Chao under the moniker Akli D. This is “Tabrats” from that album.
10 Oum Kalsoum – Wehakkak ental mona waltalab (Mantego) Composed by Abu Al, El Sheik, Mohamed, Ola, Shabrahi, Elham Abdullah El)
We got this from the Mantego collection “The Legend: the Arab World’s Greatest Singer,” which sums up Oum Kalsoum’s reputation quite neatly.
11 Natasha Atlas – Wahashini (N Atlas, N Sparkes, Dubulah – co-ordinator of Dub Colossus (Mantra Recordings)
Although born in Belgium and making her name in England as the singer in Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart, Natasha Atlas is steeped in Oum Kalsoum’s tradition of voice-led orchestral music. Wahashini was co-written by Dubulah, the coordinator of the Dub Colossus project of ethiojazz and vintage Addis music fused with dub that we’ve explored in past programmes…
12 Jump to Addis – Abebayehush (traditional arr Dawit Guebreab) (Buda Musique)
… a neat lead to our next song – “Abebayehush” by Jump to Addis – a collection of European musicians from the Amsterdam Conservatory and Addis’s finest from the “azmaribat” scene. Azmaribat are traditional minstral cabarets in Ethiopia. The song, in all its live ragged glory, celebrates the arrival of spring, which Ethiopia is experiencing round about now.
13 Ashkabad - From the station to the mill (World Music Network)
14 Adulkhamit Rayimbergenov - Sary Arqa (World Music Network)
Two tracks from Central Asia – from the Rough Guide collection to the Music of Central Asia.
15 Wareika Hill Sounds – Africa Freedom March (Honest Jon’s)
Soul, blues and rock have all left their mark outside their places of origin – and so have reggae and dub. But we’ll start our mini crossover reggae segment in the foothills of Kingston with the nyabinghi-infused sounds of veteran trombone player, Calvin “Bubbles” Cameron and his collective “Wareika Hill Sounds”. Another veteran of the Kingston scene accompanies Cameron – sax player Deadley Headley Bennet. This comes from a 2007 album on the label Honest Jon’s.
16 Kalahari Surfer – Leka-leka (trad arr W Sony) (African Dope Records)
In the early 90s South African multi-instrumentalist and producer, Pops Mohamed, headed off to the Kalahari with a sound and camera crew, to record the music of Khoisan people living in the area – the primary impulse being preservation. Some of the resultant recordings were released in 1995 by Melt 2000 as “Bushmen of the Kalahari”. Instead of remaining pristinely preserved behind glass, these recordings have provided the basis for two rounds of quite fundamental remixes in which layers of electronic and reprocessed analog sounds have been added – “Sanscapes” 1 & 2. Warrick Sony of Kalahari Surfer also did a remix of the song, “Leka-leka”, which came out on his 2001 album “Akasic Record” – and that was what we just heard …
Tonight, over the course of this show, we’ve actually heard all the musicians featured in this year’s African Soul Rebels tour which took place in the UK in February and early March – Oumou Sangare, Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo and Kalahari Surfers. More information about the musicians and the tour is contained in a podcast you can find on the Jam Magica blog – check out the link.
17 Amsterdam Klezmer Band – Sadagora Hot Dub (World Music Network)
Klezmer-inspired reggae from Amsterdam …
18 Bentho Gustave Titou & l’International Poly Rythmo – Gbe sou ve gnin (Libert)
Orchestre Poly-Rythmo played just about every style including reggae. The song we’ve just heard was written by their bass player, Bentho Gustave Titou, and the whole LP is credited to Bentho Titou & l’International Poly Rythmo. To distribute composition credits and revenues that flowed from them more evenly, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo got different members to compose whole albums. The album was released in 1980 and you can download it from the Oro blog – check out the link.
19 Jack Rose – Everybody ought to pray sometime (Thrill Jockey)
Jack Rose was a guitar player who died late last year. His old-timey, blues ragas are reminiscent of John Fahey’s – an acknowledged inspiration. This is something in the ragtime vein he also liked to play, from this latest album just released – “Luck in the valley”. It’s called “Everyone ought to pray sometime”.
20 Mawkin Causley – Botany Bay (Navigator Records)
From the 2008 EP “Cold Ruin”.
21 The Imagined Village – Cold Haily Rainy Night (Real World)
The Imagined Village are a collection of English musicians from all kind of traditions who usually take an English ballad as a starting point and interpret it in all kinds of interesting ways. Chris Wood and Eliza Carthy did the vocals, and Johnny Kalsi from Dhol Foundation played the dohl – a huge Indian double-headed drum strapped to the front of the body and played with curved sticks.
22 Cheb I Sabbah – Lagi Lagan (6 Degrees)
Cheb I Sabbah is an Algerian-born, San Francisco based DJ, or more correctly coordinator and producer of electronically reinforced recordings of traditional music mainly from North Africa and India. We’re going to hear the north Indian tune “Lagi Lagan”. Bill Laswell, no stranger to this show, supplies the bottom end, and South African Deepak Ram plays the bansuri – an Indian bamboo flute.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
3 March 2010, World Cafe
1 El Rego et Ses Commandos – E nan mian nuku (Analog Africa)
In the late 60s American soul and funk were impacting heavily on the West coast of Africa. A number of bands were getting in on the action, producing what was called “jerk”, often with lyrics in English. El Rego says that he probably recorded the first Beninese jerk tune. That was in 1968. El Rego et Ses Commandos went on to do a number of jerk tracks. “E nan mian nuku” was one – it is collected on the Analog Africa collection “Legends of Benin”.
The CDs from which we’ve culled a number of tracks we’re playing tonight come from Sheer Music, who distribute such great labels as World Music Network, World Circuit, some Real World, Crammed Records and Soundway. Thanks a stack to Sheer.
2 Baaba Maal – Tindo (Palm Pictures)
Baaba Maal’s latest CD, “Television”, was four years in the making. You can hear he has built up the sound through an accretion of layers – much like his landmark album from the 1990s “Firin’ in Fouta”, although “Television” has a more international sound. He co-produced it with Barry Reynolds, a long-time guitar player at the legendary Compass Point Studio in Nassau in the Bahamas.
Didi Gutman and Sabina Sciubba of New York’s latin reggae electro fusion outfit, Brazilian Girls, take a number of the keyboard and song writing and singing credits. Sciubba, who grew up in Nice and Munich, sings with Maal on “Tindo”.
3 Abyssinia Infinite – Gole (Network Medien Gmbh)
Abyssinia Infinite is a collective of Ethiopian and New York based international musicians, including South African, Tony Cedras, with the well known Ethiopian singer, Gigi Shibabaw at the helm. Gigi’s husband, the famous bass-playing producer co-produces with Gigi, and plays acoustic guitar. “Gole” is a very old devotional song, sung half in Amharic and half in an older language, Agewna. Gigi has added some of her own words.
4 Franco & Le TPOK Jazz – Sandoka (Sterns Africa)
Franco is generally recognised as Africa’s top bandleader of recent times. He started his professional career in the 50s as a teenager and by the 80s his band, Le TPOK Jazz, numbered more than 20 players, and he had one foot in Europe and the other in Kinshasa. He came from a poor family, had no formal musical education, but he went on to be one of the key creators of “soukous” - a fusion of Cuban and African rhythms, sometimes called the Congolese rumba, propelled by interlocking guitars. He wrote some of the most enduring songs from the DRC and put together some of the most beautiful vocal arrangements.
Collected on vol 2 of Stern’s “Francophonic” retrospective put out to mark the 20th anniversary of Franco’s death, we’re going to hear “Sandoka”. Ken Braun’s CD notes describe the track very nicely. He says “it involves six voices in chorus and in antiphonal duos and trios, calling to one another, almost in the style of a European Renaissance motet… The vocal parts take roles: a girl named Sandoka, the boy with whom she’s smitten, her parents, and their neighbours.” Basically, the parents object, and the neighbours intercede.
5 Lura – Tabanka (Lusafrica)
Off the coast of Senegal lies Cape Verde, about a third of the way west towards the Caribbean. Its music is often characterised as Afro-Caribbean. Lura, whose parents were from Cape Verde, grew up in Lisbon. Here she does Orlando Pantera’s song, “Tabanka”, in the style of Musica Popular Brasileira (MPB) or popular Brazilian music. Pantera was a songwriter from Cape Verde who died in 2001, having never released any recordings, but whose songs since then have been much recorded. He spent his formative years in Angola, and wound up in Bahia, Brazil, studying percussion – which explains the Brazilian affiliations.
6 Orchestra Poly-Rythmo – Jolie Beaute Africaine (Albarika Store)
Tout Puissant Orchestra Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, from Benin, were one the great West African bands of the 60s, 70s and early 80s, using Caribbean and voodoo rhythms. Up until recently, they have been largely unsung but since the interest from labels like Soundway and Anolog Africa, they have reformed and begun to play again. In fact, they have recently been touring the UK with Oumou Sangare and Kalahari Surfer.
We found this next vintage track, which is based on the rhythm called “cavacha”, on a magnificent blog “Oro” on which you can find quite of a bit of stuff from TP Orchestra Poly-Rythmo as well as loads of other great stuff. There’s a link to Oro on this blog.
7 Sixto Silgado, Paito y Los Gaiteros de Punta Bravo – Merengue Faroto (World Music Network)
Sixto Silgado, Paito and Los Gaiteros de Punta Bravo played some typical drum and fife street music from the Caribbean part of Colombia.
8 Les Triaboliques – Gulaguajira (I, the dissolute prisoner) (World Village)
Les Triaboliques, who we’ve just heard, are string players Ben Mandelson, Lu Edmonds and Justin Adams, who all also happen to be great global collaborators and producers. Here they sing Russian Gleb Gorbovsky’s song “Gulaguajira (I, the dissolute prisoner)”.
9 Lord Pretender – Human Race (World Music Network)
The Rough Guide to Calypso Gold collects rare recordings from the 30s, 40s and 50s. Lord Pretender or Adric Farrel, was one of Calypso’s greats. He was apparently a master of improvisation, being able to pluck choruses and verses from thin air, upon being given random topics.
10 Seprewa Kasa – Towoboase (World Music Network)
Ghanaian group “Seprewa Kasa” play some pretty laid back highlife music. The sound of the band is constructed around two seprewas. The seprewa is related to the kora, but is smaller and has fewer strings. Seprewa playing nearly died out, but according to Kari Banaman, the guitarist from Osibisa who plays in Seprewa Kasa, the instrument is becoming popular again. Banaman worked with Baffour Kyerematen and Osei Korankye to develop a unique sound – each instrument playing in its own tuning. This was done because of the difficulty of tuning two seprewas to each other, and to the guitar.
11 Anzala, Dolor, Velo – Ti fi la ou te madam (Soundway)
From the Soundways collection of 60s and 70s music from the French Caribbean, “Tumbele”, Anzala, Dolor and Velo from Guadeloupe play in a style called gwo-ka, which is strongly afro-caribbean, having its roots in rural plantation music. The irrepressible sax playing is actually atypical of gwo-ko and, on this track, the player is not known. Monsieur Dolor sings, and Velo, a very important figure in Guadeloupe, plays drums together with Anzala.
12 Solomon and Socalled featuring Michael Alpert – alt.shul Kale Bazetsn (Piranha)
Assaulting the traditional institution of marriage, in the fine radical traditional of Yiddish music, next is Sophie Solomon, Josh Dolgin (aka Socalled) and Michael Alpert. Alpert does the traditional hassidic chant vocals. From the Rough Guide to the Klezmer Revolution.
13 Klezmer Klub – G minor ser (Klub Records)
The London-based Klezmer Club is much more conservative-sounding than Solomon and her crew. That was the traditional tune, “G minor ser”. According to the sleeve notes, “a ser is a kind of Jewish square dance”.
14 Mahmoud Fadl – Ana Wehabibi (Piranha)
From an album of Cairo love classics this is Mahmoud Fadl with a composition by Mohamad Abdel Wahaab that Fadl arranged. Samy El Baby plays the qanun, which is a sort of plucked zither with obvious affinities with the koto.
15 Kim So-hee – Kayaguem Sanjo (Elektra/Wea)
The kayaguem sanjo is a koto-type instrument from Korea. That piece was played by virtuoso player Sung Keum-Yun, and it comes from a CD of equally startling music from the P’ansor tradition of Korean Opera, credited to singer Kim So-hee and released in 1988. It’s out of print now, but you can borrow it from the Cape Town Public Library.
16 Davy Graham – Bruton Town (Fledg’ling)
Acoustic guitar from the English folk revival which started in the 60s never sounded the same after Davy Graham’s debut. He introduced different tunings, Eastern modal scales and rhythms that were all over the map. Here he is with the equally innovative Danny Thompson on bass with a 1968 recording of the traditional song, “Bruton Town”.
17 Brass Monkey – The trees they grow high (Topic)
Brass Monkey are also innovators on the English folk scene – as you heard, they have introduced brass instruments in fabulous arrangements, which include the accordion, into traditional ballad playing.
18 Espers – Meridian (Drag City)
Espers are folk-rock revivalists from the US.
19 Extra Golden – Piny yore yore (Thrill Jockey Records)
Extra Golden released their third album in 2009, “Thank you very quickly”. Extra Golden were originally a combination of Otieno Jagwasi and Onyango Wuod Omari from Kenyan group Orchestra Extra Solar Africa, Alex Minoff from US group Golden, and Ian Eagleson. The collaboration grew out of Eagleson’s research project documenting the Benga music of Kenya, which Jagwasi helped him with. Jagwasi died in 2005.
20 Maddy Prior & Tim Hart – Of all the birds (Sanctuary)
Off their “Heydays” box set, here is Maddy Prior & Tim Hart with “Of all the birds”.
21 Frank Fairfield – Cumberland Gap (Tompkins Square)
Frank Fairfield, a young up and coming traditionalist from the LA area, gives us his version of “Cumberland Gap”.
22 Bert Jansch – Blackwaterside (Vanguard)
A version of “Blackwaterside” recorded in 1966. Jansch was one of the first to pick up on Davy Graham’s radical guitar stylings, and perhaps even his vocal style.
23 Levon Helm – Kingfish (Dirt Farmer Music/Vanguard)
Levon Helm’s version of Randy Newman’s “Kingfish” taken from Helm’s latest CD, “Electric Dirt”. The Kingfish was actually Huey Long, the 40th Governor of Louisiana, who governed between 1928 and 1932 at the height of the Great Depression, and was Senator after that. He created a social programme in 1934 called “Share our wealth”, which had the motto “Every man a king” – a line you’ll hear in the song. He died at the age of 42 of gunshot wounds administered by his own bodyguards, but it’s not clear whether he was assassinated or accidentally shot in an attempt to stave off what looked like a an attempted assassination by a stranger.
In the late 60s American soul and funk were impacting heavily on the West coast of Africa. A number of bands were getting in on the action, producing what was called “jerk”, often with lyrics in English. El Rego says that he probably recorded the first Beninese jerk tune. That was in 1968. El Rego et Ses Commandos went on to do a number of jerk tracks. “E nan mian nuku” was one – it is collected on the Analog Africa collection “Legends of Benin”.
The CDs from which we’ve culled a number of tracks we’re playing tonight come from Sheer Music, who distribute such great labels as World Music Network, World Circuit, some Real World, Crammed Records and Soundway. Thanks a stack to Sheer.
2 Baaba Maal – Tindo (Palm Pictures)
Baaba Maal’s latest CD, “Television”, was four years in the making. You can hear he has built up the sound through an accretion of layers – much like his landmark album from the 1990s “Firin’ in Fouta”, although “Television” has a more international sound. He co-produced it with Barry Reynolds, a long-time guitar player at the legendary Compass Point Studio in Nassau in the Bahamas.
Didi Gutman and Sabina Sciubba of New York’s latin reggae electro fusion outfit, Brazilian Girls, take a number of the keyboard and song writing and singing credits. Sciubba, who grew up in Nice and Munich, sings with Maal on “Tindo”.
3 Abyssinia Infinite – Gole (Network Medien Gmbh)
Abyssinia Infinite is a collective of Ethiopian and New York based international musicians, including South African, Tony Cedras, with the well known Ethiopian singer, Gigi Shibabaw at the helm. Gigi’s husband, the famous bass-playing producer co-produces with Gigi, and plays acoustic guitar. “Gole” is a very old devotional song, sung half in Amharic and half in an older language, Agewna. Gigi has added some of her own words.
4 Franco & Le TPOK Jazz – Sandoka (Sterns Africa)
Franco is generally recognised as Africa’s top bandleader of recent times. He started his professional career in the 50s as a teenager and by the 80s his band, Le TPOK Jazz, numbered more than 20 players, and he had one foot in Europe and the other in Kinshasa. He came from a poor family, had no formal musical education, but he went on to be one of the key creators of “soukous” - a fusion of Cuban and African rhythms, sometimes called the Congolese rumba, propelled by interlocking guitars. He wrote some of the most enduring songs from the DRC and put together some of the most beautiful vocal arrangements.
Collected on vol 2 of Stern’s “Francophonic” retrospective put out to mark the 20th anniversary of Franco’s death, we’re going to hear “Sandoka”. Ken Braun’s CD notes describe the track very nicely. He says “it involves six voices in chorus and in antiphonal duos and trios, calling to one another, almost in the style of a European Renaissance motet… The vocal parts take roles: a girl named Sandoka, the boy with whom she’s smitten, her parents, and their neighbours.” Basically, the parents object, and the neighbours intercede.
5 Lura – Tabanka (Lusafrica)
Off the coast of Senegal lies Cape Verde, about a third of the way west towards the Caribbean. Its music is often characterised as Afro-Caribbean. Lura, whose parents were from Cape Verde, grew up in Lisbon. Here she does Orlando Pantera’s song, “Tabanka”, in the style of Musica Popular Brasileira (MPB) or popular Brazilian music. Pantera was a songwriter from Cape Verde who died in 2001, having never released any recordings, but whose songs since then have been much recorded. He spent his formative years in Angola, and wound up in Bahia, Brazil, studying percussion – which explains the Brazilian affiliations.
6 Orchestra Poly-Rythmo – Jolie Beaute Africaine (Albarika Store)
Tout Puissant Orchestra Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, from Benin, were one the great West African bands of the 60s, 70s and early 80s, using Caribbean and voodoo rhythms. Up until recently, they have been largely unsung but since the interest from labels like Soundway and Anolog Africa, they have reformed and begun to play again. In fact, they have recently been touring the UK with Oumou Sangare and Kalahari Surfer.
We found this next vintage track, which is based on the rhythm called “cavacha”, on a magnificent blog “Oro” on which you can find quite of a bit of stuff from TP Orchestra Poly-Rythmo as well as loads of other great stuff. There’s a link to Oro on this blog.
7 Sixto Silgado, Paito y Los Gaiteros de Punta Bravo – Merengue Faroto (World Music Network)
Sixto Silgado, Paito and Los Gaiteros de Punta Bravo played some typical drum and fife street music from the Caribbean part of Colombia.
8 Les Triaboliques – Gulaguajira (I, the dissolute prisoner) (World Village)
Les Triaboliques, who we’ve just heard, are string players Ben Mandelson, Lu Edmonds and Justin Adams, who all also happen to be great global collaborators and producers. Here they sing Russian Gleb Gorbovsky’s song “Gulaguajira (I, the dissolute prisoner)”.
9 Lord Pretender – Human Race (World Music Network)
The Rough Guide to Calypso Gold collects rare recordings from the 30s, 40s and 50s. Lord Pretender or Adric Farrel, was one of Calypso’s greats. He was apparently a master of improvisation, being able to pluck choruses and verses from thin air, upon being given random topics.
10 Seprewa Kasa – Towoboase (World Music Network)
Ghanaian group “Seprewa Kasa” play some pretty laid back highlife music. The sound of the band is constructed around two seprewas. The seprewa is related to the kora, but is smaller and has fewer strings. Seprewa playing nearly died out, but according to Kari Banaman, the guitarist from Osibisa who plays in Seprewa Kasa, the instrument is becoming popular again. Banaman worked with Baffour Kyerematen and Osei Korankye to develop a unique sound – each instrument playing in its own tuning. This was done because of the difficulty of tuning two seprewas to each other, and to the guitar.
11 Anzala, Dolor, Velo – Ti fi la ou te madam (Soundway)
From the Soundways collection of 60s and 70s music from the French Caribbean, “Tumbele”, Anzala, Dolor and Velo from Guadeloupe play in a style called gwo-ka, which is strongly afro-caribbean, having its roots in rural plantation music. The irrepressible sax playing is actually atypical of gwo-ko and, on this track, the player is not known. Monsieur Dolor sings, and Velo, a very important figure in Guadeloupe, plays drums together with Anzala.
12 Solomon and Socalled featuring Michael Alpert – alt.shul Kale Bazetsn (Piranha)
Assaulting the traditional institution of marriage, in the fine radical traditional of Yiddish music, next is Sophie Solomon, Josh Dolgin (aka Socalled) and Michael Alpert. Alpert does the traditional hassidic chant vocals. From the Rough Guide to the Klezmer Revolution.
13 Klezmer Klub – G minor ser (Klub Records)
The London-based Klezmer Club is much more conservative-sounding than Solomon and her crew. That was the traditional tune, “G minor ser”. According to the sleeve notes, “a ser is a kind of Jewish square dance”.
14 Mahmoud Fadl – Ana Wehabibi (Piranha)
From an album of Cairo love classics this is Mahmoud Fadl with a composition by Mohamad Abdel Wahaab that Fadl arranged. Samy El Baby plays the qanun, which is a sort of plucked zither with obvious affinities with the koto.
15 Kim So-hee – Kayaguem Sanjo (Elektra/Wea)
The kayaguem sanjo is a koto-type instrument from Korea. That piece was played by virtuoso player Sung Keum-Yun, and it comes from a CD of equally startling music from the P’ansor tradition of Korean Opera, credited to singer Kim So-hee and released in 1988. It’s out of print now, but you can borrow it from the Cape Town Public Library.
16 Davy Graham – Bruton Town (Fledg’ling)
Acoustic guitar from the English folk revival which started in the 60s never sounded the same after Davy Graham’s debut. He introduced different tunings, Eastern modal scales and rhythms that were all over the map. Here he is with the equally innovative Danny Thompson on bass with a 1968 recording of the traditional song, “Bruton Town”.
17 Brass Monkey – The trees they grow high (Topic)
Brass Monkey are also innovators on the English folk scene – as you heard, they have introduced brass instruments in fabulous arrangements, which include the accordion, into traditional ballad playing.
18 Espers – Meridian (Drag City)
Espers are folk-rock revivalists from the US.
19 Extra Golden – Piny yore yore (Thrill Jockey Records)
Extra Golden released their third album in 2009, “Thank you very quickly”. Extra Golden were originally a combination of Otieno Jagwasi and Onyango Wuod Omari from Kenyan group Orchestra Extra Solar Africa, Alex Minoff from US group Golden, and Ian Eagleson. The collaboration grew out of Eagleson’s research project documenting the Benga music of Kenya, which Jagwasi helped him with. Jagwasi died in 2005.
20 Maddy Prior & Tim Hart – Of all the birds (Sanctuary)
Off their “Heydays” box set, here is Maddy Prior & Tim Hart with “Of all the birds”.
21 Frank Fairfield – Cumberland Gap (Tompkins Square)
Frank Fairfield, a young up and coming traditionalist from the LA area, gives us his version of “Cumberland Gap”.
22 Bert Jansch – Blackwaterside (Vanguard)
A version of “Blackwaterside” recorded in 1966. Jansch was one of the first to pick up on Davy Graham’s radical guitar stylings, and perhaps even his vocal style.
23 Levon Helm – Kingfish (Dirt Farmer Music/Vanguard)
Levon Helm’s version of Randy Newman’s “Kingfish” taken from Helm’s latest CD, “Electric Dirt”. The Kingfish was actually Huey Long, the 40th Governor of Louisiana, who governed between 1928 and 1932 at the height of the Great Depression, and was Senator after that. He created a social programme in 1934 called “Share our wealth”, which had the motto “Every man a king” – a line you’ll hear in the song. He died at the age of 42 of gunshot wounds administered by his own bodyguards, but it’s not clear whether he was assassinated or accidentally shot in an attempt to stave off what looked like a an attempted assassination by a stranger.
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