4 August 2010, World Cafe

1 Thomas Mapfumo - Mukadzi wangu (My wife) (Real World Records)

Thomas Mapfumo more or less pioneered the chimurenga sound in the mid- to late-70s during the liberation war in Zimbabwe. Mapfumo has been exiled from Zimbabwe for a number of years. "Mukadzi wangu" was recorded in Oregon, in the US, about 5 years back. The tune comes from the album "Rise Up", which although not uniformly brilliant, has lots of great moments.

Chimurenga is often referred to as "electric mbira". Its tunes and rhythms are built on traditional songs, but instead of using just mbiras, chimurenga interlocks mbiras with electric guitars and electric guitars with themselves to sound like mbiras - and has a kind of yodeling vocal style and distinctive drumming based on traditional shakers.

2 Hallelujah Chicken Run Band - Kare nanhasi (Analog Africa)

The Hallelujah Chicken Run Band operated during the time that chimurenga was being developed, and Thomas Mapfumo passed through their ranks at some point. But so did quite a few other Zimbabwean players, who added their influences - Shona traditional, benga, Congolese rumba. "Kare nanhasi" is pretty unclassifiable. Just exuberant Southern African music, despite its dismal subject matter: high prices and unaffordable basics, including, horrifyingly, beer; and perhaps, unintentionally, the theme of history repeating itself.

3 Enzo Avitabile and Bottari - Tarantella bruna (Wrasse Records)

Barrels, tubs and sickles are the main instruments of Enzo Avitabile and Bottari. Avitabile originates from Naples and is a veteran of the Italian pop scene, albeit on the jazzy, crossover side. About 10 years back he started to get into 14th century peasant music. It's music based on processional rhythms and legend has it that it comes from farmers banging on barrels to chase away evil spirits from the dark corners of the cellars. Avitabile did more - he added biggish-name African musicians into the mix. On "Tarentella Bruna" Baba Sissoko supplies the ngoni. A trivial point: Parts of the album from whence this track comes were recorded in the CSR Studio in Bryanston, Jhb.

4 Gaitieros de Lesboa - Nem fraco nem forte (Sony BMG)

More music from Southern Europe - this time, Portugal. Gaitieros de Lesboa fuse rustic vocal polyphony, bagpipe music from Galicia and other parts of the old Celtic world, and medieval processional rhythms mostly on instruments they've invented or subverted.

They have a great website, where they explain why they called themselves "Bagpipes of Lisbon", when there are no bagpipes in Lisbon. From that website: "Maybe it's because in Portugal the word "gaita" has many meanings. Our bagpipes are everything we grab in search for a sound, reinventing hurdy-gurdies, finding harmonies which were until now unknown to our throats, stretching animal skins, trying to make percussion out of whatever others step on, detuning bagpipes and tuning electrical conduit pipes."

5 Orchestre Zaiko Langa Langa - Katshi (African)

Orchestre Zaiko Langa Langa is another well known Congolese rumba band - really the second wave of soukous after TPOK jazz and their followers made it big. They play music influenced by rock and the shanty town music of Kinshasa and have a slightly edgier sound. "Katshi" was record in 1978.

6 Konono No 1 - Konono wa wa wa (Crammed Discs)

Definitely from the rawer side of the current Kinshasa scene - in fact from the streets and the shanty towns - off Konono No 1's latest album "Assume the Crash Position". One of Zaiko Langa Langa's founding guitarists, Pepe Feli Manuaku, guests on the album.

Here is an apt quote from a review in fROOTS magazine about "Assume the Crash Position": "violently amplified, wildly distorted likembes - bass, middle, tremble - reverberating over a killer percussion section uniting the intricate detail of Congolese village music with the power of Tesla."

7 Kathryn Tickell - Tiger's first bird (Park)

One of Northumbrian piper, fiddle player and composer, Kathryn Tickell's, own tunes.

8 Kris Drever - The Banks of the Nile (Concord)

Kris Drever, a young Scottish traditional singer-guitarist released his second album, "Mark the Hard Earth", a few months back. Most of it I find a bit soggy on first listen, but it does have a sublime arrangement of the traditional ballad, "The Banks of the Nile". John McCusker produces and plays the fiddle and Irish singer Heidi Talbot is the other voice.

9 Ba Cissoko - On veut se marier (Totolo)

From Guinea, Ba Cissoko plays an electric kora. "On veut se marier" comes off "Electric Griot Land". No guessing who one of Cissoko's main heroes is. He teams up with probably the most popular modern African reggae star, Tiken Jah Fakoly, from the home of African reggae, Abidjan, in Cote d'Ivoire. Not afraid of speaking his mind on corruption and anti-democratic behaviour, Fakoly now lives in exile (in fact he's been exiled again from his first country of exile). But he's not exactly uncontroversial; he's been a participant in the reggae wars between rival political factions that is a feature of the broader civil war in Cote d'Ivoire. Recently, however, he seems to have mellowed and is now singing about tolerance and peace.

10 Page One and the Observers - Observers style (Carib Gems Music)

Winston "Niney" Holness, in his guise as Page One and the Observers, with a tune from 1976. He apparently calls himself The Observer to rival Lee Perry's moniker, The Upsetter. He's definitely up there with the greats.

11 King Tubby & the Upsetters - Chant down rub a dub (Live and Love)

King Tubby dubbing up the Upsetters in 1981.

12 The Gatherers - Words of my mouth (Trojan)

A Lee Perry production of the short-lived teenage vocal trio, The Gatherers, circa 1973. Lee Perry would recycle that song and its rhythm a number of times.

13 Super Eagles - Sock it to me (Decca)

14 El Rego et Ses Commandos - Feeling you got (Analog Africa)

15 Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo de Cotonou - Gbeti Madjro (Analog Africa)

I was reading the sleeve notes to Analog Africa's collection "African Scream Contest" the other day. It lays out a sort of sonic history of Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou's first hit in Benin which was called "Gbeti Madjro". "Gbeti was a "jerk" tune - and jerk is basically American 60s soul and funk, given an African workover. The story starts in Gambia with the Super Eagles' massive 1969 hit, "Sock it to me" - which is a more or less straight imitation of blues and soul-based Western pop.

El Rego basically ripped off that track for Benin with the help of Ghanaian singer Eddy Black Power, calling it "Feeling you got", and providing the template for many jerk tunes in Benin, including those by Poly-Rhythmo. It would be the launch pad for Poly-Rhythmo's distinctive sound. Poly-Rhythmo speeded things up with some funky drumming and lifted a frenetically spiky guitar to the front of the mix. Lorento Eskill's spirited singing was the final ingredient.

Those last two tracks come off two different Anolog Africa collections, "African Scream Contest" and "Legends of Benin".

16 The Mellotone Sisters - Kudude Kulezontaba (King Label)

17 Mahotella Queens - Asambeni bafana (Earthworks)

Two great vocal groups from the golden age of mbaqanga that we've heard on this show before, The Mellotone Sisters (with, strangely enough, ne'er a sisterly voice to be heard) and the Mahotella Queens.

18 Busi Mhlongo - The Crocodile (EMI)

Busi Mhlongo with an alternative to the "Click Song" - "The Crocodile".

19 Twins Seven-Seven and his Gold Carbretas - Totobiroko (Soundway)

Twins Seven-Seven got his name from being the sole survivor in a line of seven sets of twins from the Oshogbo royal family in Nigeria. He's also an actor, poet, writer and painter and a musician who is very tied up in the Yoruba culture. Probably the only xylophone player we are ever going to have on this show - and when I say xylophone, I am talking the real item. This come from the newish Soundway compilation - "Nigeria Special: Vol 2".

20 Tony Allen - Ijo (World Circuit)

Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen from Nigeria, trying to lay out a case for how great Afrobeat is. Claude Dibonque from Cameroon, who is Allen's regular guitarist, supplies one of the guitars, and keyboardist and co-producer Fixi the stellar horn arrangements. Orobiyi Adunni (AYO) is on vocals and lyrics - perhaps the element that gels the least - but the other elements more than compensate.

This is off a fabulous 2009 album, "Secret Agent", and like Bousseka Kouyate's "Speak Fula", you need to go out and get it.

21 Martin Simpson - Swooping Molly (Topic)

Martin Simpson is a finger-style guitarist, following about a half step chronologically (but not in ability) behind the guitar greats of the English folk revival: Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, Martin Carthy, Nic Jones. He has an extremely dexterous, fluid approach with an arsenal of American blues and old time techniques. Here he is with the traditional piece "Swooping Molly" off last year's "True Stories" album.

22 Julie Fowlis - Brogan ur agam a-nochd (I have new shoes tonight) - The cat and dog - Mu chuacheg's laghach thu (Spit and Polish)

Julie Fowlis, a bright singer on the Scottish folk scene, with a medley of three traditional tunes.

23 Mary Gauthier - Another day borrowed (Proper)

New Orleans-raised Mary Gauthier's new album, "The Foundling", draws on her early life story before she opened a restaurant and then became a singer-songwriter. It's about abandonment, adoption, and finding an identity without the guidance of blood parents.

Thanks to Cathy Hutchings for telling me about and letting me listen to all the Americana and Anglocana featured up to this point on this show. Much appreciated.

24 Seasick Steve - Happy to have a job (Atlantic)

Seasick Steve from his 2009 album, "Man from another time".

25 Robert Johnson - If I had possession of judgement day (Columbia)

This is a slower version than you would have normally heard. Blogger Moos from Global Groove has deliberately slowed it down, because he's of the school of thought that thinks that somehow in production, the original recording got speeded up. Could be a crock, who knows? You can weigh into the debate on the Global Groove blog.

26 Paban das Baul - Modena (Riverboat)

Earlier this year Paban das Baul released an album of stripped down spiritual songs of the Bauls, as the mystic minstrels of Bengal are called. This music features jew's harp pretty centrally.

27 Tran Quang Hai - Memories of Norway (Playa Sound)

Jew's harps are found around the world. The one found in Norway is called the "munnharp" and is metallic. Tran Quang Hai, the Vietmanese ethnomusicologist demonstrates it with the piece he calls, with much imagination, "Memories of Norway".

28 Hednigarna - Bulldog (East Side Inc)

Still in Scandanavia, Hednigarna here sound quite uncharacteristically straight up acoustic, with an arrangement of a traditional tune.

29 Christian Wallumrod Ensemble - Jumpa (ECM Records)

Christian Wallumrod is a Norwegian pianist and composer. Here he explores the linkages between early music, Scandinavian dance music and jazz. "Jumpa" comes off his 2009 album "Fabula Suite Lugano".