1 Mercedes Peon – Anacos (Fol Musica)
From the Spanish northwestern province of Galicia, and sung in Gallego, the original language of the region. Peon plays nearly all the instruments on her newish record, “Sos”, which came out earlier this year – in fact about 20 instruments in all, and does most of the singing, producing and composing too.
2 Chet Nuneta – Roseda vieja sirena (Le Chant du Monde)
Shifting a little eastward to France, Chet Nuneta are four singers and a percussionist, who go for very rootsy peasant-sounding fusions. “Roseda vieja sirena” seems to be some kind of amalgam of French and Spanish – possibly Catalan? It comes from the new CD “Pangea” out on the Le Chant du Monde label.
3 Akale Wube – Mètché New (L’Arome Productions)
Akale Wube are a Paris-based French Ethiojazz band set up in 2008 who take their name from a tune by Getatchew Mekurya, the legendary veteran Ethiopian sax player. “Akale Wube” is Amharic for “Beauty of the Soul”. On their 2011 LP they do lovely versions of classic Ethiojazz tracks, mainly by Mulatu Astatke. “Mètché New” was written by the comparatively obscure singer, Téshomé Sissay.
4 Mahmoud Ahmed – Bemin Sebab Litlash (Mississippi Records)
Mahmoud Ahmed was one of the absolute greats of the early 70s Addis scene, and he’s still going strong. A bunch of his stuff from the so-called Golden Age has been available through the series “Ethiopiques” for some time now. “Bemin Sebab Litlash” is from 1978, just after the Golden Age, when the Derg had already started in Ethiopia, from the LP “Jeguol Naw Betwa” just reissued by Mississippi Records. His long-time backing band, the Ibex Band, is full cry on this tune.
5 Addis Acoustic Project – Etitu Beredegn (World Village)
The Addis Acoustic Project is one of the resident bands at the Jazzamba Lounge, Addis’s premier jazz venue which only opened in June this year in a space that had been derelict for 20 years. Their stuff is often a bit too smooth for comfort, but the mandolin playing by veteran Ayele Mamo is worth the entry price. They say that Mamo is the only mandolin player in Addis.
6 Bako Dagnon – Fadeen To (Styllart)
Malian Bako Dagnon is sometimes called the griot’s griot – although she is not very well known in global circles, she is in fact a mentor to Kandia Kouyate, recognized as one of the top jelimusos, or female griots. After an accident early on in her career, Dagnon has largely been working in the background, learning, promoting and preserving singing traditions at a village level, in the Segou area near to Bamako, where her family hail from. After 50 years she’s only produced two internationally-released albums, her second one coming out this year. It’s called “Sidiba”. Check out the flamenco guitar licks on “Fadeen To”.
7 Fatoumata Diawara – Bakonoba (World Circuit)
28 year old, Paris-based Malian, Fatoumata Diawara, exploded as a solo artist on the international stage just this year – although she’s been working as a backing singer and actor for many years. Her debut CD “Fatou”, out on World Circuit, is quite an understated slightly poppy affair, and is pretty wonderful.
8 JuJu – Halanam (Real World)
A few months ago I had several positive responses from listeners when I played something off Juldeh Camara and Justin Adam’s latest CD “In Trance”. Let’s listen to another one – “Halanam”. By the way, they are now calling themselves JuJu, and their CD is available in SA courtesy of Sheer Music – one of the top releases of the year I’d say.
9 Fikret Kizilok - Gozlerinden Bellidir (World Psychedelia)
From Turkey, the hopelessly obscure, cultish early 70s protest singer Fikret Kizilok. I culled the single “Gozlerinden Bellidir” from an underground reissue made in 2005 of his original singles. If you look hard enough, you’ll be able to find his stuff on the web.
10 Georgette Sayegh – Yay, Yay, Ya Nassini (EMI Greece)
When I was researching the next two tracks I turned up this quote by one Jim Knox: “Lebanese popular music was peaking in 1974 but the civil war that started one year later laid it all to ruin”. The Ghost Capital blog dug up “Yay, Yay, Ya Nassini”, recorded in 1973, from a holiday souvenir LP collection for Lebanon brought out by an airline.
11 Fairouz – Ba’adana (EMI)
Nouhad Wadi Haddad, known as Fairuz, is probably the top living singer of the Arab world. She’s now in her mid 70s but still very much performing. “Ba’adana” was recorded in 1966.
12 Brendon Bussy in collaboration with Renee Holleman – If walls could talk would they sing (played with permission of artist)
A few months ago, Cape Town composer and musician Brendon Bussy collaborated with artist Renee Holleman with “If walls could talk would they sing”. The piece was written for the opening of the new premises of the “WhatIfTheWorld” gallery at the old synagogue in Argyle Road, Woodstock – an area that now has a significant Muslim community. Bussy explains in a fascinating blog entry that on Holleman’s suggestion he used a Jewish scale Ahava Rabbah (meaning ‘Abounding Love’ in Hebrew) as a basis for the tune. It turns out that this scale is the same as the Freygish mode used in Klezmer and the Hijaz Makam used in Arabic music. There’s a lot more at work in this piece – and I would suggest checking out Brendon Bussy’s blog entry http://brendonbussy.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/if-walls-could-talk-would-they-sing/#more-616
13 Rashanim – Avodah (Tzadik)
Power jazz trio Rashanim with “Avodah”. Rashanim is one of the groups appearing on Tzadik’s 2003 release “Voices in the wilderness” - a double-disk collection of John Zorn’s free-jazz tinged klezmer compositions interpreted by a whole range of groups.
14 Wolf Krakowski – Drey, Dreydl (Sion Dreydl) (Tzadik)
Toronto-based Wolf Krakowski’s home language is Yiddish. He was born just after the end of WW2 in a camp for displaced persons in Austria, his Russian parents having survived the Holocaust. His countryesque arrangement of the traditional tune “Drey, Dreydl” is also out on Tzadik – on the CD “Goyrl: Destiny”.
15 Norman Blake – Little Sadi (Mercury)
It’s been 10 years since the release of “O Brother Where Art Thou?” and its soundtrack spurred a big resurgence of rootsy Americana. Mercury have just released a deluxe edition in celebration, which includes tracks recorded by producer T-Bone Burnett and not used in the movie, and stuff used in the movie but not released on the first incarnation of the soundtrack. Let’s listen to two tracks only available on the deluxe edition.
Norman Blake’s version of “Little Sadi” was recorded for the movie, but not used.
16 The Kossoy Sisters with Erik Darling – I’ll fly away (Mercury)
The Kossoy Sisters with 5 string banjo player Erik Darling’s version of “I’ll fly away” recorded in 1956. This was the version actually used in the movie, although a version by Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch came out on the official soundtrack. Both versions are great, if you ask me. The Kossoy Sisters are actual sisters – in fact they’re identical twins.
17 June Tabor & Oysterband – Bonny Bunch of Roses (Topic)
June Tabor’s been pretty active this year – she put out a solo record earlier this year called “Ashore”, and we’ve listened to some tunes from that. A few months ago she also put out something with the Oysterband called “Ragged Kingdom”. The trad song “Bonny Bunch of Roses” is quite sympathetic to Napoleon, which means that it’s probably Irish in origin.
18 Bert Jansch – Nottamun Town (Vanguard)
“Nottamun Town” is another traditional song. It might date from the late medieval period and might be about the English Civil War as Charles I raised his army around Nottingham at the beginning of the war. The very great and unfortunately late Bert Jansch died in October. The tune is from Jansch’s classic album, “Jack Orion,” in which he plays with John Renbourne. This album is considered a precursor to the kind of music Jansch and Renbourne played in the folk-rock group Pentangle.
19 Syd Kitchen – Fine Lines (Liaison Music)
Another big loss to folk circles this year was Syd Kitchen. Before he died he was invited to contribute a track to the tribute album to John Martyn. He recorded Martyn’s song “Fine Lines” with Martyn’s most recent backing band in Scotland. The PVC pipe has never sounded this good!
20 Lee Perry & Dub Syndicate – Music + Science Lovers (On U-Sound)
Lee Perry was actually a friend of John Martyn – they hung together in Jamaica in the mid 70s. “Music + Science Lovers” was recorded with the Dub Syndicate with Adrian Sherwood producing. It’s from the mid 80s album “Time Boom X De Devil Dead” – a great creative collaboration and one of the only really great things he’s put out since the 70s.
21 Bob Marley & The Wailers – Reaction (JAD)
In just about every show over the last while I’ve been spinning high points from Lee Perry’s career. Such a review wouldn’t be complete without listening to his production work for Bob Marley done in 1970 and 71. “Reaction” is from the LP “Soul Rebels”.
22 Aldona – You could carry me away (Jaro Medien)
Aldona is Poland-born Aldona Nowowiejska together with a stellar band that features a bunch of string instruments including the guembri, and the bass clarinet against the normal rhythm section. “You could carry me away” is from her 2011 CD “Sonnet”.
23 Olafur Arnalds – 33:26 (Erased Tapes)
From Paris to Poland and now to the Arctic Circle – Iceland has a rapidly expanding and pretty varied music scene, mainly driven by tech-savvy youngsters who do everything on a small DIY scale but come up with sweeping fusions informed by rock, folk, jazz and Western chamber music – but that’s chamber music with attitude and edge. Olafur Arnald is one of the prime movers in Iceland. Thanks to Douglas Gimberg for introducing me to this stuff.
24 Hauschka – Cube (Fat Cat)
Volker Bertelmann aka Hauschka is a Dusseldorf-based musician and composer whose main instrument is something called the prepared piano. He has played with a bunch of Icelandic musicians. This is from his 2011 release, called “Salon des amateurs”.
25 Hauschka and Hildur Guðnadóttir – Cool Gray 1 (Sonic Pieces)
Hauschka on the prepared piano and with Iceland’s Hildur Ingveldardóttir Guðnadóttir on cello. “Cool Gray” is from their 2011 release “Pan Tone”.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
2 November 2011, World Cafe
1 Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 – African Soldiers (Because) (Rilwan Fagbemi)
Seun Kuti together with his band Egypt 80, the 12-piece band he inherited from his father, Fela Kuti. He’s upped the beats per minute from the normal Afrobeat fare, and the anger’s ratcheted way up there too. “African Soldier” is a tirade against former soldiers who become dictators and keep themselves in power for decades. It’s from their 2011 album, “From Africa with fury: Rise”, which Brian Eno, a long-time Afrobeat enthusiast, co-produced.
2 Vieux Farka Toure – Aigna (feat. Derek Trucks) (Six Degrees)
Speaking of sons of great musicians, Vieux Farka Toure, son of Ali Farka Toure, put out a wonderful record earlier this year, “The Secret”. We listened to a collaboration with John Scofield a few months ago. “Aigna” features the American blues guitar prodigy and Allman Brothers Band member, Derek Trucks, on some sitar-like slide guitar.
3 Bembeya Jazz National – Alalake (Syliphone)
Sekou “Diamond Fingers” Diabate plays some incredible pedal steel. It comes from an album recorded in the mid 70s dedicated to former member, singer and composer, Aboubacar Demba, who died in a car crash in 1973.
4 Gnonnas Pedro and his Dadjes Band International – Fini les pavés (African Songs Ltd)
Gnonnas Pedro is a great singer from the 70s Benin scene. “Fini les pavés” is from the original vinyl LP put out by the label African Songs Ltd in 1977 called “The Band of Africa, vol 3”.
5 Fatoumata Diwara – Nayan (World Circuit)
Fatoumata Diawara (aka Fatou) from Mali has just put out her first album on World Circuit, called “Fatou”– and it’s sort of in the quiet, independent singer-songwriter spirit of Rokia Traore, who is actually a friend of hers, and who inspired Diawara to accompany herself on guitar. But she also draws on the Wassoulou traditions of her parents and of her mentor, Oumara Sangare.
Diawara’s 28 year history has been one of fierce independence – she started out as a film actor in Mali, having been sent to live with her aunt, also an actor, in Bamoko by her parents after she refused to continue with school. Then she became a stage actor, and literally escaped to Paris, after her parents tried to curtail her career. She was discovered as a singer, started performing in stage shows around the world, and has wound up singing with Cheikh Lô, AfroCubism, Herbie Hancock and Orchestra Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou.
“Nayan” is from an EP called “Kanou” that preceded the album. We’ll hear something from the full album in December.
6 Tinariwen – Imidiwan Win Sahara (Anti-)
Tinariwen, probably the most well-known Tuareg band, have a new album out, “Tassili”, named after Tassili N’Ajjer in southern Algeria, where it was recorded. Tassili is a place where Tamashek guerrillas took refuge en route to Mali. Its rocks and caves are a world heritage site. The album is somewhat more acoustic and less overtly political than recent ones. You have to love the group hum on this tune.
7 Genticorum – Reel Circulaire (Roues et Archets)
Québécois music off Genticorum's latest album “Nagez Rameurs”, which is based around the theme of maritime voyages. Québécois is an amalgam of French, Irish, Scottish and Breton traditions.
At the centre of this tune is song collector and fiddler Pascal Gemme , who first heard traditional Québécois music as a child in Huntingdon, Quebec, where his grandfather was the village fiddler.
8 Bee Dehotels - Aux Natchitoches (Cinq Planetes)
Nova Scotia, one of the Canada’s maritime provinces, is just east of Quebec. It used to be known as Acadia, and is where the forbearers of the Louisianan Cajuns came from. In the mid-70s, the label "Cinq Planètes” put out a wonderful set of recordings made in the homes of the musician and Cajun revivalist Dewey Balfa and painter Eraste Fontenot, both of whose families are very well known on the Cajun scene. The recordings were made for a film project on legendary masters of cajun and creole music called “Les haricots sont pas salés” – “the beans are not salted”. Bee Dehotels apparently specialized in old Cajun French ballads.
9 Vielleux du Bourbonnais – Bourrée A Malochet-Bourrée d’Alfred Pommier (Auvidis)
Bagpipe and hurdy-gurdy music was one of the traditions the original French settlers brought with them when they settled in Acadia in the 1600s. French group Vielleux du Bourbonnais take their music from the manuscripts of late nineteenth-century collectors, who in turn collected and transcribed older tunes passed down orally.
10 Andreas Schaerer & Banz Oester – Finger Maxu (Unit Records)
In July Prohelvetia brought vocalist Andreas Schaerer and bassist Banz Oester to South Africa. If you saw them playing at the Fugard Theatre you were probably either perplexed or blown away – actually you were probably both at the same time. As they would say, they “instantly composed” a fusion of a bewildering array of styles and traditions.
11 Vezhliviy Otkaz – Russian song (Zenith/Soyuz)
Vezhliviy Otkaz are from Moscow. Their name apparently means “Polite Refusal”.
12 Jermain Tamraz – Doogle Shapireh (Assyrian)
Jermain Tamraz is another great 70s middle-eastern singer. I know she’s Assyrian, although I’m not whether she came from Syria or Iraq.
13 Gulcan Opel – Tamammi (Bouzouki Joe)
The Turkish singer Gulcan Opel with the tune “Tamammi” reissued in 2011 by Bouzouki Joe on the collection “Turkish Freakout 2: Psych-Folk 1970-78”. The track was produced by Arif Sag, a singer, bağlama virtuoso, Turkish folk music founder and academic, and former MP in the Turkish parliament.
14 The Golden Ring – The Lost (Persianna)
Another Arif or Aref prominent in modern Middle Eastern music is Aref Arefkia. He’s just as famous in Iran as Googoosh, but unlike her left Iran in 1979 at the time of the revolution. In his early days, in the 60s, he was a member of the Tehran garage band, The Golden Ring. “The Lost” off a recent reissue: “The Golden Ring: Iranian Styled 60s Garage and other exotic sounds”.
15 African Head Charge – Throw it away (On U Sound)
Continuing our celebration of 30 years of the British reggae and dub label, On-U Sound, the tune comes from African Head Charge’s fourth album “Off the beaten track” which came out in 1986.
16 Lee Perry – Rise Again (M.O.D. Technologies)
On-U Sound’s Adrian Sherwood has produced a number of albums by one of dub’s best ever explorers and innovators, Lee Perry. Lee Perry’s most recent effort is a collaboration with bass playing polymath Bill Laswell – called “Rise again.” It’s mostly a little disappointing, but the title track isn’t too bad.
17 Lee Perry and the Upsetters – Kiss Me Mix (Exclusive Dub Plate Mix) (Pressure Sounds)
Lee Scratch Perry at his peak in the mid-70s with the exclusive dub plate mix of “Kiss me neck”. It’s from a truly wonderful collection just out on On-U Sound’s sister label, Pressure Sounds – “The Return of Sound System Scratch: More Lee Perry Dub Plate Mixes and Rarities 1973-1979”. Obtain forthwith if you have any interest in Lee Perry’s music – you will not be sorry.
18 Cyril Diaz & His Orchestra – Voodoo (Soundway)
Another track from a collection of 7” reissues of vintage Columbian music that Soundway brought out earlier this year.
19 Home Service – Battle Pavanne / Peat Bog Soldiers (Fledg’ling)
Eight-piece folk-rock group, Home Service, from the highly politicised mid-80s of Thatcher’s England. The track here is from a recent release called “Live 1986”. “Battle Pavanne” is actually a piece of court music written by Tielman Susato in 1551. “Peat Bog Soldiers” was written by prisoners in a Nazi labour camp in 1933, adopted by the Republicans as an anthem during the Spanish Civil War, and was sung all around Europe during World War Two, and after that as a protest song.
20 Elle Osborne – I’m bound away (Folk Police Recordings)
Elle Osborne, a traditional singer from Lincolnshire, has been around for a few years now. She’s got a new album out on the label Folk Police called “So slowly slowly got she up” with a supporting cast that includes Alasdair Roberts, Cath and Phil Tyler and Alex Neilson, all of whom we’ve listened to before here on this show.
Check out the “Eileen Aroon” mix out on both Holy Warbles and the Ghost Capital blog if you like this sort of stuff – it’s a few entries down from the top. Well worth the download.
21 Sarah Jarosz - Anabelle Lee (Sugar Hill)
20 year old guitarist, banjo player, singer and song-writer from Austin, Texas, Sarah Jarosz, unbelievably off her second album “Follow me down”. That’s her neo-traditional tune “Anabelle Lee”, based on a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Her band includes a bunch of luminaries on the bluegrass/ newgrass/country scene like Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Viktor Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Shawn Colvin and Darrell Scott.
22 Jolie Holland – June (Anti, Ince)
Jolie Holland is also from Texas, but this time Houston. She works a more bluesy, jazzy vein of Americana – a bit like Billie Holliday (who she cites as a big influence) doing country blues. “June” is from her new album “Pint of Blood”.
23 Flower Travellin’ Band – House of the Rising Sun (Philips)
The mind-blowing, lung-bursting singing of Joe Yamanaka of the Flower Travellin’ Band circa 1970. The earliest recordings of “House of the Rising Sun” were by Clarence Ashley in 1933, although the song or something like it is probably much, much older – Ashley claimed that his grandfather used to sing it. Alan Lomax collected a version in 1937 in Kentucky, which it seemed made the song famous. Yamanaka died on 7th August and here’s a ‘believe it or not’ fact: he was a friend of Bob Marley and took his place as lead singer of The Wailers for five years after Marley died.
24 Kuni Kawachi & the Flower Travellin’ Band – Kirikyogen (Capital)
Also from the 1970s, this is Joe Yamanaka with keyboardist Kuni Kawachi.
25 Can – Spoon (Spoon)
Sticking with anti-establishment, counter-cultural 60s and 70s psychedelic scenes in previously highly authoritarian countries, that was the Krautrock group Can with one of their more well-known tunes, “Spoon”. In fact the tune was a German Top 40 hit, from one of their many classic albums, “Ege Bamyasi”, which is Turkish for Aegean okra.
Can apparently actually started out trying to play exotic fusions, but then discovered the Velvet Underground – they did actually return to the exotic a bit later in their Ethnological Forgery Series.
The singer on “Spoon” is Damo Suzuki, a Japanese traveller who founding members Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit found busking outside a café in Munich. Suzuki ended up playing with them for quite a few years.
26 Harmonia – Deluxe (Immer Wieder) (Brain)
Another absolutely classic Krautrock track. Harmonia was a kind of supergroup that included members from the bands Neu, Cluster and Guru Guru.
Check out the wonderful doccie on Krautrock made by BBC4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B89-69icyc&noredirect=1
The label “Krautrock” is contested on the grounds of accuracy and its belittling overtones. There are also recent interviews with the members of Can and Harmonia reflecting how things were in Germany in the late 60s and the 70s.
Seun Kuti together with his band Egypt 80, the 12-piece band he inherited from his father, Fela Kuti. He’s upped the beats per minute from the normal Afrobeat fare, and the anger’s ratcheted way up there too. “African Soldier” is a tirade against former soldiers who become dictators and keep themselves in power for decades. It’s from their 2011 album, “From Africa with fury: Rise”, which Brian Eno, a long-time Afrobeat enthusiast, co-produced.
2 Vieux Farka Toure – Aigna (feat. Derek Trucks) (Six Degrees)
Speaking of sons of great musicians, Vieux Farka Toure, son of Ali Farka Toure, put out a wonderful record earlier this year, “The Secret”. We listened to a collaboration with John Scofield a few months ago. “Aigna” features the American blues guitar prodigy and Allman Brothers Band member, Derek Trucks, on some sitar-like slide guitar.
3 Bembeya Jazz National – Alalake (Syliphone)
Sekou “Diamond Fingers” Diabate plays some incredible pedal steel. It comes from an album recorded in the mid 70s dedicated to former member, singer and composer, Aboubacar Demba, who died in a car crash in 1973.
4 Gnonnas Pedro and his Dadjes Band International – Fini les pavés (African Songs Ltd)
Gnonnas Pedro is a great singer from the 70s Benin scene. “Fini les pavés” is from the original vinyl LP put out by the label African Songs Ltd in 1977 called “The Band of Africa, vol 3”.
5 Fatoumata Diwara – Nayan (World Circuit)
Fatoumata Diawara (aka Fatou) from Mali has just put out her first album on World Circuit, called “Fatou”– and it’s sort of in the quiet, independent singer-songwriter spirit of Rokia Traore, who is actually a friend of hers, and who inspired Diawara to accompany herself on guitar. But she also draws on the Wassoulou traditions of her parents and of her mentor, Oumara Sangare.
Diawara’s 28 year history has been one of fierce independence – she started out as a film actor in Mali, having been sent to live with her aunt, also an actor, in Bamoko by her parents after she refused to continue with school. Then she became a stage actor, and literally escaped to Paris, after her parents tried to curtail her career. She was discovered as a singer, started performing in stage shows around the world, and has wound up singing with Cheikh Lô, AfroCubism, Herbie Hancock and Orchestra Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou.
“Nayan” is from an EP called “Kanou” that preceded the album. We’ll hear something from the full album in December.
6 Tinariwen – Imidiwan Win Sahara (Anti-)
Tinariwen, probably the most well-known Tuareg band, have a new album out, “Tassili”, named after Tassili N’Ajjer in southern Algeria, where it was recorded. Tassili is a place where Tamashek guerrillas took refuge en route to Mali. Its rocks and caves are a world heritage site. The album is somewhat more acoustic and less overtly political than recent ones. You have to love the group hum on this tune.
7 Genticorum – Reel Circulaire (Roues et Archets)
Québécois music off Genticorum's latest album “Nagez Rameurs”, which is based around the theme of maritime voyages. Québécois is an amalgam of French, Irish, Scottish and Breton traditions.
At the centre of this tune is song collector and fiddler Pascal Gemme , who first heard traditional Québécois music as a child in Huntingdon, Quebec, where his grandfather was the village fiddler.
8 Bee Dehotels - Aux Natchitoches (Cinq Planetes)
Nova Scotia, one of the Canada’s maritime provinces, is just east of Quebec. It used to be known as Acadia, and is where the forbearers of the Louisianan Cajuns came from. In the mid-70s, the label "Cinq Planètes” put out a wonderful set of recordings made in the homes of the musician and Cajun revivalist Dewey Balfa and painter Eraste Fontenot, both of whose families are very well known on the Cajun scene. The recordings were made for a film project on legendary masters of cajun and creole music called “Les haricots sont pas salés” – “the beans are not salted”. Bee Dehotels apparently specialized in old Cajun French ballads.
9 Vielleux du Bourbonnais – Bourrée A Malochet-Bourrée d’Alfred Pommier (Auvidis)
Bagpipe and hurdy-gurdy music was one of the traditions the original French settlers brought with them when they settled in Acadia in the 1600s. French group Vielleux du Bourbonnais take their music from the manuscripts of late nineteenth-century collectors, who in turn collected and transcribed older tunes passed down orally.
10 Andreas Schaerer & Banz Oester – Finger Maxu (Unit Records)
In July Prohelvetia brought vocalist Andreas Schaerer and bassist Banz Oester to South Africa. If you saw them playing at the Fugard Theatre you were probably either perplexed or blown away – actually you were probably both at the same time. As they would say, they “instantly composed” a fusion of a bewildering array of styles and traditions.
11 Vezhliviy Otkaz – Russian song (Zenith/Soyuz)
Vezhliviy Otkaz are from Moscow. Their name apparently means “Polite Refusal”.
12 Jermain Tamraz – Doogle Shapireh (Assyrian)
Jermain Tamraz is another great 70s middle-eastern singer. I know she’s Assyrian, although I’m not whether she came from Syria or Iraq.
13 Gulcan Opel – Tamammi (Bouzouki Joe)
The Turkish singer Gulcan Opel with the tune “Tamammi” reissued in 2011 by Bouzouki Joe on the collection “Turkish Freakout 2: Psych-Folk 1970-78”. The track was produced by Arif Sag, a singer, bağlama virtuoso, Turkish folk music founder and academic, and former MP in the Turkish parliament.
14 The Golden Ring – The Lost (Persianna)
Another Arif or Aref prominent in modern Middle Eastern music is Aref Arefkia. He’s just as famous in Iran as Googoosh, but unlike her left Iran in 1979 at the time of the revolution. In his early days, in the 60s, he was a member of the Tehran garage band, The Golden Ring. “The Lost” off a recent reissue: “The Golden Ring: Iranian Styled 60s Garage and other exotic sounds”.
15 African Head Charge – Throw it away (On U Sound)
Continuing our celebration of 30 years of the British reggae and dub label, On-U Sound, the tune comes from African Head Charge’s fourth album “Off the beaten track” which came out in 1986.
16 Lee Perry – Rise Again (M.O.D. Technologies)
On-U Sound’s Adrian Sherwood has produced a number of albums by one of dub’s best ever explorers and innovators, Lee Perry. Lee Perry’s most recent effort is a collaboration with bass playing polymath Bill Laswell – called “Rise again.” It’s mostly a little disappointing, but the title track isn’t too bad.
17 Lee Perry and the Upsetters – Kiss Me Mix (Exclusive Dub Plate Mix) (Pressure Sounds)
Lee Scratch Perry at his peak in the mid-70s with the exclusive dub plate mix of “Kiss me neck”. It’s from a truly wonderful collection just out on On-U Sound’s sister label, Pressure Sounds – “The Return of Sound System Scratch: More Lee Perry Dub Plate Mixes and Rarities 1973-1979”. Obtain forthwith if you have any interest in Lee Perry’s music – you will not be sorry.
18 Cyril Diaz & His Orchestra – Voodoo (Soundway)
Another track from a collection of 7” reissues of vintage Columbian music that Soundway brought out earlier this year.
19 Home Service – Battle Pavanne / Peat Bog Soldiers (Fledg’ling)
Eight-piece folk-rock group, Home Service, from the highly politicised mid-80s of Thatcher’s England. The track here is from a recent release called “Live 1986”. “Battle Pavanne” is actually a piece of court music written by Tielman Susato in 1551. “Peat Bog Soldiers” was written by prisoners in a Nazi labour camp in 1933, adopted by the Republicans as an anthem during the Spanish Civil War, and was sung all around Europe during World War Two, and after that as a protest song.
20 Elle Osborne – I’m bound away (Folk Police Recordings)
Elle Osborne, a traditional singer from Lincolnshire, has been around for a few years now. She’s got a new album out on the label Folk Police called “So slowly slowly got she up” with a supporting cast that includes Alasdair Roberts, Cath and Phil Tyler and Alex Neilson, all of whom we’ve listened to before here on this show.
Check out the “Eileen Aroon” mix out on both Holy Warbles and the Ghost Capital blog if you like this sort of stuff – it’s a few entries down from the top. Well worth the download.
21 Sarah Jarosz - Anabelle Lee (Sugar Hill)
20 year old guitarist, banjo player, singer and song-writer from Austin, Texas, Sarah Jarosz, unbelievably off her second album “Follow me down”. That’s her neo-traditional tune “Anabelle Lee”, based on a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Her band includes a bunch of luminaries on the bluegrass/ newgrass/country scene like Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Viktor Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Shawn Colvin and Darrell Scott.
22 Jolie Holland – June (Anti, Ince)
Jolie Holland is also from Texas, but this time Houston. She works a more bluesy, jazzy vein of Americana – a bit like Billie Holliday (who she cites as a big influence) doing country blues. “June” is from her new album “Pint of Blood”.
23 Flower Travellin’ Band – House of the Rising Sun (Philips)
The mind-blowing, lung-bursting singing of Joe Yamanaka of the Flower Travellin’ Band circa 1970. The earliest recordings of “House of the Rising Sun” were by Clarence Ashley in 1933, although the song or something like it is probably much, much older – Ashley claimed that his grandfather used to sing it. Alan Lomax collected a version in 1937 in Kentucky, which it seemed made the song famous. Yamanaka died on 7th August and here’s a ‘believe it or not’ fact: he was a friend of Bob Marley and took his place as lead singer of The Wailers for five years after Marley died.
24 Kuni Kawachi & the Flower Travellin’ Band – Kirikyogen (Capital)
Also from the 1970s, this is Joe Yamanaka with keyboardist Kuni Kawachi.
25 Can – Spoon (Spoon)
Sticking with anti-establishment, counter-cultural 60s and 70s psychedelic scenes in previously highly authoritarian countries, that was the Krautrock group Can with one of their more well-known tunes, “Spoon”. In fact the tune was a German Top 40 hit, from one of their many classic albums, “Ege Bamyasi”, which is Turkish for Aegean okra.
Can apparently actually started out trying to play exotic fusions, but then discovered the Velvet Underground – they did actually return to the exotic a bit later in their Ethnological Forgery Series.
The singer on “Spoon” is Damo Suzuki, a Japanese traveller who founding members Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit found busking outside a café in Munich. Suzuki ended up playing with them for quite a few years.
26 Harmonia – Deluxe (Immer Wieder) (Brain)
Another absolutely classic Krautrock track. Harmonia was a kind of supergroup that included members from the bands Neu, Cluster and Guru Guru.
Check out the wonderful doccie on Krautrock made by BBC4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B89-69icyc&noredirect=1
The label “Krautrock” is contested on the grounds of accuracy and its belittling overtones. There are also recent interviews with the members of Can and Harmonia reflecting how things were in Germany in the late 60s and the 70s.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
7 September 2011, World Cafe
1 Kekele – Yo Odeconer (Sterns Africa)
Congolese singer M’Bilia Bel guests with veteran singers, Bumba Massa and Loko Massengo, on Kekele’s 2006 album, “Kinavana”. Kinavana is a contraction of Kinshasa and Havana, a neat handle for their sound – old style Congolese rumba with more Cuban reinforcements than usual. Kekele’s members are nearly all luminaries from the Congo music scene in the 60s, 70s and 80s – including one of Franco’s chief guitarists, Papa Noel.
2 Orchestra du Bawobab – Ndaga (Disques Buur Records)
Sticking with Cuban-infused vintage West African sounds, “Ndaga” is a totally wonderful recording by Orchestra du Bawobab, from Senegal. It’s from around 1974 when the band included griot singer Laye M’Boup singing in Wolof and Thione Seck, who brought Maninke and Malinke songs into the mix. The tunes come from the LP “Senegaal Sunugaal”.
3 Vieux Farka Toure – Gido (feat. John Scofield) (Six Degrees)
This track is Malian Vieux Farka Toure’s startling teaming with one of the greatest American jazz guitarists of the last 30 years, John Scofield. It’s off Farka Toure’s seriously wonderful new album, “The Secret”, out on Six Degrees.
4 JuJu – Jombajo (Real World)
Another lovely new album just out is Juldeh Camara and Justin Adams’s – called “In trance”. They are now calling themselves JuJu, which I suppose is marginally better than Jules and Just. In the tune “Jombajo” the pair draw mainly on Fulani music, as in a lot of their stuff. Adams is on guitar, Camara on the ritti, a one-stringed fiddle, and the rhythm section from Bristol consists of Billy Fuller and Dave Smith --- whom I’ve never heard of.
5 Trembling Bells – Sir Richard’s Song (Folk Police)
The track comes off a new collection of Peter Bellamy’s settings of Rudyard Kipling’s children’s poems published between 1900 and 1910. Bellamy is one of the great English folk revivalists from the 60s, and the new collection, featuring many of the recent crop of folk revivalists, is called “Oak Ash Thorn”. We’ll be hearing more from the English folk label, Folk Police, in coming months.
6 The Duellists – Miserden/Indigo (Panic Attack)
The Duellists are a trio of Nigel Eaton, Cliff Stapleton & Chris Walshaw. They combine bagpipes with hurdy-gurdies and play newly and largely self-written dance music rooted in the English and French traditions. “Miserden” and “Indigo” are two tunes from their album called, rather one-sidedly, “English hurdy-gurdy music”.
7 Penguin Café – Landau (Penguin Cafe)
Arthur Jeffes is continuing in the footsteps of his father, Simon, the founder of the folk minimalist collective, the Penguin Café Orchestra. He’s calling his all-new collective, Penguin Café. “Landau”, which has Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell on board, is off their new album, “A Matter of Life …”.
8 Khyam Allami – An Alif/An Apex (Nawa Recordings)
Khyam Allami, who started his musical life as a rock percussionist in London, has discovered his Syrian and Iraqi roots. He has a new album of self-composed solo oud music called “Resonance/Dissonance”.
9 Hijaz – Leaving Adana (Zephyrus Productions)
From Middle Eastern classical music, with its structured improvisations and inventiveness, to some kind of Arabic folk jazz … Hijaz are a band of musicians from Tunisia, Greece, Morocco, Armenia and Belgium. The tune comes off their 2011 album “Chemsi”.
10 Uri Caine – Ladino Medley (Knitting Factory Works)
Sephardic/Moroccan singer Aaron Bensoussan with his arrangement of a bunch of traditional songs sung in Ladino. Ladino is a mixture of Hebrew and Spanish, much like Yiddish is a mixture of Hebrew, German and probably other central European languages. American jazz pianist, Uri Caine, who’s been working the seam between jazz and Jewish music for a long time now, is also upfront in the mix. The recording comes off Caine’s 1999 album “Zohar Keter” – Zohar being the founding text of the Kabbalah.
11 Vijay Iyer – Falsehood (ACT)
On his new record, “Thirta”, NY based jazz piano maestro Vijay Iyer definitely invokes the spirit of 70s Indian folk jazz fusionists, Shakti. He plays with guitarist Prassana and tabla player Nitin Mitta. “Falsehood” is Prassana’s composition.
12 Janie Hunter – Jack and Mary and the Three Dogs (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)
13 The Moving Star Hall Singers – See God’s Ark A-Moving (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)
14 Ruth Bligen – Moonlight in Glory (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)
15 Brian Eno & David Byrne – Moonlight in Glory (Nonesuch)
In earlier shows, I’ve gone on at length about the influence and importance of Brian Eno’s and David Byrne’s 1980s record “My life in the bush of ghosts”. A prime example of something I’ve been calling, maybe wrongly, “possible music” – which is a term linked to Eno – I’ve been referring to it as a kind of seamless mix of found and played global sounds, musique concrète techniques and dark and ambient jazz and dub. Whatever!
Eno and Byrne used some pretty incredible field recordings as a central part of their sound. In the piece “Moonlight in Glory” they drew heavily on the 1967 recordings made by archivist, civil rights activist and musical director Guy Carawan of singers from the relatively isolated St John’s Island off the coast of South Carolina. Those recordings were put out on the Smithsonian Folkways Collection, “Been in the storm so long”.
16 African Head Charge – Stoned Age Man (On-U Sound)
One of the groups of musicians directly inspired by “My life in the bush of ghosts” was a bunch on the On-U Sound label, including founder Adrian Sherwood. On-U Sound is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
African Head Charge (basically Adrian Sherwood, Bonjo I a Binghi Noah and a rotating array of On-U Sounders) actually explicitly reference their debt to “My life in the bush of ghosts”. Their first LP was called “My life in a hole in the ground”. “Stoned Age Man” is from their new album “Voodoo of the Godsent”. By the way, On-U Sound have some new branding to tie in with their 30th anniversary. How do you like this as a logo -- “Disturbing the comfortable – comforting the disturbed”.
17 Prince Fari and the Arabs – Mozabites (Pressure Sounds)
Adrian Sherwood started his career as a dub producer in his late teens on an extremely high note. That was one of his earliest production efforts, five years before the advent of On-U Sound. It’s off the album “Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 1”, a co-production by Fari I and Sherwood.
18 Fool’s Gold – Nadine (Iamsound)
Fool’s Gold are an LA-based band whose numerous members are Israeli, Argentinean, Brazilian and Mexican, and link African and Middle Eastern music in all its guises to Western indie pop. They sing in Hebrew and English. “Nadine” is off their eponymous 2009 album.
19 Shohreh – Del (Secret Stash)
From pre-revolutionary Iran, this is off the collection simply called “Persian Funk” just out on the label Secret Stash. Nearly all of this kind of stuff was originally on a label and its imprints set up by the Ministry of Culture under the Shah.
20 Googoosh – Koh (Caltex)
The legendary Iranian singer Googoosh was active during the same period. “Koh” is from a collection of stuff called “Golden Songs, volume 1”.
21 Corinne West and Kelly Joe Phelps – Whiskey Poet (Tin Angel Records)
Californian singer-songwriter Corinne West and country blues slide and finger style guitarist of astonishing ability, Kelly Joe Phelps, with one of West’s songs, “Whiskey Poet”. It’s off their really nice 2010 album, “Magnetic Skyline”.
22 Gillian Welch – Silver Dagger (Acony Records)
Gillian Welch, after a long break, has a new album out - “The Harrow and the Harvest” – and boy is it great – in the top 10 albums of the year, and probably the decade, without a doubt, if you like this kind of paired-down old timey Americana blues as much as I do.
23 Colin Stetson – Lord I just can’t keep from crying sometime (Constellation)
Colin Stetson’s multi-phonic sax playing is all done live, no overdubs, with the use of multiple mike placings and circulatory breathing. He plays there with Shara Worden on the traditional spiritual "Lord I Just Can't Keep from Crying Sometimes”. The song is from Stetson’s “New History Welfare Vol 2: Judges”.
24 The Unthanks – Close the coalhouse door (Rough Trade)
The Unthanks are from Northumberland and have been developing their sound since 2004. “Close the coalhouse door”, off their new album “Last”, started out as a stage song written by Alex Glasgow for a play of the same name put out in Newcastle in the 70s. The Unthanks’s version apparently draws heavily on the Wilson Family’s version – the Wilson Family being one of those trad English folk vocal family groups, like the Watersons.
25 Matthias Loibner – Chasen Senem (Cinq Planetes)
Matthias Loibner is an Austrian hurdy-gurdy player. With multiple mike placings which capture the different sounds and voices of the instrument, this is pretty close to Colin Stetson’s saxophone music. It’s off a cd titled “Vielle a roué” or “Hurdy-gurdy”.
Congolese singer M’Bilia Bel guests with veteran singers, Bumba Massa and Loko Massengo, on Kekele’s 2006 album, “Kinavana”. Kinavana is a contraction of Kinshasa and Havana, a neat handle for their sound – old style Congolese rumba with more Cuban reinforcements than usual. Kekele’s members are nearly all luminaries from the Congo music scene in the 60s, 70s and 80s – including one of Franco’s chief guitarists, Papa Noel.
2 Orchestra du Bawobab – Ndaga (Disques Buur Records)
Sticking with Cuban-infused vintage West African sounds, “Ndaga” is a totally wonderful recording by Orchestra du Bawobab, from Senegal. It’s from around 1974 when the band included griot singer Laye M’Boup singing in Wolof and Thione Seck, who brought Maninke and Malinke songs into the mix. The tunes come from the LP “Senegaal Sunugaal”.
3 Vieux Farka Toure – Gido (feat. John Scofield) (Six Degrees)
This track is Malian Vieux Farka Toure’s startling teaming with one of the greatest American jazz guitarists of the last 30 years, John Scofield. It’s off Farka Toure’s seriously wonderful new album, “The Secret”, out on Six Degrees.
4 JuJu – Jombajo (Real World)
Another lovely new album just out is Juldeh Camara and Justin Adams’s – called “In trance”. They are now calling themselves JuJu, which I suppose is marginally better than Jules and Just. In the tune “Jombajo” the pair draw mainly on Fulani music, as in a lot of their stuff. Adams is on guitar, Camara on the ritti, a one-stringed fiddle, and the rhythm section from Bristol consists of Billy Fuller and Dave Smith --- whom I’ve never heard of.
5 Trembling Bells – Sir Richard’s Song (Folk Police)
The track comes off a new collection of Peter Bellamy’s settings of Rudyard Kipling’s children’s poems published between 1900 and 1910. Bellamy is one of the great English folk revivalists from the 60s, and the new collection, featuring many of the recent crop of folk revivalists, is called “Oak Ash Thorn”. We’ll be hearing more from the English folk label, Folk Police, in coming months.
6 The Duellists – Miserden/Indigo (Panic Attack)
The Duellists are a trio of Nigel Eaton, Cliff Stapleton & Chris Walshaw. They combine bagpipes with hurdy-gurdies and play newly and largely self-written dance music rooted in the English and French traditions. “Miserden” and “Indigo” are two tunes from their album called, rather one-sidedly, “English hurdy-gurdy music”.
7 Penguin Café – Landau (Penguin Cafe)
Arthur Jeffes is continuing in the footsteps of his father, Simon, the founder of the folk minimalist collective, the Penguin Café Orchestra. He’s calling his all-new collective, Penguin Café. “Landau”, which has Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell on board, is off their new album, “A Matter of Life …”.
8 Khyam Allami – An Alif/An Apex (Nawa Recordings)
Khyam Allami, who started his musical life as a rock percussionist in London, has discovered his Syrian and Iraqi roots. He has a new album of self-composed solo oud music called “Resonance/Dissonance”.
9 Hijaz – Leaving Adana (Zephyrus Productions)
From Middle Eastern classical music, with its structured improvisations and inventiveness, to some kind of Arabic folk jazz … Hijaz are a band of musicians from Tunisia, Greece, Morocco, Armenia and Belgium. The tune comes off their 2011 album “Chemsi”.
10 Uri Caine – Ladino Medley (Knitting Factory Works)
Sephardic/Moroccan singer Aaron Bensoussan with his arrangement of a bunch of traditional songs sung in Ladino. Ladino is a mixture of Hebrew and Spanish, much like Yiddish is a mixture of Hebrew, German and probably other central European languages. American jazz pianist, Uri Caine, who’s been working the seam between jazz and Jewish music for a long time now, is also upfront in the mix. The recording comes off Caine’s 1999 album “Zohar Keter” – Zohar being the founding text of the Kabbalah.
11 Vijay Iyer – Falsehood (ACT)
On his new record, “Thirta”, NY based jazz piano maestro Vijay Iyer definitely invokes the spirit of 70s Indian folk jazz fusionists, Shakti. He plays with guitarist Prassana and tabla player Nitin Mitta. “Falsehood” is Prassana’s composition.
12 Janie Hunter – Jack and Mary and the Three Dogs (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)
13 The Moving Star Hall Singers – See God’s Ark A-Moving (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)
14 Ruth Bligen – Moonlight in Glory (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)
15 Brian Eno & David Byrne – Moonlight in Glory (Nonesuch)
In earlier shows, I’ve gone on at length about the influence and importance of Brian Eno’s and David Byrne’s 1980s record “My life in the bush of ghosts”. A prime example of something I’ve been calling, maybe wrongly, “possible music” – which is a term linked to Eno – I’ve been referring to it as a kind of seamless mix of found and played global sounds, musique concrète techniques and dark and ambient jazz and dub. Whatever!
Eno and Byrne used some pretty incredible field recordings as a central part of their sound. In the piece “Moonlight in Glory” they drew heavily on the 1967 recordings made by archivist, civil rights activist and musical director Guy Carawan of singers from the relatively isolated St John’s Island off the coast of South Carolina. Those recordings were put out on the Smithsonian Folkways Collection, “Been in the storm so long”.
16 African Head Charge – Stoned Age Man (On-U Sound)
One of the groups of musicians directly inspired by “My life in the bush of ghosts” was a bunch on the On-U Sound label, including founder Adrian Sherwood. On-U Sound is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
African Head Charge (basically Adrian Sherwood, Bonjo I a Binghi Noah and a rotating array of On-U Sounders) actually explicitly reference their debt to “My life in the bush of ghosts”. Their first LP was called “My life in a hole in the ground”. “Stoned Age Man” is from their new album “Voodoo of the Godsent”. By the way, On-U Sound have some new branding to tie in with their 30th anniversary. How do you like this as a logo -- “Disturbing the comfortable – comforting the disturbed”.
17 Prince Fari and the Arabs – Mozabites (Pressure Sounds)
Adrian Sherwood started his career as a dub producer in his late teens on an extremely high note. That was one of his earliest production efforts, five years before the advent of On-U Sound. It’s off the album “Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter 1”, a co-production by Fari I and Sherwood.
18 Fool’s Gold – Nadine (Iamsound)
Fool’s Gold are an LA-based band whose numerous members are Israeli, Argentinean, Brazilian and Mexican, and link African and Middle Eastern music in all its guises to Western indie pop. They sing in Hebrew and English. “Nadine” is off their eponymous 2009 album.
19 Shohreh – Del (Secret Stash)
From pre-revolutionary Iran, this is off the collection simply called “Persian Funk” just out on the label Secret Stash. Nearly all of this kind of stuff was originally on a label and its imprints set up by the Ministry of Culture under the Shah.
20 Googoosh – Koh (Caltex)
The legendary Iranian singer Googoosh was active during the same period. “Koh” is from a collection of stuff called “Golden Songs, volume 1”.
21 Corinne West and Kelly Joe Phelps – Whiskey Poet (Tin Angel Records)
Californian singer-songwriter Corinne West and country blues slide and finger style guitarist of astonishing ability, Kelly Joe Phelps, with one of West’s songs, “Whiskey Poet”. It’s off their really nice 2010 album, “Magnetic Skyline”.
22 Gillian Welch – Silver Dagger (Acony Records)
Gillian Welch, after a long break, has a new album out - “The Harrow and the Harvest” – and boy is it great – in the top 10 albums of the year, and probably the decade, without a doubt, if you like this kind of paired-down old timey Americana blues as much as I do.
23 Colin Stetson – Lord I just can’t keep from crying sometime (Constellation)
Colin Stetson’s multi-phonic sax playing is all done live, no overdubs, with the use of multiple mike placings and circulatory breathing. He plays there with Shara Worden on the traditional spiritual "Lord I Just Can't Keep from Crying Sometimes”. The song is from Stetson’s “New History Welfare Vol 2: Judges”.
24 The Unthanks – Close the coalhouse door (Rough Trade)
The Unthanks are from Northumberland and have been developing their sound since 2004. “Close the coalhouse door”, off their new album “Last”, started out as a stage song written by Alex Glasgow for a play of the same name put out in Newcastle in the 70s. The Unthanks’s version apparently draws heavily on the Wilson Family’s version – the Wilson Family being one of those trad English folk vocal family groups, like the Watersons.
25 Matthias Loibner – Chasen Senem (Cinq Planetes)
Matthias Loibner is an Austrian hurdy-gurdy player. With multiple mike placings which capture the different sounds and voices of the instrument, this is pretty close to Colin Stetson’s saxophone music. It’s off a cd titled “Vielle a roué” or “Hurdy-gurdy”.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
3 August 2011, World Cafe
1 Erick Manana – Zanamalala (Une voix…une guitare…)
The guitar and voice of Bordeaux-based Madagascan Erick Manana from his album “Une voix … une guitare”. Like probably all the Madagascan musicians we’ve featured on this show, Manana is interested in preserving the gutsy integrity of the rural music of Madagascar -- but he is also keen on cutting it with all kinds of Western folk music. He uses open tunings like the ba-gasy tuning – something indigenous to Madagascar.
2 Mahaleo – Vaonala (Playa Sound collection Africa)
Erick Manana, who we just heard, has been on the scene for around 30 years and played in many bands including the longstanding, well-known band Mahaleo – sometimes brilliantly blending pop with traditional Madagascan. Formed in the early 70s, the band members have gone on to become doctors, sociologists and government officials. Here is something quite lovely off their 1976 album “Madagascar” called “Vaonala”.
3 NY Malagasy Orchestra – Mila omby (Cinq Planetes)
Cutting-edge Antandroy music – music from the cattle farming territory of the southernmost part of Madagascar. The singing from this area often emulates cattle wheezing and bellowing and the calls of cattle herders. The NY Malagasy Orchestra is pretty large - almost a Madagascan supergroup - under the direction of valiha star-player, Justin Vali. They are evidently a touring show and their tie-in album is called “Masoala” which came out last year on the wonderful French label, Cinq Planetes.
4 Damily – Talilio (Phantom Sound and Vision)
Tsapiky (pronounced “tsapeek”) is another popular brand of music from south Madagascar, in fact the Tulear area – and it’s pretty frantic. There are apparently loads of informal, pick up bands in the Tulear area. Damily, named after its founder, is probably the most well known Tsapiky band. This song comes from their 2008 album, “Ravinahitsy”.
5 Gege Mahafay Monja – Manontolo tromba (Cinq Planetes)
Sticking to the south of Madagascar, the incredible marovany player Gege Mahafay Monja. His mother, a healer, taught him to play. She used to take him to “tromba” – the general name for divinations, treatment sessions and exorcisms. The tune is from another Cinq Planetes release – Monja’s 2005 album called “Marovany”.
6 Babata – Soma motomay (instrumental) (Long Distance)
The west coast of Madagascar is the most remote part of the island, large parts of which are only accessiblle by boat. Josephin Herisson, or Babata as he’s known on stage, is a fisherman, diver and musician who has traveled up and down that coast. He plays the mandaliny, a small 4 string guitar related to the ukulele, which is usually homemade in Madagascar and has strings made from anything going. It’s usually subjected to many idiosyncratic styles of playing.
7 Eliza Carthy – War (Hem Hem)
Besides being a wonderful fiddler and interpreter of traditional English music, Eliza Carthy also writes her own songs, and her new album of original songs, “Neptune”, is probably her best so far of this kind. In “War” she flits across a bunch of styles in her best Yorkshire accent.
8 Bella Hardy – The Herring Girl (Navigator)
Another traditionalist who’s had a good go at writing her own stuff is Bella Hardy (also a fiddle player – but from Derbyshire). Her latest album, “Songs Lost & Stolen”, is also a collection of her own songs, like Carthy’s.
9 Dolina Maclennan – Fil Uo Ro Hu-O (Topic)
Dolina Maclennan is from the island of Lewis off the west coast of Scotland. This song was recorded in the 60s, but was passed down through generations of her family. It’s a waulking song – a song to accompany the communal multi-stage work of shrinking tweed. Each stage is done to a specific rhythm and has different accompanying songs. It’s off a 1965 collection on Topic Records called “Bonny Lass Come O’er the Burn”.
10 Jeannie Robertson – My rovin’ eye
Jeannie Robertson lived much of her life in Aberdeen. This version of the traditional song “My rovin’ eye” was recorded in the 50s by Alan Lomax. She’s widely recognized as one of the greatest Scottish ballad singers and well known for giving performances of the full epic songs.
11 Tud – Heuliad dansou plinn (Plinn ton simpl) (Celtic America Llc)
Sticking to places that made up the old Celtic world, Tud is a super slick, super dextrous modern Breton folk band.
12 Soig Siberil & Nolwen Korbell – Padal (Coop Breizh)
Breton guitarist Soig Siberal and singer Nolwen Korbell with a song off their 2007 album called “Red”.
13 Amador Garcia - El Ramo (Saga)
The Spanish province of Zamora in the Castilla and Leon region in Western Spain near the Portuguese border has a fabulous music tradition, well explored by the Spanish label, Saga, which made field recordings in the 1980s (Zamora Musica Tradicional Vol 1). Here are two of those recordings – the first is “El Ramo” by Amador Garcia on flauta and snare drum.
14 Marina Martin and Abel Martin - Arbolito Florido (Saga)
The second is “Arbolito Florido” with Marina Martin singing and on tambourine, and Abel Martin on castanets.
15 Maleem Mahmoud Ghania & Pharoah Sanders – Moussa Berkiyo-Koubaliy Beriah La’foh (Axiom)
The Moroccan master guimbri player Maleem Mahmoud Ghania, whose father was actually an immigrant from Guinea, and his troop with American tenor sax player Pharoah Sanders.
I don’t know whether it’s my imagination but I’m hearing resonances of gnawa music in that peasant music from west central Spain, or maybe it’s the other way around. This despite the fact that gnawa music was only supposed to have started with the movement of the Fulani slaves from the Mali-Guinea region into Morocco in the 16th century, way after the Moors were expelled from Spain. But gnawa and whatever Moorish music found its way into Spain may have similar roots in that as early as the 700s the cultures of the Ghanaian Empire and the Berbers began to blend in Mauritania. In 1000 Mauritania broke away from the Ghanaian Empire and its people, known as Al-Moravids, began to push north into Morocco and Spain.
16 Radio Morocco – The Medina Sound (Sublime Frequencies)
Staying in Morocco … one of the many things that the visionary label Sublime Frequencies does is country-based radio collages - mixes of recorded radio transmissions made in a particular country. They started doing this in 1983 in Morocco. “The Medina Sound” off their CD “Radio Morocco” comes from a range of stations across Morocco.
17 Dimi Mint Abba – Song 4 (World Circuit)
Dimi Mint Abba, a veteran of the Mauritanian music scene, died tragically in early June this year. “Song 4” is from a World Circuit collection released in 2006 to mark its 20th anniversary, called “World Circuit Presents…”.
18 Bombino – Tigrawahi Tikma (Bring us together) (Cumbancha)
The Touareg are found in Eastern Mali, Western Niger, Algeria and Western Libya and form part of the Berber people. The musician Bombino, named for his early musical ability, comes from the city of Agadez in the centre of Niger. He was forced to leave in 2007 after two of his band members were killed in the violence following a Touareg uprising. The album he released earlier this year on Cumbancha, called “Agadez,” was part of his contribution to the post-rebellion restoration of the city which he returned to in 2010.
19 Dub Colossus – Feqer Aydelem Wey (Real World)
Dub Colossus, bass player and producer Nick Page’s collective of Ethiopian and English musicians with a somewhat dub-infused Ethio-jazz tune, off their latest album “Addis through the looking glass.”
20 King Tubby – Roots Dub (Jigsaw Music)
King Tubby’s warmly echoey dub version of some vintage reggae jazz by the Skatalites released in 1976. The album is “Herb Dub-Collie Dub”.
2I Dunkelbunt – Smile on your face (Brian May Remix) (PID)
I don’t normally go for modern electro-dub, but that tune by Austrian DJ and producer, Dunkelbunt, aka Ulf Lindemann, is suitably rootsy, and the Klezmer and Balkan fusions work very nicely even though they are just a little too smooth.
22 Lee Perry – Scratch The Dub Organiser (Clocktower)
If you need an antidote to Dunkelbunt, Lee Perry is probably perfect. The tune comes off a really great, rather mysterious collection called “Chapter 1: The Upsetters” which is a collection of previously unreleased stuff from 1970 to 76 brought out by Clocktower – originally a New York based reggae label, now based in Canada.
23 Nguyen Le – Mina Zuki (ACT)
Nguyen Le is a French guitarist of Vietnamese ancestry. On “Mina Zuki” he plays with Mieko Miyazaki on koto, Pradhu Edouard on tabla and percussion and the great veteran bansuri player, Hariprasad Chaurasia, doing what I suppose can be called global fusion – and giving it a good name.
24 Huun Huur-Tu – Agitator (Shanachie)
From South Asia and the Far East to Central Asia … Tuvan group Huun Huur Tu put out their second album recorded in New York and Moscow, “The Orphan’s Lament”, in 1994, and from that here is “Agitator”.
25 Hosoo – Zombon Tuuraitai (Own production)
Hosoo is from the Altai Mountains in Western Mongolia.
26 Svang – Tajukankaan Polkka (Comatoscene Polka) (Aito Records)
Does ensemble harmonica sound like a “naff” proposition, a heavy, fat slice of novelty kitsch? Then you haven’t heard the Finnish harmonica quartet, Svang, letting rip on the chromatic, diatonic, chord and bass harmonicas.
27 Chateau neuf spelemannslag – Halling after Thorvald Tronsgard (Grappa)
Chateau Neuf Spelemannslag are a large band from Norway who like to cross Norwegian folk tunes with all kinds of things – jazz, swing, Manhattan Transfer type vocals, funk. A “halling” is a kind of rural Norwegian dance usually done by men and is pretty acrobatic and competitive.
28 Hardellin, Hallberg, Hertzberg, Stabi – Tar du e’ dellboska (Westpark Access)
Hardellin, Hallberg, Hertzberg, Stabi are a Swedish collective of established singers, each of whom also plays with their own bands, including Ditt Ditt Darium, who we’ve heard on this show before. “Tar du e’ dellboska” is off their album “Love Letters and Russian Satellites”.
29 Nils Okland – Biberslatt (Rune Gramofon)
Nils Okland, a Norwegian hardanger fiddle player, is equally at home playing early music, folk and improv music, and often plays all three at the same time. The hardanger fiddle is similar to a normal fiddle except for the 4 or 5 sympathetic strings that run under the regular four strings over the body. The oldest one we know about dates from 1650. On “Biberslatt”, Okland plays with Ole Henrik Moe on a fiddle, or flat fiddle as it’s sometimes called in Norway.
30 Trygve Seim/Andreas Utnem - 312 (ECM)
An arrangement by sax player, Tygve Seim, and pianist, Andreas Utnem, of the traditional Norwegian tune from the town Aseral, from their 2010 ECM release, “Purcor: Songs for Saxophone and Piano”.
The guitar and voice of Bordeaux-based Madagascan Erick Manana from his album “Une voix … une guitare”. Like probably all the Madagascan musicians we’ve featured on this show, Manana is interested in preserving the gutsy integrity of the rural music of Madagascar -- but he is also keen on cutting it with all kinds of Western folk music. He uses open tunings like the ba-gasy tuning – something indigenous to Madagascar.
2 Mahaleo – Vaonala (Playa Sound collection Africa)
Erick Manana, who we just heard, has been on the scene for around 30 years and played in many bands including the longstanding, well-known band Mahaleo – sometimes brilliantly blending pop with traditional Madagascan. Formed in the early 70s, the band members have gone on to become doctors, sociologists and government officials. Here is something quite lovely off their 1976 album “Madagascar” called “Vaonala”.
3 NY Malagasy Orchestra – Mila omby (Cinq Planetes)
Cutting-edge Antandroy music – music from the cattle farming territory of the southernmost part of Madagascar. The singing from this area often emulates cattle wheezing and bellowing and the calls of cattle herders. The NY Malagasy Orchestra is pretty large - almost a Madagascan supergroup - under the direction of valiha star-player, Justin Vali. They are evidently a touring show and their tie-in album is called “Masoala” which came out last year on the wonderful French label, Cinq Planetes.
4 Damily – Talilio (Phantom Sound and Vision)
Tsapiky (pronounced “tsapeek”) is another popular brand of music from south Madagascar, in fact the Tulear area – and it’s pretty frantic. There are apparently loads of informal, pick up bands in the Tulear area. Damily, named after its founder, is probably the most well known Tsapiky band. This song comes from their 2008 album, “Ravinahitsy”.
5 Gege Mahafay Monja – Manontolo tromba (Cinq Planetes)
Sticking to the south of Madagascar, the incredible marovany player Gege Mahafay Monja. His mother, a healer, taught him to play. She used to take him to “tromba” – the general name for divinations, treatment sessions and exorcisms. The tune is from another Cinq Planetes release – Monja’s 2005 album called “Marovany”.
6 Babata – Soma motomay (instrumental) (Long Distance)
The west coast of Madagascar is the most remote part of the island, large parts of which are only accessiblle by boat. Josephin Herisson, or Babata as he’s known on stage, is a fisherman, diver and musician who has traveled up and down that coast. He plays the mandaliny, a small 4 string guitar related to the ukulele, which is usually homemade in Madagascar and has strings made from anything going. It’s usually subjected to many idiosyncratic styles of playing.
7 Eliza Carthy – War (Hem Hem)
Besides being a wonderful fiddler and interpreter of traditional English music, Eliza Carthy also writes her own songs, and her new album of original songs, “Neptune”, is probably her best so far of this kind. In “War” she flits across a bunch of styles in her best Yorkshire accent.
8 Bella Hardy – The Herring Girl (Navigator)
Another traditionalist who’s had a good go at writing her own stuff is Bella Hardy (also a fiddle player – but from Derbyshire). Her latest album, “Songs Lost & Stolen”, is also a collection of her own songs, like Carthy’s.
9 Dolina Maclennan – Fil Uo Ro Hu-O (Topic)
Dolina Maclennan is from the island of Lewis off the west coast of Scotland. This song was recorded in the 60s, but was passed down through generations of her family. It’s a waulking song – a song to accompany the communal multi-stage work of shrinking tweed. Each stage is done to a specific rhythm and has different accompanying songs. It’s off a 1965 collection on Topic Records called “Bonny Lass Come O’er the Burn”.
10 Jeannie Robertson – My rovin’ eye
Jeannie Robertson lived much of her life in Aberdeen. This version of the traditional song “My rovin’ eye” was recorded in the 50s by Alan Lomax. She’s widely recognized as one of the greatest Scottish ballad singers and well known for giving performances of the full epic songs.
11 Tud – Heuliad dansou plinn (Plinn ton simpl) (Celtic America Llc)
Sticking to places that made up the old Celtic world, Tud is a super slick, super dextrous modern Breton folk band.
12 Soig Siberil & Nolwen Korbell – Padal (Coop Breizh)
Breton guitarist Soig Siberal and singer Nolwen Korbell with a song off their 2007 album called “Red”.
13 Amador Garcia - El Ramo (Saga)
The Spanish province of Zamora in the Castilla and Leon region in Western Spain near the Portuguese border has a fabulous music tradition, well explored by the Spanish label, Saga, which made field recordings in the 1980s (Zamora Musica Tradicional Vol 1). Here are two of those recordings – the first is “El Ramo” by Amador Garcia on flauta and snare drum.
14 Marina Martin and Abel Martin - Arbolito Florido (Saga)
The second is “Arbolito Florido” with Marina Martin singing and on tambourine, and Abel Martin on castanets.
15 Maleem Mahmoud Ghania & Pharoah Sanders – Moussa Berkiyo-Koubaliy Beriah La’foh (Axiom)
The Moroccan master guimbri player Maleem Mahmoud Ghania, whose father was actually an immigrant from Guinea, and his troop with American tenor sax player Pharoah Sanders.
I don’t know whether it’s my imagination but I’m hearing resonances of gnawa music in that peasant music from west central Spain, or maybe it’s the other way around. This despite the fact that gnawa music was only supposed to have started with the movement of the Fulani slaves from the Mali-Guinea region into Morocco in the 16th century, way after the Moors were expelled from Spain. But gnawa and whatever Moorish music found its way into Spain may have similar roots in that as early as the 700s the cultures of the Ghanaian Empire and the Berbers began to blend in Mauritania. In 1000 Mauritania broke away from the Ghanaian Empire and its people, known as Al-Moravids, began to push north into Morocco and Spain.
16 Radio Morocco – The Medina Sound (Sublime Frequencies)
Staying in Morocco … one of the many things that the visionary label Sublime Frequencies does is country-based radio collages - mixes of recorded radio transmissions made in a particular country. They started doing this in 1983 in Morocco. “The Medina Sound” off their CD “Radio Morocco” comes from a range of stations across Morocco.
17 Dimi Mint Abba – Song 4 (World Circuit)
Dimi Mint Abba, a veteran of the Mauritanian music scene, died tragically in early June this year. “Song 4” is from a World Circuit collection released in 2006 to mark its 20th anniversary, called “World Circuit Presents…”.
18 Bombino – Tigrawahi Tikma (Bring us together) (Cumbancha)
The Touareg are found in Eastern Mali, Western Niger, Algeria and Western Libya and form part of the Berber people. The musician Bombino, named for his early musical ability, comes from the city of Agadez in the centre of Niger. He was forced to leave in 2007 after two of his band members were killed in the violence following a Touareg uprising. The album he released earlier this year on Cumbancha, called “Agadez,” was part of his contribution to the post-rebellion restoration of the city which he returned to in 2010.
19 Dub Colossus – Feqer Aydelem Wey (Real World)
Dub Colossus, bass player and producer Nick Page’s collective of Ethiopian and English musicians with a somewhat dub-infused Ethio-jazz tune, off their latest album “Addis through the looking glass.”
20 King Tubby – Roots Dub (Jigsaw Music)
King Tubby’s warmly echoey dub version of some vintage reggae jazz by the Skatalites released in 1976. The album is “Herb Dub-Collie Dub”.
2I Dunkelbunt – Smile on your face (Brian May Remix) (PID)
I don’t normally go for modern electro-dub, but that tune by Austrian DJ and producer, Dunkelbunt, aka Ulf Lindemann, is suitably rootsy, and the Klezmer and Balkan fusions work very nicely even though they are just a little too smooth.
22 Lee Perry – Scratch The Dub Organiser (Clocktower)
If you need an antidote to Dunkelbunt, Lee Perry is probably perfect. The tune comes off a really great, rather mysterious collection called “Chapter 1: The Upsetters” which is a collection of previously unreleased stuff from 1970 to 76 brought out by Clocktower – originally a New York based reggae label, now based in Canada.
23 Nguyen Le – Mina Zuki (ACT)
Nguyen Le is a French guitarist of Vietnamese ancestry. On “Mina Zuki” he plays with Mieko Miyazaki on koto, Pradhu Edouard on tabla and percussion and the great veteran bansuri player, Hariprasad Chaurasia, doing what I suppose can be called global fusion – and giving it a good name.
24 Huun Huur-Tu – Agitator (Shanachie)
From South Asia and the Far East to Central Asia … Tuvan group Huun Huur Tu put out their second album recorded in New York and Moscow, “The Orphan’s Lament”, in 1994, and from that here is “Agitator”.
25 Hosoo – Zombon Tuuraitai (Own production)
Hosoo is from the Altai Mountains in Western Mongolia.
26 Svang – Tajukankaan Polkka (Comatoscene Polka) (Aito Records)
Does ensemble harmonica sound like a “naff” proposition, a heavy, fat slice of novelty kitsch? Then you haven’t heard the Finnish harmonica quartet, Svang, letting rip on the chromatic, diatonic, chord and bass harmonicas.
27 Chateau neuf spelemannslag – Halling after Thorvald Tronsgard (Grappa)
Chateau Neuf Spelemannslag are a large band from Norway who like to cross Norwegian folk tunes with all kinds of things – jazz, swing, Manhattan Transfer type vocals, funk. A “halling” is a kind of rural Norwegian dance usually done by men and is pretty acrobatic and competitive.
28 Hardellin, Hallberg, Hertzberg, Stabi – Tar du e’ dellboska (Westpark Access)
Hardellin, Hallberg, Hertzberg, Stabi are a Swedish collective of established singers, each of whom also plays with their own bands, including Ditt Ditt Darium, who we’ve heard on this show before. “Tar du e’ dellboska” is off their album “Love Letters and Russian Satellites”.
29 Nils Okland – Biberslatt (Rune Gramofon)
Nils Okland, a Norwegian hardanger fiddle player, is equally at home playing early music, folk and improv music, and often plays all three at the same time. The hardanger fiddle is similar to a normal fiddle except for the 4 or 5 sympathetic strings that run under the regular four strings over the body. The oldest one we know about dates from 1650. On “Biberslatt”, Okland plays with Ole Henrik Moe on a fiddle, or flat fiddle as it’s sometimes called in Norway.
30 Trygve Seim/Andreas Utnem - 312 (ECM)
An arrangement by sax player, Tygve Seim, and pianist, Andreas Utnem, of the traditional Norwegian tune from the town Aseral, from their 2010 ECM release, “Purcor: Songs for Saxophone and Piano”.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
6 July 2011, World Cafe
1 Zim Ngqawana – Dirge (Sheer Music)
Ngqawana died in May. He was a fearless multi-instrumentalist, mostly on various reeds, and a composer – always crossing boundaries between cultures, and between structure and freedom. “Dirge” comes off his 2003 album, “Vadzimu” on Sheer Music. It’s one you should get if you haven’t already.
2 Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou – Von Vo Nono (Strut)
We’ve listened to Poly-Rythmo on this show many times, mainly drawing on recent reissues of the mid 70s stuff when they were at their peak, brought out by small specialist labels like Analog Africa. Orchestra Poly-rythmo had the wind taken out of their sails by the advent of the Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in Benin in 1972, which lasted until 1990, and began to bite from the late 70s. But they’re now back almost at full intensity on Strut Records with a core of original players (Loko Pierre, Vincent Ahehehinnou, Bentho Gustave, Melome Clement), largely thanks to the success of those reissues. This is their take on fellow Beninese music veteran Gnonnas Pedro’s classic tune “Von Vo Nono”. Pedro died in 2004, so I guess it’s a kind of tribute. Their new release on Strut Records is called “Cotonou Club”.
3 Imperial Tiger Orchestra – Etu Gela (Mental Groove Records)
The Imperial Tiger Orchestra is from Switzerland. They basically only play blistering, genre-crunching Ethio-jazz. You might have seen them in Cape Town round about September last year. The tune “Etu Gela” comes off their 2010 EP, “Addis Abeba”.
4 Teshome Meteku - Mot Adeladlogn (Buda Musique)
That we’re hearing that sort of furious Ethio-jazz fusion is in no small part due to Francis Falceto’s reissue series “Ethiopiques”, which he started in 1997, 10 years after the end of the Derg and six years after the end of communism in Ethiopia. The imprint mainly profiles music from the mid 60s till the military coup in 1974. There are now about 24 CDs in the series.
“Mot Adeladlogn” by keyboardist, Teshome Meteku (or Mitiku), is from Ethiopiques 1. Mitiku’s brother, Theodros, is on sax, and Seifu Yohannes sings. Mitiku emigrated to the US during the Derg, like many Ethiopian musicians. Since the Derg ended, he’s been back a number of times.
5 Dub Colossus – Guragigna (Real World)
The totally wonderful Ethiopian/British collective, Dub Colossus, thankfully have a new album out - “Addis through the looking glass”. “Guragigna”, is from an EP linked to the album called “Rockers meet Addis Uptown”. The pianist in Dub Colossus is a youngster, Samuel Yirga Mitiku, and I couldn’t help wondering if he’s related to Teshome, who we heard before Dub Colussus, but I couldn’t find anything confirming that he was.
Sheer Music bring out Dub Colussus in South Africa, and thanks to them for making the EP available.
6 Sidi Toure and Friends– Bera nay wassa (Thrill Jockey)
Sidi Toure is based in his city of birth, Gao, on the Niger River in Eastern Mali. Like Salif Keita he defied his noble family to become a musician. His latest record, “Sahel Folk”, only his second western release, is a collection of duets recorded in his sister’s house in Gao. On “Bera nay wassa” he plays the kurbu (a three-stringed instrument with a skin resonator which can be struck percussively) and sings, while Douma Cisse plays the guitar. The title means “Honour goes straight to the heart”.
7 Mamadou Diabate – Humanity (World Village)
New York-based Mamadou Diabate is the cousin of Toumani Diabate. “Humanity” is from his brand new album “Courage” which he went back to Bamako to record. All the musicians are Malian, except for his usual NY bass player, Noah Jarret. The wonderful balafon player (technically the instrument is a bala and balafon refers to the musician) is Lansana Fode Diabate.
8 Miriam Makeba - Dakhla Yunik (Stern’s Africa)
Miriam Makeba’s version of the Lebanese traditional song “Dakhla Yunik” which she recorded in the mid-70s during her exile in Guinea for well known Guinean label, Syliphone. The band contained some top flight Guinean players, like Seckou “Diamond Finger” Diabate, from Bembeya Jazz National. You can find that on Stern’s collection called “Miriam Makeba: The Guinea Years”.
9 Alexander Maloof and the Maloof Oriental Orchestra – Fatima (Rounder)
Syrian pianist, composer, orchestra leader, publisher and producer Alexander Maloof and the Maloof Oriental Orchestra with his tune “Fatima”. Maloof was very much part of the New York music establishment, especially in the 20s and 30s, when he played Carnegie Hall for the likes of Albert Einstein. His blend of western form, harmonies and orchestration with Arabic folk songs and classical music was widely embraced. That’s on Rounder’s collection of 78s from 1916 to the early 50s, called “Music of Arab Americans”.
10 Ferrante and Teicher – El Cumbanchero (Westminster)
Over the last few months we’ve been listening to all kinds of “possible musics” and “ethnological forgeries”, but studiously avoiding a closely related cousin – “lounge exotica” or “easy listening” – inventive but often maudlin, with highly plastic, droopy kinds of sounds – queasy listening. But I’ve come across something pretty exciting of late – the spiky, off-kilter sounds of Ferrante and Teicher, Julliard graduates active in the 50s and 60s. As one reviewer puts it, a “Dimension-X version of easy listening” – the influence of Joe Meek, John Cage, and Moondog writ large. “El Cumbanchero” is some kind of a Caribbean-Mexican mix. It’s from their 1956 LP, “Soundproof”.
11 Lucho Bermudez y Su Orquesta – Fiesta de negritos (Soundway)
Lucho Bermúdez y Su Orquesta with a mix of US big band music and Columbian cumbia. Bermúdez’s career spanned from the 1930s through to the 1960s, and the orchestra toured throughout the US and Cuba. They did some lovely stuff with Trinidadian calypso singers that we’ll listen to in the coming months.
12 Pedro Laza y Sus Pelayeros – La Picua (Soundway)
We listened to some Disco Fuentes stuff from Columbia last month, and there’s a lot more to come.
Both of these tunes come from a series of limited edition 7” vinyl only reissues just released by Soundway.
13 Bienvenidos – Systema Solar (Trikont)
I must say I find the Discos Fuentes sound of the modern rooted in the old, rural and peasant extremely compelling. Popular amongst students in Columbia, Systema Solar do the same in a post-hip hop kind of way.
14 Lee Perry – Better Days (Trojan)
A Lee Perry production of the Carlton & His Shoes single “Better Days” from 1973. “Carlton & His Shoes” are Carlton Manning, a founding member of the reggae roots group, the Abyssinians, and his brothers Donald and Lynford, who also joined the Abyssinians.
15 Atilla the Hun & Lord Executor – Jim Congo Meyer (Rounder)
Trinidadian calypso giant Attila the Hun was born Raymond Quevedo. Apart from touring all around the US and the Caribbean, he was active in local politics in the 40s and 50s, and even wrote a history of calypso. “Jim Congo Meyer” comes from the Rounder collection “Shango, Shouter and Obeah: Supernatural Calypso from Trinidad 1934 - 40”.
16 Snooks Eaglin – St James Infirmary (Smithsonian Folkways)
Playing different versions of “St James Infirmary” is turning into some kind of a custom on this show. A few months ago Sean O’Connor spun Allen Toussaint’s recent instrumental version, and we’ve heard versions by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band from New Orleans. Veteran guitarist and singer Snooks Eaglin’s lovely version was, I think, used in a UK Budweiser TV ad, horrible as that might seem. Incidently, Eaglin was in Allen Toussaint’s 1950s band, the Flamingoes.
17 David Johansen and Larry Saltzman – The Last Kind Words (Luaka Bop)
In the early 2000s David Johansen, the singer for the glam rock, proto-punk band, The New York Dolls, reinvented himself pretty convincingly as an old-time blues singer. This is his version of Geeshie Wiley’s fine song, “The Last Kind Words”. It’s from the soundtrack to the 2003 documentary “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus”.
18 Ola Belle Reed – High on the Mountain (Smithsonian Folkways)
“High on the Mountain” is probably Ola Belle Reed’s most famous song. Ola Belle Reed was a singer-songwriter and banjo player from North Carolina very rooted in Appalachian music and culture. Smithsonian Folkways brought out a wonderful collection of her stuff last year, “Rising Sun Melodies”.
19 Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard –- Working Girl Blues (Rounder)
Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard with a classic Dickens’ song “Working Girl Blues”. As I mentioned last month, Hazel Dickens, an old timey West Virginian singer-songwriter – one of the best, from what I’ve heard – died a few months ago. She met Alice Gerrard, Mike Seeger’s wife, when she moved from Mercer County to the Baltimore-Washington area to seek factory work, and their musical partnership lasted 20 years, although they played some reunions in the 90s.
20 John Wright – Dornoch Links - The Shepherd Crook – Iochiel’s Awa to France (Topic)
John Wright is a pretty obscure English folk musician who’s lived in France for decades now – so long that he was very much part of the French folk revival of the 70s. Here’s a medley of three traditional tunes played on the jew’s harp and recorded for Topic. The track appears on the LP “Unaccompanied: vocal-jew’s harp-fiddle-mouth organ”.
21 unknown – Gamelan Gabor # 2 (Sublime Frequencies)
From the Sublime Frequencies release “Night recordings from Bali”. Apparently Balinese Gamelan music is faster, tighter, and louder than their mighty neighbours to the west, the Javanese. Gamelan music is played by the Hindu minority in Bali.
22 Bo Hein and Bo Mein – Master of the nine cities (Sublime Frequencies)
This is a “nat pwe” from Burma. A “nat” is the spirit of a historical figure who met a tragic or violent death, and if recognized can either assist or devastate a person’s life. And a “pwe” is a ceremony to appease a nat. Pwes happen all the time in Burma - for success in business, happy marriage and good health. It’s from “Music of Nat Pwe: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar Vol 3”.
23 The Son of P.M. – Asava Leela (Sathit Tra Kon Khu)
From Thailand in the 60s. At the beginning of their career, PM stood for Payong Mukda, the driving force behind the band, and then later Pocket Music. The band was key to the development of “glassic” music or “progressive classical music” aka “Thai Modernised Music” aka “Shadow Music”, after the Shadows. The song is from the LP “Glassic Goes Modern Dance” and that particular dance rhythm is a “guaracha”.
24 Sun City Girls – Black Orchid (Abduction)
I was talking about “ethnological forgeries” earlier, and the Sun City Girls are prime proponents. “Black Orchid” is something from their last ever album, “Funeral Mariachi”, which came out last year, and is built posthumously around the drum tracks of Charles Gocher, who died some time ago. “Black Orchid” is some kind of Indonesian rock thing.
25 Bijan Chemirani with Ross Daly - Makrinitsa (L'empreinte Digitale)
The magnificent teaming of zarb or frame drum maestro, Bijan Chemirani, and Ross Daly on a lyre of his own invention (a cross between a Cretan lyre and an Indian sangari), on Daly’s tune, “Makrinitsa”. Bijan comes from the great dynasty of Iranian percussionists, the Chemirani. His father Djamchid and brother Keyvan also play on the tune. Daly is an Irishman who been living in Crete for over 35 years.
Earlier in the post I referred to Zim Ngqawana’s adventurous openness – he actually played with Djamchid Chemirani in Rylands a few years ago at the Galaxy, I think it was, with, strangely enough, another Irishman transposed from Ireland, Christy Doran.
26 Emily Portman – Two Sisters (Furrow)
From the lyre to the harp, Emily Portman’s version of a traditional song from her 2010 release, “The Glamoury”.
27 Martin Carthy – Bold General Wolfe (Topic)
Martin Carthy has just turned 70; actually he pipped Bob Dylan to the post. Martin Carthy has been at the forefront of the English folk revival since its inception, more or less, and helped introduce loads of important sonic innovations (percussive acoustic guitar playing, mysterious unaccompanied polyphonic singing, droney electric guitar, brass) and literally spawned a key mover in the current folk scene, fiddler, singer and songwriter, Eliza Carthy. Toby Shippey provides the trumpet, Ben Ivitsky, the trombone and Eliza Carthy the melodeon or was it the harmonium? It’s from his 2004 album, “Waiting for Angels”.
28 June Tabor – Jamaica (Topic)
About three months ago I played you one of the two instrumentals from June Tabor’s new album, “Ashore”, an album of songs which contemplate from the safety of the shore the sea and its crossing. “Jamaica” is the second instrumental from the album. It features Andy Cutting on accordion, Mark Emerson on violin, Tim Harries on bass and Huw Warren on piano.
Ngqawana died in May. He was a fearless multi-instrumentalist, mostly on various reeds, and a composer – always crossing boundaries between cultures, and between structure and freedom. “Dirge” comes off his 2003 album, “Vadzimu” on Sheer Music. It’s one you should get if you haven’t already.
2 Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou – Von Vo Nono (Strut)
We’ve listened to Poly-Rythmo on this show many times, mainly drawing on recent reissues of the mid 70s stuff when they were at their peak, brought out by small specialist labels like Analog Africa. Orchestra Poly-rythmo had the wind taken out of their sails by the advent of the Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in Benin in 1972, which lasted until 1990, and began to bite from the late 70s. But they’re now back almost at full intensity on Strut Records with a core of original players (Loko Pierre, Vincent Ahehehinnou, Bentho Gustave, Melome Clement), largely thanks to the success of those reissues. This is their take on fellow Beninese music veteran Gnonnas Pedro’s classic tune “Von Vo Nono”. Pedro died in 2004, so I guess it’s a kind of tribute. Their new release on Strut Records is called “Cotonou Club”.
3 Imperial Tiger Orchestra – Etu Gela (Mental Groove Records)
The Imperial Tiger Orchestra is from Switzerland. They basically only play blistering, genre-crunching Ethio-jazz. You might have seen them in Cape Town round about September last year. The tune “Etu Gela” comes off their 2010 EP, “Addis Abeba”.
4 Teshome Meteku - Mot Adeladlogn (Buda Musique)
That we’re hearing that sort of furious Ethio-jazz fusion is in no small part due to Francis Falceto’s reissue series “Ethiopiques”, which he started in 1997, 10 years after the end of the Derg and six years after the end of communism in Ethiopia. The imprint mainly profiles music from the mid 60s till the military coup in 1974. There are now about 24 CDs in the series.
“Mot Adeladlogn” by keyboardist, Teshome Meteku (or Mitiku), is from Ethiopiques 1. Mitiku’s brother, Theodros, is on sax, and Seifu Yohannes sings. Mitiku emigrated to the US during the Derg, like many Ethiopian musicians. Since the Derg ended, he’s been back a number of times.
5 Dub Colossus – Guragigna (Real World)
The totally wonderful Ethiopian/British collective, Dub Colossus, thankfully have a new album out - “Addis through the looking glass”. “Guragigna”, is from an EP linked to the album called “Rockers meet Addis Uptown”. The pianist in Dub Colossus is a youngster, Samuel Yirga Mitiku, and I couldn’t help wondering if he’s related to Teshome, who we heard before Dub Colussus, but I couldn’t find anything confirming that he was.
Sheer Music bring out Dub Colussus in South Africa, and thanks to them for making the EP available.
6 Sidi Toure and Friends– Bera nay wassa (Thrill Jockey)
Sidi Toure is based in his city of birth, Gao, on the Niger River in Eastern Mali. Like Salif Keita he defied his noble family to become a musician. His latest record, “Sahel Folk”, only his second western release, is a collection of duets recorded in his sister’s house in Gao. On “Bera nay wassa” he plays the kurbu (a three-stringed instrument with a skin resonator which can be struck percussively) and sings, while Douma Cisse plays the guitar. The title means “Honour goes straight to the heart”.
7 Mamadou Diabate – Humanity (World Village)
New York-based Mamadou Diabate is the cousin of Toumani Diabate. “Humanity” is from his brand new album “Courage” which he went back to Bamako to record. All the musicians are Malian, except for his usual NY bass player, Noah Jarret. The wonderful balafon player (technically the instrument is a bala and balafon refers to the musician) is Lansana Fode Diabate.
8 Miriam Makeba - Dakhla Yunik (Stern’s Africa)
Miriam Makeba’s version of the Lebanese traditional song “Dakhla Yunik” which she recorded in the mid-70s during her exile in Guinea for well known Guinean label, Syliphone. The band contained some top flight Guinean players, like Seckou “Diamond Finger” Diabate, from Bembeya Jazz National. You can find that on Stern’s collection called “Miriam Makeba: The Guinea Years”.
9 Alexander Maloof and the Maloof Oriental Orchestra – Fatima (Rounder)
Syrian pianist, composer, orchestra leader, publisher and producer Alexander Maloof and the Maloof Oriental Orchestra with his tune “Fatima”. Maloof was very much part of the New York music establishment, especially in the 20s and 30s, when he played Carnegie Hall for the likes of Albert Einstein. His blend of western form, harmonies and orchestration with Arabic folk songs and classical music was widely embraced. That’s on Rounder’s collection of 78s from 1916 to the early 50s, called “Music of Arab Americans”.
10 Ferrante and Teicher – El Cumbanchero (Westminster)
Over the last few months we’ve been listening to all kinds of “possible musics” and “ethnological forgeries”, but studiously avoiding a closely related cousin – “lounge exotica” or “easy listening” – inventive but often maudlin, with highly plastic, droopy kinds of sounds – queasy listening. But I’ve come across something pretty exciting of late – the spiky, off-kilter sounds of Ferrante and Teicher, Julliard graduates active in the 50s and 60s. As one reviewer puts it, a “Dimension-X version of easy listening” – the influence of Joe Meek, John Cage, and Moondog writ large. “El Cumbanchero” is some kind of a Caribbean-Mexican mix. It’s from their 1956 LP, “Soundproof”.
11 Lucho Bermudez y Su Orquesta – Fiesta de negritos (Soundway)
Lucho Bermúdez y Su Orquesta with a mix of US big band music and Columbian cumbia. Bermúdez’s career spanned from the 1930s through to the 1960s, and the orchestra toured throughout the US and Cuba. They did some lovely stuff with Trinidadian calypso singers that we’ll listen to in the coming months.
12 Pedro Laza y Sus Pelayeros – La Picua (Soundway)
We listened to some Disco Fuentes stuff from Columbia last month, and there’s a lot more to come.
Both of these tunes come from a series of limited edition 7” vinyl only reissues just released by Soundway.
13 Bienvenidos – Systema Solar (Trikont)
I must say I find the Discos Fuentes sound of the modern rooted in the old, rural and peasant extremely compelling. Popular amongst students in Columbia, Systema Solar do the same in a post-hip hop kind of way.
14 Lee Perry – Better Days (Trojan)
A Lee Perry production of the Carlton & His Shoes single “Better Days” from 1973. “Carlton & His Shoes” are Carlton Manning, a founding member of the reggae roots group, the Abyssinians, and his brothers Donald and Lynford, who also joined the Abyssinians.
15 Atilla the Hun & Lord Executor – Jim Congo Meyer (Rounder)
Trinidadian calypso giant Attila the Hun was born Raymond Quevedo. Apart from touring all around the US and the Caribbean, he was active in local politics in the 40s and 50s, and even wrote a history of calypso. “Jim Congo Meyer” comes from the Rounder collection “Shango, Shouter and Obeah: Supernatural Calypso from Trinidad 1934 - 40”.
16 Snooks Eaglin – St James Infirmary (Smithsonian Folkways)
Playing different versions of “St James Infirmary” is turning into some kind of a custom on this show. A few months ago Sean O’Connor spun Allen Toussaint’s recent instrumental version, and we’ve heard versions by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band from New Orleans. Veteran guitarist and singer Snooks Eaglin’s lovely version was, I think, used in a UK Budweiser TV ad, horrible as that might seem. Incidently, Eaglin was in Allen Toussaint’s 1950s band, the Flamingoes.
17 David Johansen and Larry Saltzman – The Last Kind Words (Luaka Bop)
In the early 2000s David Johansen, the singer for the glam rock, proto-punk band, The New York Dolls, reinvented himself pretty convincingly as an old-time blues singer. This is his version of Geeshie Wiley’s fine song, “The Last Kind Words”. It’s from the soundtrack to the 2003 documentary “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus”.
18 Ola Belle Reed – High on the Mountain (Smithsonian Folkways)
“High on the Mountain” is probably Ola Belle Reed’s most famous song. Ola Belle Reed was a singer-songwriter and banjo player from North Carolina very rooted in Appalachian music and culture. Smithsonian Folkways brought out a wonderful collection of her stuff last year, “Rising Sun Melodies”.
19 Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard –- Working Girl Blues (Rounder)
Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard with a classic Dickens’ song “Working Girl Blues”. As I mentioned last month, Hazel Dickens, an old timey West Virginian singer-songwriter – one of the best, from what I’ve heard – died a few months ago. She met Alice Gerrard, Mike Seeger’s wife, when she moved from Mercer County to the Baltimore-Washington area to seek factory work, and their musical partnership lasted 20 years, although they played some reunions in the 90s.
20 John Wright – Dornoch Links - The Shepherd Crook – Iochiel’s Awa to France (Topic)
John Wright is a pretty obscure English folk musician who’s lived in France for decades now – so long that he was very much part of the French folk revival of the 70s. Here’s a medley of three traditional tunes played on the jew’s harp and recorded for Topic. The track appears on the LP “Unaccompanied: vocal-jew’s harp-fiddle-mouth organ”.
21 unknown – Gamelan Gabor # 2 (Sublime Frequencies)
From the Sublime Frequencies release “Night recordings from Bali”. Apparently Balinese Gamelan music is faster, tighter, and louder than their mighty neighbours to the west, the Javanese. Gamelan music is played by the Hindu minority in Bali.
22 Bo Hein and Bo Mein – Master of the nine cities (Sublime Frequencies)
This is a “nat pwe” from Burma. A “nat” is the spirit of a historical figure who met a tragic or violent death, and if recognized can either assist or devastate a person’s life. And a “pwe” is a ceremony to appease a nat. Pwes happen all the time in Burma - for success in business, happy marriage and good health. It’s from “Music of Nat Pwe: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar Vol 3”.
23 The Son of P.M. – Asava Leela (Sathit Tra Kon Khu)
From Thailand in the 60s. At the beginning of their career, PM stood for Payong Mukda, the driving force behind the band, and then later Pocket Music. The band was key to the development of “glassic” music or “progressive classical music” aka “Thai Modernised Music” aka “Shadow Music”, after the Shadows. The song is from the LP “Glassic Goes Modern Dance” and that particular dance rhythm is a “guaracha”.
24 Sun City Girls – Black Orchid (Abduction)
I was talking about “ethnological forgeries” earlier, and the Sun City Girls are prime proponents. “Black Orchid” is something from their last ever album, “Funeral Mariachi”, which came out last year, and is built posthumously around the drum tracks of Charles Gocher, who died some time ago. “Black Orchid” is some kind of Indonesian rock thing.
25 Bijan Chemirani with Ross Daly - Makrinitsa (L'empreinte Digitale)
The magnificent teaming of zarb or frame drum maestro, Bijan Chemirani, and Ross Daly on a lyre of his own invention (a cross between a Cretan lyre and an Indian sangari), on Daly’s tune, “Makrinitsa”. Bijan comes from the great dynasty of Iranian percussionists, the Chemirani. His father Djamchid and brother Keyvan also play on the tune. Daly is an Irishman who been living in Crete for over 35 years.
Earlier in the post I referred to Zim Ngqawana’s adventurous openness – he actually played with Djamchid Chemirani in Rylands a few years ago at the Galaxy, I think it was, with, strangely enough, another Irishman transposed from Ireland, Christy Doran.
26 Emily Portman – Two Sisters (Furrow)
From the lyre to the harp, Emily Portman’s version of a traditional song from her 2010 release, “The Glamoury”.
27 Martin Carthy – Bold General Wolfe (Topic)
Martin Carthy has just turned 70; actually he pipped Bob Dylan to the post. Martin Carthy has been at the forefront of the English folk revival since its inception, more or less, and helped introduce loads of important sonic innovations (percussive acoustic guitar playing, mysterious unaccompanied polyphonic singing, droney electric guitar, brass) and literally spawned a key mover in the current folk scene, fiddler, singer and songwriter, Eliza Carthy. Toby Shippey provides the trumpet, Ben Ivitsky, the trombone and Eliza Carthy the melodeon or was it the harmonium? It’s from his 2004 album, “Waiting for Angels”.
28 June Tabor – Jamaica (Topic)
About three months ago I played you one of the two instrumentals from June Tabor’s new album, “Ashore”, an album of songs which contemplate from the safety of the shore the sea and its crossing. “Jamaica” is the second instrumental from the album. It features Andy Cutting on accordion, Mark Emerson on violin, Tim Harries on bass and Huw Warren on piano.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
1 June 2010, World Cafe
1 Khaira Arby – Goumou (Clermont Music/Lusafrica)
Khaira Arby has been part of the music scene in Mali, especially around Timbuktu from whence she hails, for decades but only brought out her first international release, “Timbuktu Tarab”, last year. Like Oumou Sangare, she’s a women’s rights activist and an inspiration for women singers around Mali. She’s also Ali Farka Toure’s cousin. We’ve just listened to “Goumou”, the opening track from “Timbuktu Tarab”.
2 Tamikrest – Tarhamanine Assinegh (Glitterhouse)
Tamikest is a band of twenty-something Tuaregs who formed in 2006 around the city Kidal, NE of Timbuktu and relatively close to the Algerian border. Tinariwen are their total heroes. The song comes from their second LP, just released, called “Toumastin”.
3 Ricky and Mbasalala – Biby Neny (Haus der kulturen der welt)
Ricky and Mbasalala sing a vocal style that comes from the Antandroy, the “people of the land of thorns” - the dry, low lying southern region of Madagascar. Legend has it that the people of this region are descendents of Arabs who landed there in the 5th century. The area, like the rest of Madagascar, is a serious melting-pot. However, the culture of the area is apparently quite unified and based on hunting and animal breeding. There are stylistic elements in the singing that bear this out, like the rough, breathy singing in imitation of wheezing cattle that you heard in this song. “Biby Neny” is a legendary nocturnal monster, deployed by parents to terrify their children into submission.
4 Vaovy – Angira (Indigo)
Staying in Antandroy, Vaovy are a mainly vocal group. “Angira” is an invitation made to neighbouring villages to sing and revel. Vaovy is the brainchild of the songwriter and choral composer, Jean Gabin Fanovana, who sings the lead vocal parts on this track. There are imitations of cattle and cattle herding sounds here too.
5 Daniel Tombo – Tsara Ny Manam-Pahaizana (Buda)
Daniel Tombo, a marovany maestro, lives in the eastern part of Madagascar, a monsoon forest area in which grow the hardwoods used to produce the marovany box resonator. Containing the first big port of Madagascar, it’s also a very multicultural area. The marovany is a descendent of the valiha, a bamboo harp that originates in Upper Vietnam and Malaysia. The song, very soberly, but probably not very traditionally, advises against sacrificing education for early marriage.
These three Madagascan recordings each come from separate albums, and were all recorded in the mid to late 90s. If you’re interested in getting them, check out the Freedomblues blog.
6 Aurelio – Yurumie (Stonetree Records)
The super-rich mélange that is Madagascan music, for some reason always reminds me of Garifunan music, from the Caribbean.
“Yurumai” is another name for the island of St Vincent which is a kind of promised land for the Garifuna people. It’s the place where the Garifuna culture was originally born 200 years ago, from the interaction between shipwrecked slaves from West Africa and Caribbean Indians. The Garifuna people were expelled from the island by the British and wound up in Honduras and Belize. The tune gives this history, and expresses a longing to return. It comes from Aurelio Martinez’s new album, “Laru Seya”.
7 Curro Fuentes & the Big Band – Yolanda (Soundway)
Sticking to the Caribbean, “Yolanda” is from vintage Columbian label Discos Fuentes, founded in 1934 in the Caribbean city of Cartagena. Curro Fuentes, the youngest brother in the original founding family, produced a mass of material for the label in the 60s and 70s, and Soundway recently put out a collection of this stuff. The tune “Yolanda” is by Orlando Fortich. One key feature of Curro’s sound is a studious avoidance of the drum kit. So on “Yolanda” instead of the hi-hat on the upbeat, you get the guiro – a washboard – which makes things funky, but not Funky with a capital F. It comes off the album “Cartagena Curro Fuentes & the Big Band Cumbia and Descarga Sound of Colombia 1962-72”.
8 Bill Frisell & Vinicius Cantuaria – Mi Declaration (Entertainment One Music)
American jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and Brazilian guitarist, singer and percussionist, Vinicius Cantuaria, have pushed musical boundaries in the past as part of the Intercontinentals. Their 2011 teaming up, “Lagrimas Mexicanas”, takes various kinds of Latin music as the starting point, but moves thing a lot further.
9 Miguel Aceves Mejia – El jinete (RCA Victor)
Miguel Aceves Mejia, the “king of the falsetto”, was one of Mexico’s most popular singers, especially in the 50s and 60s, and is known for his interpretations of various Mexican folk styles, like ranchera. But he was also a composer and a movie actor. He died at the age of 91 in 2006. “El jinete” (“The horseman”) was one of his biggest hits. It comes from the LP “Canta canciones de Jose Alfredo Jimenez”.
10 Professor Longhair and his Blues Scholars – Tipitina (Proper)
The city of New Orleans fronts onto the Gulf of Mexico, and is a site of great cultural mixing and musical innovation. Here are two great New Orleans pianists.
Professor Longhair, in the words of journalist Tony Russell, developed a kind of “vivacious rumba-rhythmed” piano blues and “choked singing” style that spawned a whole sub-genre of New Orleans rhythm and blues. This version of “Tipitina” was recorded in 1953.
11 Allen Toussaint – Whirlaway (RCA)
Allen Toussaint is one of the Professor’s followers, who eventually took things in a polished and sophisticated soulful, almost orchestral, singer-songwriter direction – but not here. This version of “Whirlaway” was recorded in 1958 under the name A. Tousan, when he was 20.
12 Mayos Muana Ngombo – Nalembi-kotuna (Eddy’Son Consortium Mondial)
Speaking of the rumba, “Nalembi-kotuna” is a quite obscure, but very infectious Congolese rumba. The red hot drumming is by Nole Ti-Paul, and Eddy Gustave, who is also the producer, supplies the sax.
13 Sunny Ade & his Green Spot Band – Gbe mi debute ogo (African Songs Ltd)
Sunny Ade & his Green Spot Band from the mid 60s with his pre-juju Nigerian brand of hi-life. It’s from his 1966 collection “The Master Guitarist vol 1”.
14 Mahmoud Ahmed – Kulun Mankwelesh (Buda Musique)
Some absolutely classic Ethiopean funk circa 1973. “Kulun Mankwelesh” is a wedding song. The title means “Who put the kohl on your eyes?”. It comes from “Ethiopiques vol 6: Almaz”.
15 Sim Sisamouth – Don’t let my girlfriend tickle me (Sublime Frequencies)
Last month we listened to a classic Cambodian 60s and 70s folk and rock singer, Ros Sereysothea, who died during the Khmer Rouge. Sim Sisamouth was one of her musical partners, and a singer-songwriter, who also died during the Khmer Rouge. Sublime Frequencies in another one of their daring acts of exhumation and resurrection – the niceties of hi-fi and copyright be damned – has rescued for posterity his music and the music of others from 150 ageing cassettes found at the Asian Branch of the Oakland Public Library in California. They put it out on “Cambodian Cassette Archives: Khmer Folk and Pop Music Vol 1”.
16 Mar Mar Aye – Beautiful Town (Sublime Frequencies)
Sublime Frequencies are also active with their gonzo acts of restoration in another South East Asian hotspot of repression, Burma. The track comes from “Princess Nicotine: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar Vol 1”. There is some exquisite, subtle piano playing here. The SF blurb puts it eloquently “What the Burmese have done with a piano is so precise in the adaptation to their existing form and melody that one would think they invented it [the piano]”.
17 Saing Saing Maw – Lake Thay Mah Shoke (Sublime Frequencies)
“Lake Thay Mah Shoke” is taken from “Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk & Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma), Vol 2”. The Golden Triangle was a poppy-growing area in Burma in the Shan State when this was recorded (it now also produces masses of methamphetamine), and Saing Saing Maw was a legendary singer-songwriter/electric guitarist from this area.
18 Natacha Atlas – Hayati Inta Reprise (Hayatak Ana) (World Village)
“Hayati Inta (Hayatak Ana)” means “You’re my life and I am your life” and is off the 2008 release “Ana Hina”.
19 Googoosh – Gol Bi Goldoun (Caltex)
Faegheh Atashin, or as she is better known, Googoosh, is a legendary singer from Iran, very well known throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Her father was partly of Azerbaijani extraction, and besides her silken voice, she is known for her ability to sing in several Central Asian languages. She was forced to stop singing in public after the revolution in 1979, but remained in Iran until 2000. Since then she’s given concerts in America, where she now lives, and the Middle East – people come from far and wide to see her. The song comes off “The Best of Googoosh, Volume 3”.
20 She’koyokh Klezmer Ensemble – Rampi Rampi (ARC music)
Cigdem Alsan is a Turkish singer based in Britain who forms part of the large and sprightly band, the She’koyokh Klezmer Ensemble. She leads them in the Turkish tune “Rampi Rampi” which seems to be about different kinds of personal resilience: “on the top of my tent the rain went shpp shpp; Allah did not take my soul away”.
21 Masada – Hekhal (DIW) (Disk Union Japan)
From John Zorn’s power jazz quartet, Masada, that was “Hekhal”, which was part of the Temple in Jerusalem, near the Holy of Holies… and that brings us to the sort of folk-jazz section of this show. Folk-jazz, for purposes of this show, being the intrusion of folk elements (melodies, harmonies, rhythms even instruments) into various kinds of jazz, but especially free jazz. The 70s appears to be the high point for this kind of stuff.
22 Francois Tusques/Sonneur Traditionnels /intercommunal free dance music orchestra - Les racines de la montagne (Le Chant du Monde)
Pianist and composer Francois Tusques is a pioneer of free jazz in France. In 1979 with his Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra, consisting of French, Corsican and North and West African musicians, he put together an album called “Apres la maree noire (after the oil slick): towards a new Breton music”. The track features the bombarde, a popular contemporary conical bore double reed instrument widely used to play traditional Breton music.
23 Ken Hyder’s Talisker – The men of Barra know how to drink but the women know how to sing (Japo)
Two tunes that either come from the Hebrides or are inspired by Hebridean music.
Ken Hyder’s Talisker, a free jazz group active in the 70s, often appropriated traditional Scottish elements. On the tune “The men of Barra know how to drink but the women know how to sing” they teamed up with free (improvisational) singers Maggie Nichols, Frankie Armstrong, Brian Eley and Phil Minton.
24 Mary Morrison – Pipe Imitations (Tradition TLP 1047)
Mary Morrison, who came from the Barra area, recorded her imitations of pipe music for musicologist Alan Lomax in the 50s. It’s on a collection called “Heather and Glen – A collection of folk songs and folk music from Aberdeenshire and the Hebrides”.
25 Marry Waterson & Oliver Knight – The Loosened Arrow (One Little Indian)
Marry Waterson and Oliver Knight are the daughter and son of Lal Waterson – from the legendary English trad group, the Watersons. Daughter and son have apparently been playing their own tunes for years, drawing inspiration from their mother’s unconventional approaches to writing, but only formally released the stuff this year on the album, “The Days that Shaped me”. “The Loosened Arrow” has their cousin, Eliza Carthy, supplying the fiddle.
26 Frank Proffitt – Satan, your kingdom must come down (Rounder)
Two musicians based in North Carolina.
Frank Proffitt was raised on a farm in the Appalachian mountains and lived on the farm for his whole life – growing tobacco, working wood, labouring in a spark plug factory and making his own banjos. This tune was recorded in the field by John Cohen and came out on the 1975 Rounder compilation “High Atmosphere”. Proffitt is most known for his version of “Tom Dooley” which he learnt from his aunt, Nancy Prather, who had actually known Tom Dula. The Proffitt version of the tune wound up in John and Alan Lomax’s 1947 print anthology “Folk Song USA”.
27 Hiss Golden Messenger – Super Blue (Two Days Clean) (Blackmaps)
Hiss Golden Messenger is basically Michael Taylor, originally of San Francisco, who apparently works as a folklorist. That’s from his recent album, “Bad Debt”.
28 Hazel Dickens, Carol Elizabeth Jones and Ginny Hawker – Times are not what they used to be (Rounder)
One of the touchstone singers and songwriters of Southern mountain music, Hazel Dickens, died in late April. Dickens was born in Mercer County, West Virginia, and lived a good deal of her life in West Virginia, although she wound up in the Baltimore area in the 50s and 60s (where she formed a musical partnership with Alice Gerrard - more about that in July). The track might have been from her last recording to be released – the album “Heart of the Singer” from 1998, which she did with singers Carol Elizabeth Jones and Ginny Hawker.
Khaira Arby has been part of the music scene in Mali, especially around Timbuktu from whence she hails, for decades but only brought out her first international release, “Timbuktu Tarab”, last year. Like Oumou Sangare, she’s a women’s rights activist and an inspiration for women singers around Mali. She’s also Ali Farka Toure’s cousin. We’ve just listened to “Goumou”, the opening track from “Timbuktu Tarab”.
2 Tamikrest – Tarhamanine Assinegh (Glitterhouse)
Tamikest is a band of twenty-something Tuaregs who formed in 2006 around the city Kidal, NE of Timbuktu and relatively close to the Algerian border. Tinariwen are their total heroes. The song comes from their second LP, just released, called “Toumastin”.
3 Ricky and Mbasalala – Biby Neny (Haus der kulturen der welt)
Ricky and Mbasalala sing a vocal style that comes from the Antandroy, the “people of the land of thorns” - the dry, low lying southern region of Madagascar. Legend has it that the people of this region are descendents of Arabs who landed there in the 5th century. The area, like the rest of Madagascar, is a serious melting-pot. However, the culture of the area is apparently quite unified and based on hunting and animal breeding. There are stylistic elements in the singing that bear this out, like the rough, breathy singing in imitation of wheezing cattle that you heard in this song. “Biby Neny” is a legendary nocturnal monster, deployed by parents to terrify their children into submission.
4 Vaovy – Angira (Indigo)
Staying in Antandroy, Vaovy are a mainly vocal group. “Angira” is an invitation made to neighbouring villages to sing and revel. Vaovy is the brainchild of the songwriter and choral composer, Jean Gabin Fanovana, who sings the lead vocal parts on this track. There are imitations of cattle and cattle herding sounds here too.
5 Daniel Tombo – Tsara Ny Manam-Pahaizana (Buda)
Daniel Tombo, a marovany maestro, lives in the eastern part of Madagascar, a monsoon forest area in which grow the hardwoods used to produce the marovany box resonator. Containing the first big port of Madagascar, it’s also a very multicultural area. The marovany is a descendent of the valiha, a bamboo harp that originates in Upper Vietnam and Malaysia. The song, very soberly, but probably not very traditionally, advises against sacrificing education for early marriage.
These three Madagascan recordings each come from separate albums, and were all recorded in the mid to late 90s. If you’re interested in getting them, check out the Freedomblues blog.
6 Aurelio – Yurumie (Stonetree Records)
The super-rich mélange that is Madagascan music, for some reason always reminds me of Garifunan music, from the Caribbean.
“Yurumai” is another name for the island of St Vincent which is a kind of promised land for the Garifuna people. It’s the place where the Garifuna culture was originally born 200 years ago, from the interaction between shipwrecked slaves from West Africa and Caribbean Indians. The Garifuna people were expelled from the island by the British and wound up in Honduras and Belize. The tune gives this history, and expresses a longing to return. It comes from Aurelio Martinez’s new album, “Laru Seya”.
7 Curro Fuentes & the Big Band – Yolanda (Soundway)
Sticking to the Caribbean, “Yolanda” is from vintage Columbian label Discos Fuentes, founded in 1934 in the Caribbean city of Cartagena. Curro Fuentes, the youngest brother in the original founding family, produced a mass of material for the label in the 60s and 70s, and Soundway recently put out a collection of this stuff. The tune “Yolanda” is by Orlando Fortich. One key feature of Curro’s sound is a studious avoidance of the drum kit. So on “Yolanda” instead of the hi-hat on the upbeat, you get the guiro – a washboard – which makes things funky, but not Funky with a capital F. It comes off the album “Cartagena Curro Fuentes & the Big Band Cumbia and Descarga Sound of Colombia 1962-72”.
8 Bill Frisell & Vinicius Cantuaria – Mi Declaration (Entertainment One Music)
American jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and Brazilian guitarist, singer and percussionist, Vinicius Cantuaria, have pushed musical boundaries in the past as part of the Intercontinentals. Their 2011 teaming up, “Lagrimas Mexicanas”, takes various kinds of Latin music as the starting point, but moves thing a lot further.
9 Miguel Aceves Mejia – El jinete (RCA Victor)
Miguel Aceves Mejia, the “king of the falsetto”, was one of Mexico’s most popular singers, especially in the 50s and 60s, and is known for his interpretations of various Mexican folk styles, like ranchera. But he was also a composer and a movie actor. He died at the age of 91 in 2006. “El jinete” (“The horseman”) was one of his biggest hits. It comes from the LP “Canta canciones de Jose Alfredo Jimenez”.
10 Professor Longhair and his Blues Scholars – Tipitina (Proper)
The city of New Orleans fronts onto the Gulf of Mexico, and is a site of great cultural mixing and musical innovation. Here are two great New Orleans pianists.
Professor Longhair, in the words of journalist Tony Russell, developed a kind of “vivacious rumba-rhythmed” piano blues and “choked singing” style that spawned a whole sub-genre of New Orleans rhythm and blues. This version of “Tipitina” was recorded in 1953.
11 Allen Toussaint – Whirlaway (RCA)
Allen Toussaint is one of the Professor’s followers, who eventually took things in a polished and sophisticated soulful, almost orchestral, singer-songwriter direction – but not here. This version of “Whirlaway” was recorded in 1958 under the name A. Tousan, when he was 20.
12 Mayos Muana Ngombo – Nalembi-kotuna (Eddy’Son Consortium Mondial)
Speaking of the rumba, “Nalembi-kotuna” is a quite obscure, but very infectious Congolese rumba. The red hot drumming is by Nole Ti-Paul, and Eddy Gustave, who is also the producer, supplies the sax.
13 Sunny Ade & his Green Spot Band – Gbe mi debute ogo (African Songs Ltd)
Sunny Ade & his Green Spot Band from the mid 60s with his pre-juju Nigerian brand of hi-life. It’s from his 1966 collection “The Master Guitarist vol 1”.
14 Mahmoud Ahmed – Kulun Mankwelesh (Buda Musique)
Some absolutely classic Ethiopean funk circa 1973. “Kulun Mankwelesh” is a wedding song. The title means “Who put the kohl on your eyes?”. It comes from “Ethiopiques vol 6: Almaz”.
15 Sim Sisamouth – Don’t let my girlfriend tickle me (Sublime Frequencies)
Last month we listened to a classic Cambodian 60s and 70s folk and rock singer, Ros Sereysothea, who died during the Khmer Rouge. Sim Sisamouth was one of her musical partners, and a singer-songwriter, who also died during the Khmer Rouge. Sublime Frequencies in another one of their daring acts of exhumation and resurrection – the niceties of hi-fi and copyright be damned – has rescued for posterity his music and the music of others from 150 ageing cassettes found at the Asian Branch of the Oakland Public Library in California. They put it out on “Cambodian Cassette Archives: Khmer Folk and Pop Music Vol 1”.
16 Mar Mar Aye – Beautiful Town (Sublime Frequencies)
Sublime Frequencies are also active with their gonzo acts of restoration in another South East Asian hotspot of repression, Burma. The track comes from “Princess Nicotine: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar Vol 1”. There is some exquisite, subtle piano playing here. The SF blurb puts it eloquently “What the Burmese have done with a piano is so precise in the adaptation to their existing form and melody that one would think they invented it [the piano]”.
17 Saing Saing Maw – Lake Thay Mah Shoke (Sublime Frequencies)
“Lake Thay Mah Shoke” is taken from “Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk & Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma), Vol 2”. The Golden Triangle was a poppy-growing area in Burma in the Shan State when this was recorded (it now also produces masses of methamphetamine), and Saing Saing Maw was a legendary singer-songwriter/electric guitarist from this area.
18 Natacha Atlas – Hayati Inta Reprise (Hayatak Ana) (World Village)
“Hayati Inta (Hayatak Ana)” means “You’re my life and I am your life” and is off the 2008 release “Ana Hina”.
19 Googoosh – Gol Bi Goldoun (Caltex)
Faegheh Atashin, or as she is better known, Googoosh, is a legendary singer from Iran, very well known throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Her father was partly of Azerbaijani extraction, and besides her silken voice, she is known for her ability to sing in several Central Asian languages. She was forced to stop singing in public after the revolution in 1979, but remained in Iran until 2000. Since then she’s given concerts in America, where she now lives, and the Middle East – people come from far and wide to see her. The song comes off “The Best of Googoosh, Volume 3”.
20 She’koyokh Klezmer Ensemble – Rampi Rampi (ARC music)
Cigdem Alsan is a Turkish singer based in Britain who forms part of the large and sprightly band, the She’koyokh Klezmer Ensemble. She leads them in the Turkish tune “Rampi Rampi” which seems to be about different kinds of personal resilience: “on the top of my tent the rain went shpp shpp; Allah did not take my soul away”.
21 Masada – Hekhal (DIW) (Disk Union Japan)
From John Zorn’s power jazz quartet, Masada, that was “Hekhal”, which was part of the Temple in Jerusalem, near the Holy of Holies… and that brings us to the sort of folk-jazz section of this show. Folk-jazz, for purposes of this show, being the intrusion of folk elements (melodies, harmonies, rhythms even instruments) into various kinds of jazz, but especially free jazz. The 70s appears to be the high point for this kind of stuff.
22 Francois Tusques/Sonneur Traditionnels /intercommunal free dance music orchestra - Les racines de la montagne (Le Chant du Monde)
Pianist and composer Francois Tusques is a pioneer of free jazz in France. In 1979 with his Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra, consisting of French, Corsican and North and West African musicians, he put together an album called “Apres la maree noire (after the oil slick): towards a new Breton music”. The track features the bombarde, a popular contemporary conical bore double reed instrument widely used to play traditional Breton music.
23 Ken Hyder’s Talisker – The men of Barra know how to drink but the women know how to sing (Japo)
Two tunes that either come from the Hebrides or are inspired by Hebridean music.
Ken Hyder’s Talisker, a free jazz group active in the 70s, often appropriated traditional Scottish elements. On the tune “The men of Barra know how to drink but the women know how to sing” they teamed up with free (improvisational) singers Maggie Nichols, Frankie Armstrong, Brian Eley and Phil Minton.
24 Mary Morrison – Pipe Imitations (Tradition TLP 1047)
Mary Morrison, who came from the Barra area, recorded her imitations of pipe music for musicologist Alan Lomax in the 50s. It’s on a collection called “Heather and Glen – A collection of folk songs and folk music from Aberdeenshire and the Hebrides”.
25 Marry Waterson & Oliver Knight – The Loosened Arrow (One Little Indian)
Marry Waterson and Oliver Knight are the daughter and son of Lal Waterson – from the legendary English trad group, the Watersons. Daughter and son have apparently been playing their own tunes for years, drawing inspiration from their mother’s unconventional approaches to writing, but only formally released the stuff this year on the album, “The Days that Shaped me”. “The Loosened Arrow” has their cousin, Eliza Carthy, supplying the fiddle.
26 Frank Proffitt – Satan, your kingdom must come down (Rounder)
Two musicians based in North Carolina.
Frank Proffitt was raised on a farm in the Appalachian mountains and lived on the farm for his whole life – growing tobacco, working wood, labouring in a spark plug factory and making his own banjos. This tune was recorded in the field by John Cohen and came out on the 1975 Rounder compilation “High Atmosphere”. Proffitt is most known for his version of “Tom Dooley” which he learnt from his aunt, Nancy Prather, who had actually known Tom Dula. The Proffitt version of the tune wound up in John and Alan Lomax’s 1947 print anthology “Folk Song USA”.
27 Hiss Golden Messenger – Super Blue (Two Days Clean) (Blackmaps)
Hiss Golden Messenger is basically Michael Taylor, originally of San Francisco, who apparently works as a folklorist. That’s from his recent album, “Bad Debt”.
28 Hazel Dickens, Carol Elizabeth Jones and Ginny Hawker – Times are not what they used to be (Rounder)
One of the touchstone singers and songwriters of Southern mountain music, Hazel Dickens, died in late April. Dickens was born in Mercer County, West Virginia, and lived a good deal of her life in West Virginia, although she wound up in the Baltimore area in the 50s and 60s (where she formed a musical partnership with Alice Gerrard - more about that in July). The track might have been from her last recording to be released – the album “Heart of the Singer” from 1998, which she did with singers Carol Elizabeth Jones and Ginny Hawker.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
4 May 2011, World Cafe
1 Aurelio Martinez – Nuwerun (Stonetree Records)
The Caribbean has long been a kind of aqueous crucible in which Africa meets Europe. Aurelio Martinez, singer and guitarist from the Honduras, doing an incredible job of preserving, growing and popularizing Garifuna music all at the same time. Aurelio, as he is now becoming known, is generally seen as taking over the baton from Andy Palacio who died suddenly a few years ago, way before his time. The tune “Nuwerun” is from his 2004 album, “Garifuna Soul” which he made with a crew of top flight Belize studio musicians. Martinez is generally down as someone who innovates in pandara rhythms and punta rock, but he says in this interview, things are a lot more complicated:
http://afropop.org/multi/interview/ID/97/Aurelio+Martinez%2C+2006
He has a brand new album that I hope to bring you next month.
2 Oz Kiezos – Comboio (Analog Africa)
The influence of Caribbean music is pretty widely felt, although one place you don’t hear about much is Angola. Samy Ben Redjeb’s stunning new collection, “Angola Sound 1968 – 1976” out of his label, “Analog Africa”, goes some way to correct this. Oz Kiezos, which means “The Broom” (after all the dust they stirred up in one of their first gigs), were formed in the early 60s. In an interview that Redjeb conducted last year with Vate Costa, the singer and a founding member of Oz Kiezos, Costa says the song, “Comboio”, which we’re about to hear, is traditional and is about a farmer who goes back to his homeland by train. The song speaks about the hardships of life and is built around the indigenous Angolan semba rhythm. The interview with Costa was conducted just two months before he died in May 2010.
3 Shiyani Ngcobo – uDadewtha (World Music Network)
February and March 2011 brought two sudden deaths to the South African music scene. Two of the greatest guitarists South Africa has known were taken from us. Both were not recognized to the extent that they should have been.
Traditional acoustic Maskanda stalwart Shiyani Ngcobo died on 18th February. uDadesame”, and it comes off the only album he officially released, one he made for the British label, World Music Network. They sent in a crack producer, Ben Mandelson, who did a great job. So at least the album we have is a 5 star one, and one that you should all own. Go out and get it, if you haven’t already.
4 Bafo Bafo – Zimpi Zombango (Bafo Bafo)
The other guitarist is Syd Kitchen, who died on 22nd March. Kitchen was a fabulous songwriter to boot, often in an acerbic, biting satirical vein. You need to get some of his records too. “Zimpi Zombango" is about the craziness of war and violence and it comes off an EP he did with Maskanda musician, Mandala Kunene, called “Bafo Bafo”.
5 Debademba – Ma Cherie (Naïve Classique)
Debademba to my ears sound a lot like a stripped version of Thione Seck’s Malian Mande meets South Indian karnathak. I’m hearing bansuri and clay pot percussion in there, on their tune “Ma Cherie”. The press blurb says echoes of Arab-Andalusian, so maybe those clay pots are actually daraboukas or Maghreb drums. The core of Debademba, which means “big family”, is the Paris-based duo of Abdoulaye Traore, who was born in Bakino Faso and cut his musical teeth in the Abidjan national ballet in Cote d’Ivoire, and Mohamed Diaby, who seems to have an Ivorian and Malian background – his mother was a griot from Cote d’Ivoire. I haven’t been able to find out much else about this bunch.
6 Majid Bekkas – Makendba (Igloomondo)
Moroccan Majid Bekkas is a classically trained guitarist and oud player and a music academic, but he’s also a multi-instrumentalist with a penchant for high octane Gnawa-jazz crossovers who spends a lot of this time somewhere between Morocco and the jazz scene in Europe. Here on his latest album “Makenba” he opens up spaces with his guimbri bass for the fabulous French reeds player, Louis Sclavis.
7 Ahmud Abdul-Malik – El Haris (Anxious) (Original Jazz Classics)
Last month we listened to Salah Ragab’s magnificent “Egypt Strut”. I mentioned there were American counterparts to this fusion of Middle Eastern music and jazz. One of them, the bassist and oud player Ahmud Abdul Malik, was perhaps the first American jazz musician to try something like this. “El Haris”, which means “Anxious”, was recorded in 1958. Johnny Griffin supplies the scorching tenor sax.
8 Yusef Lateef – The Three Faces of Bilal (Prestige/OJC)
Yusef Lateef is almost synonymous with this kind of Middle Eastern imbued jazz. From his 1961 album, “Eastern Sounds”, here is “The Three Faces of Bilal”. On an incredibly restrained piano is Barry Harris.
9 Ahmad Adaweya – Salametha Omm Hassan (SHB 536) (SACEM)
Moving onto Egypt, Ahmad Adaweya, was very popular in Egypt and England in the 70s and early 80s, with his working class slang and double entendres. Hopefully his apparently borderline risqué sounds are wholesome enough for a family radio station. I have no idea what he was singing about, except for the song titles and they’re in phonetic Roman-script Arabic, the sleeve notes being totally in Arabic. The style of vocal improvisation is on the track is called mawal.
10 Iness Mezel – Respect (Wrasse)
Relatively new on the North African/European tasteful world pop fusion block, Iness Mezel, of Algerian and French extraction, has just released her album, “Beyond the Trance”. It’s a great collection of mostly self-penned songs, often in the Berber language of Amazigh. Justin Adams, who we’ve heard on this show many times, produces and plays an array of instruments including guitar, banjo and guimbri. Well known kora player, Seckou Keita, is also in there.
11 Jah Wobble – Port Said (30 Hertz)
Jah Wobble from his global dub mash-up album “Welcome to My World” with his song in praise of Port Said, on the Suez Canal.
12 Mikey Brooks – Psalms of Blessing (Tabou 1)
The somewhat obscure singer Mikey Brooks with his “Psalms of Blessing” backed by the Upsetters and recorded in Lee Perry’s Black Ark studios in 1976.
13 Horace Andy & King Tubby – Zion Gate (Spectrum Audio)
The inimitable roots singer, Horace Andy, with his song, “Zion Gate”, off a nice collection that came out last year, “Trojan Foundation Dub”. Trojan Records is a British label which started out in the 60s licensing and distributing Jamaican music, often ska and rocksteady in handy collections, but in the 70s branched out into doing their own distinctive dubs. They’ve re-issued masses of their stuff over the last few years.
14 Hijaz – Mr JPS (Zephyrus Records)
Last month we listened to vintage karnathak chamber jazz from TK Ramamoorthy. Belgium-based Hijaz produce a similar kind of Eastern favoured chamber jazz, albeit with a more international flavour. Included in this largish band are musicians from Tunisia, Morocco and Armenia as well as musicians from all around Europe, in all its hybrid multi-cultural glory.
15 Erkin Koray – Hop Hop Gelsin (Dogan/World Psychedelia Ltd)
We listened to the grandfather of Turkish psych last month, Erkin Koray. The single “Hop Hop Gelsin” came out in 1968. Koray really lived the rock lifestyle when it was seriously unfashionable in some quarters, getting stabbed at one point for having long hair. Legend has it that he was the first to play rock in Turkey – and that was in 1957, when he played covers of Elvis.
16 Nahid Akhtar – Mera Mehbob Hai (Finders Keepers)
Pakistan has its own film industry with its own playback singers – to whom the starlets have to lip synch. At the pinnacle of playback singers in the 70s and 80s was Nahid Akhtar, with her massive range of expression – melancholy, devotional, lewd and sultry, peppy. “Mera Mehbob Hai” is culled from a lovely collection out on Finders Keepers, “B Music: Drive In, Turn On, Freak Out”. Finders Keepers is a similar kind of label to Sublime Frequencies, and we’ll get to hear more from it in months to come.
17 Ros Sereysothea – Jah Jou Aem (Old Sour and Sweet) (Lion Productions)
Ros Sereysothea is widely recognized as the greatest modern Cambodian singer – despite or maybe because of her relatively early death. She died in 1977 at 29 during the reign of the Khmer Rouge – although no one’s certain of the circumstances, they are thought to be grim. She started her career in 67 doing pretty pure and folky stuff for the National Radio, but in the 70s moved to experiment with rock. “Jah Jou Aem (Old Sour and Sweet)” comes off the new collection “Groove Club Vol 3: Cambodia Rock Intensified”, which is out on Lion Productions.
18 Sun City Girls – Kal El Lazi Kad Ham (Annihaya)
To continue more explicitly with the theme of “ethnographic forgeries” or “possible music”, that I brought up a few months ago, here is the Sun City Girls, from an LP of stuff from their archives when Charles Gocher, their drummer was still alive, and which they released in Lebanon last year – “Gum Arabic”. Mostly covers of stuff they heard on the radio without knowing titles and composers or anything really about the songs. They’ve rearranged the tunes and given them new titles. The Sun City Girls were the Bishop Brothers, Alan and Richard, together with Gocher. If their aesthetic seems familiar, it’s no coincidence – Alan Bishop is one half of the team which runs the unsurpassable Sublime Frequencies label.
19 Le Trio Joubran – Nawwar (World Village)
Three brothers from Nazareth toting 33 strings amongst them (basically three ouds), play without cluttering things up. Yousef Hbeisch, also Palestinian, supplies the percussion.
20 Rolf Lislevand – La Perra Mora (ECM)
Perhaps this is a thin stretch, but I had to find a way of sneaking this in. Norwegian lute player, Rolf Lislevand, does his version of the anonymous Spanish renaissance tune “La Perra Mora”, the Moorish Dog. It’s in a weird timing – 5/2 - and if you think I’m trying to make links between so-called Western classical music and Arabic music, you’d be right. David Mayoral supplies the light-touch, yet ultra-groovy, percussion. It comes off Lislevand’s ECM release, “Diminuito”. And if you don’t know what dimunitions are, like I didn’t, you need to check out the concept – it’s pretty cool to say the least.
21 Kimmo Pohjonen & Kronos Quartet – Uniko: III Sarma (Ondine)
The accordion is a much-loved instrument in Finland – mainly deployed for dance music, often the tango. Kimmo Pohjonen has always taken things in other directions, mostly aided by sampling and programming sidekick, Samli Kosminen. In 2002 they started collaborating with serial collaborators, the Kronos Quartet, and their new album, “UNIKO”, is the product of that long partnership. Live and sampled and mixed up, and drawing on stuff from all over, if the label “possible music” applied sensibly to anything, it should be this.
22 Pekko Kappi – Ristilukki (Peippo)
The jouhikko, or bowed lyre, or more correctly, the bowed kantele, is indigenous to the Karelia region of Finland, and some of the surrounding areas in Sweden and Estonia, and its presence in Finland goes back at least to the 14th century. Pekko Kappi has made it his life’s mission to track down and preserve the music composed on the jouhikko. Most of the music he’s collected goes back to the 18th century. Judging from the movies of Aki Kaurismaki they sure get the blues in Finland, but Pekko Kappi shows that they have authentic ways of expressing it. “Ritilukki” is off “Jos ken pahon uneksii” released in 2007.
23 Koichi Makigami – Tundra (Tzadik)
From Finnish blues to Japanese Tuvan blues. In 2010 multi-hat wearing composer, experimental singer, instrumentalist and general performer, Koichi Makigami teamed up with two Tuvan musicians (or as Tzadik would have it, Mongolian/Russians) for his “Tokyo Taiga release”.
24 Kim Doo Soo – Bohemian (Blackest Rainbow)
At one time banned in South Korea for being too gloomy, Kim Doo Soo is a dyed-in-the-wool folk singer-poet who had to defy his banker father to take up music. One of his most well known songs is “Bohemian” – a song that apparently has both saved people from suicide and caused them to do it. He retreated from public music playing for 10 years after he heard about the suicide, but since then has resurrected the song as a song of hope. This is the latest version of the song out on his latest release, “Evening River”, which came out in 2009, although it was released onto Western markets this year.
The Caribbean has long been a kind of aqueous crucible in which Africa meets Europe. Aurelio Martinez, singer and guitarist from the Honduras, doing an incredible job of preserving, growing and popularizing Garifuna music all at the same time. Aurelio, as he is now becoming known, is generally seen as taking over the baton from Andy Palacio who died suddenly a few years ago, way before his time. The tune “Nuwerun” is from his 2004 album, “Garifuna Soul” which he made with a crew of top flight Belize studio musicians. Martinez is generally down as someone who innovates in pandara rhythms and punta rock, but he says in this interview, things are a lot more complicated:
http://afropop.org/multi/interview/ID/97/Aurelio+Martinez%2C+2006
He has a brand new album that I hope to bring you next month.
2 Oz Kiezos – Comboio (Analog Africa)
The influence of Caribbean music is pretty widely felt, although one place you don’t hear about much is Angola. Samy Ben Redjeb’s stunning new collection, “Angola Sound 1968 – 1976” out of his label, “Analog Africa”, goes some way to correct this. Oz Kiezos, which means “The Broom” (after all the dust they stirred up in one of their first gigs), were formed in the early 60s. In an interview that Redjeb conducted last year with Vate Costa, the singer and a founding member of Oz Kiezos, Costa says the song, “Comboio”, which we’re about to hear, is traditional and is about a farmer who goes back to his homeland by train. The song speaks about the hardships of life and is built around the indigenous Angolan semba rhythm. The interview with Costa was conducted just two months before he died in May 2010.
3 Shiyani Ngcobo – uDadewtha (World Music Network)
February and March 2011 brought two sudden deaths to the South African music scene. Two of the greatest guitarists South Africa has known were taken from us. Both were not recognized to the extent that they should have been.
Traditional acoustic Maskanda stalwart Shiyani Ngcobo died on 18th February. uDadesame”, and it comes off the only album he officially released, one he made for the British label, World Music Network. They sent in a crack producer, Ben Mandelson, who did a great job. So at least the album we have is a 5 star one, and one that you should all own. Go out and get it, if you haven’t already.
4 Bafo Bafo – Zimpi Zombango (Bafo Bafo)
The other guitarist is Syd Kitchen, who died on 22nd March. Kitchen was a fabulous songwriter to boot, often in an acerbic, biting satirical vein. You need to get some of his records too. “Zimpi Zombango" is about the craziness of war and violence and it comes off an EP he did with Maskanda musician, Mandala Kunene, called “Bafo Bafo”.
5 Debademba – Ma Cherie (Naïve Classique)
Debademba to my ears sound a lot like a stripped version of Thione Seck’s Malian Mande meets South Indian karnathak. I’m hearing bansuri and clay pot percussion in there, on their tune “Ma Cherie”. The press blurb says echoes of Arab-Andalusian, so maybe those clay pots are actually daraboukas or Maghreb drums. The core of Debademba, which means “big family”, is the Paris-based duo of Abdoulaye Traore, who was born in Bakino Faso and cut his musical teeth in the Abidjan national ballet in Cote d’Ivoire, and Mohamed Diaby, who seems to have an Ivorian and Malian background – his mother was a griot from Cote d’Ivoire. I haven’t been able to find out much else about this bunch.
6 Majid Bekkas – Makendba (Igloomondo)
Moroccan Majid Bekkas is a classically trained guitarist and oud player and a music academic, but he’s also a multi-instrumentalist with a penchant for high octane Gnawa-jazz crossovers who spends a lot of this time somewhere between Morocco and the jazz scene in Europe. Here on his latest album “Makenba” he opens up spaces with his guimbri bass for the fabulous French reeds player, Louis Sclavis.
7 Ahmud Abdul-Malik – El Haris (Anxious) (Original Jazz Classics)
Last month we listened to Salah Ragab’s magnificent “Egypt Strut”. I mentioned there were American counterparts to this fusion of Middle Eastern music and jazz. One of them, the bassist and oud player Ahmud Abdul Malik, was perhaps the first American jazz musician to try something like this. “El Haris”, which means “Anxious”, was recorded in 1958. Johnny Griffin supplies the scorching tenor sax.
8 Yusef Lateef – The Three Faces of Bilal (Prestige/OJC)
Yusef Lateef is almost synonymous with this kind of Middle Eastern imbued jazz. From his 1961 album, “Eastern Sounds”, here is “The Three Faces of Bilal”. On an incredibly restrained piano is Barry Harris.
9 Ahmad Adaweya – Salametha Omm Hassan (SHB 536) (SACEM)
Moving onto Egypt, Ahmad Adaweya, was very popular in Egypt and England in the 70s and early 80s, with his working class slang and double entendres. Hopefully his apparently borderline risqué sounds are wholesome enough for a family radio station. I have no idea what he was singing about, except for the song titles and they’re in phonetic Roman-script Arabic, the sleeve notes being totally in Arabic. The style of vocal improvisation is on the track is called mawal.
10 Iness Mezel – Respect (Wrasse)
Relatively new on the North African/European tasteful world pop fusion block, Iness Mezel, of Algerian and French extraction, has just released her album, “Beyond the Trance”. It’s a great collection of mostly self-penned songs, often in the Berber language of Amazigh. Justin Adams, who we’ve heard on this show many times, produces and plays an array of instruments including guitar, banjo and guimbri. Well known kora player, Seckou Keita, is also in there.
11 Jah Wobble – Port Said (30 Hertz)
Jah Wobble from his global dub mash-up album “Welcome to My World” with his song in praise of Port Said, on the Suez Canal.
12 Mikey Brooks – Psalms of Blessing (Tabou 1)
The somewhat obscure singer Mikey Brooks with his “Psalms of Blessing” backed by the Upsetters and recorded in Lee Perry’s Black Ark studios in 1976.
13 Horace Andy & King Tubby – Zion Gate (Spectrum Audio)
The inimitable roots singer, Horace Andy, with his song, “Zion Gate”, off a nice collection that came out last year, “Trojan Foundation Dub”. Trojan Records is a British label which started out in the 60s licensing and distributing Jamaican music, often ska and rocksteady in handy collections, but in the 70s branched out into doing their own distinctive dubs. They’ve re-issued masses of their stuff over the last few years.
14 Hijaz – Mr JPS (Zephyrus Records)
Last month we listened to vintage karnathak chamber jazz from TK Ramamoorthy. Belgium-based Hijaz produce a similar kind of Eastern favoured chamber jazz, albeit with a more international flavour. Included in this largish band are musicians from Tunisia, Morocco and Armenia as well as musicians from all around Europe, in all its hybrid multi-cultural glory.
15 Erkin Koray – Hop Hop Gelsin (Dogan/World Psychedelia Ltd)
We listened to the grandfather of Turkish psych last month, Erkin Koray. The single “Hop Hop Gelsin” came out in 1968. Koray really lived the rock lifestyle when it was seriously unfashionable in some quarters, getting stabbed at one point for having long hair. Legend has it that he was the first to play rock in Turkey – and that was in 1957, when he played covers of Elvis.
16 Nahid Akhtar – Mera Mehbob Hai (Finders Keepers)
Pakistan has its own film industry with its own playback singers – to whom the starlets have to lip synch. At the pinnacle of playback singers in the 70s and 80s was Nahid Akhtar, with her massive range of expression – melancholy, devotional, lewd and sultry, peppy. “Mera Mehbob Hai” is culled from a lovely collection out on Finders Keepers, “B Music: Drive In, Turn On, Freak Out”. Finders Keepers is a similar kind of label to Sublime Frequencies, and we’ll get to hear more from it in months to come.
17 Ros Sereysothea – Jah Jou Aem (Old Sour and Sweet) (Lion Productions)
Ros Sereysothea is widely recognized as the greatest modern Cambodian singer – despite or maybe because of her relatively early death. She died in 1977 at 29 during the reign of the Khmer Rouge – although no one’s certain of the circumstances, they are thought to be grim. She started her career in 67 doing pretty pure and folky stuff for the National Radio, but in the 70s moved to experiment with rock. “Jah Jou Aem (Old Sour and Sweet)” comes off the new collection “Groove Club Vol 3: Cambodia Rock Intensified”, which is out on Lion Productions.
18 Sun City Girls – Kal El Lazi Kad Ham (Annihaya)
To continue more explicitly with the theme of “ethnographic forgeries” or “possible music”, that I brought up a few months ago, here is the Sun City Girls, from an LP of stuff from their archives when Charles Gocher, their drummer was still alive, and which they released in Lebanon last year – “Gum Arabic”. Mostly covers of stuff they heard on the radio without knowing titles and composers or anything really about the songs. They’ve rearranged the tunes and given them new titles. The Sun City Girls were the Bishop Brothers, Alan and Richard, together with Gocher. If their aesthetic seems familiar, it’s no coincidence – Alan Bishop is one half of the team which runs the unsurpassable Sublime Frequencies label.
19 Le Trio Joubran – Nawwar (World Village)
Three brothers from Nazareth toting 33 strings amongst them (basically three ouds), play without cluttering things up. Yousef Hbeisch, also Palestinian, supplies the percussion.
20 Rolf Lislevand – La Perra Mora (ECM)
Perhaps this is a thin stretch, but I had to find a way of sneaking this in. Norwegian lute player, Rolf Lislevand, does his version of the anonymous Spanish renaissance tune “La Perra Mora”, the Moorish Dog. It’s in a weird timing – 5/2 - and if you think I’m trying to make links between so-called Western classical music and Arabic music, you’d be right. David Mayoral supplies the light-touch, yet ultra-groovy, percussion. It comes off Lislevand’s ECM release, “Diminuito”. And if you don’t know what dimunitions are, like I didn’t, you need to check out the concept – it’s pretty cool to say the least.
21 Kimmo Pohjonen & Kronos Quartet – Uniko: III Sarma (Ondine)
The accordion is a much-loved instrument in Finland – mainly deployed for dance music, often the tango. Kimmo Pohjonen has always taken things in other directions, mostly aided by sampling and programming sidekick, Samli Kosminen. In 2002 they started collaborating with serial collaborators, the Kronos Quartet, and their new album, “UNIKO”, is the product of that long partnership. Live and sampled and mixed up, and drawing on stuff from all over, if the label “possible music” applied sensibly to anything, it should be this.
22 Pekko Kappi – Ristilukki (Peippo)
The jouhikko, or bowed lyre, or more correctly, the bowed kantele, is indigenous to the Karelia region of Finland, and some of the surrounding areas in Sweden and Estonia, and its presence in Finland goes back at least to the 14th century. Pekko Kappi has made it his life’s mission to track down and preserve the music composed on the jouhikko. Most of the music he’s collected goes back to the 18th century. Judging from the movies of Aki Kaurismaki they sure get the blues in Finland, but Pekko Kappi shows that they have authentic ways of expressing it. “Ritilukki” is off “Jos ken pahon uneksii” released in 2007.
23 Koichi Makigami – Tundra (Tzadik)
From Finnish blues to Japanese Tuvan blues. In 2010 multi-hat wearing composer, experimental singer, instrumentalist and general performer, Koichi Makigami teamed up with two Tuvan musicians (or as Tzadik would have it, Mongolian/Russians) for his “Tokyo Taiga release”.
24 Kim Doo Soo – Bohemian (Blackest Rainbow)
At one time banned in South Korea for being too gloomy, Kim Doo Soo is a dyed-in-the-wool folk singer-poet who had to defy his banker father to take up music. One of his most well known songs is “Bohemian” – a song that apparently has both saved people from suicide and caused them to do it. He retreated from public music playing for 10 years after he heard about the suicide, but since then has resurrected the song as a song of hope. This is the latest version of the song out on his latest release, “Evening River”, which came out in 2009, although it was released onto Western markets this year.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
6 April 2011, World Cafe
Two of South Africa’s greatest guitarists died in March 2011 – Shiyani Ngcobo and Syd Kitchen. I’ll be playing some of their music in the May show.
1 Afrocubism – Nima Diyala (World Circuit)
The musics of Cuba and West Africa have had a strong interconnection for centuries, particularly in the 1950s, 60s and 70s when Cuban rhythms, melodies and even lyrics became the springboard for an explosion of styles in West Africa, including Congolese rumba and Senegalese mbalax. Even so, to me the Afrocubism project, which we’ve just listened to, sounds exploratory – and I think that is mainly because it combines the older, more traditional Mande courtly music of Mali (played on kora, ngoni and balafon) with modern urban Cuban music. As the musicologist Banning Eyre points out, the arrangements are busy, with the Cuban and Malian instruments falling into a similar frequency range, and so the hierarchical distribution of musical roles in those two styles tends to break down.
Anyway, the stellar players in the project, including Djelimady Tounkara (guitar), Toumani Diabaté (kora), Bassekou Kouyaté (ngoni), and ex-Buena Vista Social Club member, Eliades Ochoa (guitar and vocals), pull things off. The customary clear but full bodied World Circuit production, courtesy of Nick Gold, also helps.
Thanks to Sheer Music, the distributors in South Africa, for the disc.
2 Amparo Sanchez – Hoja en Blanco (Blank Sheet) (Wrasse)
Amparo Sanchez is the singer for the mestizo band Amparanoia – mestizo being a fusion of reggae, salsa and hip-hop with Spanish music. Last year she departed from her formula and teamed up with American band Calexico for the album “Tucson Habana”, which describes their approach in a nutshell – surf music, mariachi brass, Cuban son with some seriously mournful Spanish lyrics. “Hoja en Blanco” translates as “blank sheet”.
3 Los Wembler’s de Iquitos – Lemento del Yacuruna (Barbes Record)
Classic chicha from 70s Peru, Los Wembler’s de Iquitos hail from the land-locked oil boom town of Iquitos, on the border of the Amazon jungle. Chicha is actually a pejorative term in Peru – but one that has began to be worn with pride and defiance – generally referring to the music of the slums of Lima created by rural migrants from the Andes. But the style goes way beyond Lima, as this track illustrates, way beyond fusions of cumbia and rock, and way beyond the working classes – indeed many of the most famous players of chicha are schooled musicians, specializing in the more established style of criollo – music played on Spanish guitar, castanets and cajon. Check out the “Roots of Chicha 2 – Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru” for more tunes and a discussion of the lineage.
4 Angel Viloria y su Conjunto Tipico Cibaeno – Merengue cerrao (Ansonia Records)
Last month we listened to some merengue from the Dominican Republic. Merengue is actually an old Spanish dance, but was given a thorough reworking in the 50s in South America, especially the Dominican Republic. Accordionist Angel Viloria was one of the prime movers. On “Merengue carrao” he is joined by saxist Ramon Garcia and singer Dioris Valladares, who also produces scraping sounds on the “gourd”.
5 Dimba Diangola – Fuma (Analog Africa)
In the 60s and 70s, the inhabitants of Luanda’s “musseques” (shanty towns) started to create a Mardi Gras culture distinct from that of their colonial masters, centred around the two week carnival period and its year-long preparations. They combined the rural sounds of Angola with imports – Congolese rumba, Caribbean merengue, Cuban son and rock. “Fuma” sounds like some kind of a son to me. It came out in around 1968. Fuma are the worrying rumours about a person spread around town by a liar, who then vanishes when family from the villages arrives in consternation. It comes from a fabulous collection out on Analog Africa – “Angola Soundtrack: the unique sound of Luanda 1968 – 1976”.
6 Orchestra du Bawobab – Digone nga ma (Musicafrique)
The Orchestra du Bawobab (also Baobab) from Senegal is one of the great West African fusers of Cuban, African, rock and a lot more. “Digone nga ma” comes from an apparently impossibly rare LP, “Une nuit au Jandeer”, which came out in 1978. Check out the Global Groove blog if you’re interested in getting it.
7 Vicky et OK Jazz – En memoire de Bayon (EMI)
Vicky Longomba was one of Franco’s top singers and a founding member of OK Jazz. “En memoire de Bayon” is a song in memory of Bavon Marie Marie, Franco’s brother. The song came out just after he died in a car crash in late 71.
8 Timbila – Zvichapera (Timbila)
Perhaps you’d expect a New York group to produce a cutting edge combination of Chopi marimba or timbila music from Mozambique with Shona mbira music from Zimbabwe. But you’d probably not expect all the musicians to be American – which they are as far as I know. At least one of them, Banning Eyre, has serious pedigree, having spent some time in the American incarnation of Thomas Mapfumo and the Black Unlimited.
9 Bela Fleck & D’Gary – Kinesta (Rounder)
A D’Gary tune played with the virtuoso American banjo player Bela Fleck, who has tried his hand, largely successfully, at just about everything – bluegrass, new grass, funk, baroque, folk, jazz, Indian classical music. D’Gary is from Madagascar. In about 2008 Fleck traveled around Africa playing with just about every African string-playing luminary. His half brother Sascha Paladino documented all this and produced a movie, “Throw Down Your Heart”, and there’ve been a bunch of CD tie-ins around this. This song is from “Throw Down Your Heart, Tales from an acoustic planet: Africa Sessions Part 3”.
10 Ataratu - Ludu Parinna – excerpt (Smithsonian Folkways)
Madagascan culture is a serious melting pot, with one of the key ingredients being Indonesian music. This lovely version of the song “Ludu Parinna” from the island of Sumba is played on the guitar-like four-stringed jungga by Ataratu. The song is played during the threshing of the rice harvest and dispenses, in improvised verses, advice to the young including not to listen to gossip or spread rumours. It comes off the Smithsonian Folkways release, “Music of Indonesia vol 20 – Indonesian Guitar”, which was recorded in the field between 90 and 97. Ataratu originally sang a 35 minute version, but you might be pleased to know this has been shortened, first by the compiler and then by me.
11 Bounthong Keoboboula – Lam Saravane (Inedit/Maison des Cultures du Monde)
The bamboo mouth organ is probably the national instrument of Laos. It’s made of 16 pipes fitted with free reeds and arranged in a raft shape. The pipes pass through a hardwood wind chamber, each pipe with a playing hole which when covered activates the reed. This design creates a wall of sound which can be varied subtly to rhythmic and harmonic effect. Bounthong Keoboboula plays a courtship song in combination with a flute player and singer. The wooer extols the virtues of the Pakse region, near the Cambodian border. The song was recorded in 2005.
12 Meas Hokseng – Jomnes ji kor aung (Sublime Frequencies)
Here is Meas Hokseng from Cambodia, from a tie-in to the documentary “My Friend Rain” which presents musical segments, fleeting glimpses and odd sounds captured in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar/Burma. The blurb on the CD that accompanies the movie states that the music is culled from various damaged and indecipherable cassette and LP sources purchased in SE Asia. Vintage Sublime Frequencies, then.
13 The Panthers – Simmi Dance (Sublime Freqencies)
From another Sublime Frequencies collection, “Pakistan Folk & Pop Instrumentals 66-76”, which came out last year. The 10 year period 66 to 76 was one of wild rock’n’roll-propelled invention, which was snuffed out by the coup in June 77 that led to the establishment of an Islamic state governed by Sharia law. Sadly a period never to be repeated in Pakistan – there was a mass exodus of musicians to America, Canada and England.
14 TK Ramamoorthy – Sahana (EM Records)
TK Ramamoorthy was a South India based film music composer of note in the 50s, 60s and 70s. In 1969 he came up with an extremely smooth and seamless joining of the karnatak classical music and jazz. As the on-line music shop, Weirdo Music, puts it: “a sly, syncretic combination of karnatak raga and bachelor-pad lounge”.
15 Salah Ragab & the Cairo Jazz Band – Egypt Strut (Art Yard)
Salah Ragab, a major in the Egyptian army in the 60s and a jazz drummer, founded the first jazz big band in Egypt in 1968, the Cairo Jazz Band. “Egypt Strut” is a fusion of American jazz and Arabic music, similar to that played in the US at the same time by the likes of Yusef Lateef and Ahmud Abdul-Malik. We’ll be getting to some of that music in the May show.
Ragab is also well known for his friendship with Sun Ra. He helped Ra out with instruments and venues in Ra’s first pretty shambolic tour of Egypt in 1971, when the band’s instruments were held up at the border post. He also toured with Ra in the 80s around Egypt and Europe. The tune comes from a lovely 2006 Art Yard album called “Egyptian Jazz 1968 – 73” in which Ragab’s key tunes were compiled for Western consumption.
16 Diaspora (featuring Amina Annabi) – Elhem 1 (Green Queen)
Pity about the bland name, but the music of Diaspora is far from bland. The core of the band is Italian-born Luca Gatti and Frenchman Stephane Rene – they came together to work on film soundtracks in the early 2000s, and later worked with Asian Dub Foundation on the music for an opera about Gaddafi. They recently combined with Egyptian Baheeg Ramzy Mikail, a veteran violinist and vocalist who worked with Oum Kalthoum, and with French Tunisian singer Amina Annabi to come up with the album “A Jamaican in Cairo”.
17 Augustus Pablo – East of the River Nile (Original Rockers)
An alternative dub version of “East of the River Nile”. It comes off the killer 3 CD box set “The Definitive Augustus Pablo”.
18 Lee Perry (featuring Roots Manuva and LSK) – International Broadcaster (On-U-Sound)
A couple of months ago we listened to something from the recent Lee Perry collaboration with Adrian Sherwood, “Dubsetter”. “Dubsetter” is actually the dub version of “The Mighty Upsetter”. “International Broadcaster” is from the latter album and features two British rappers, Roots Manuva and LSK.
19 Erkin Koray – Turku (Dogan Plakcilik or World Psychedelia Ltd in 1999)
Turkey has long had a vast psychedelic rock scene, in which Turkish folk elements, often played on sazes (distorted to hell and gone) coexist very happily with the normal rock tropes. Erkin Koray is one of the granddaddies of the scene. “Turku” is from one of his classic albums, “Electronik Turkuler”, from 1974.
20 Arif Sag – Osman Pehlivan (Bouzouki Joe, 2010)
Arif Sag is another veteran from the Turkish psych scene. “Osman Pehlivan” is a well-known Turkish song, I believe. It comes from the collection “Turkish Freakout: Psych-folk singles 1969 to 80”.
21 Hayvanlar Alemi – Bahar Patlatan (Sublime Frequencies)
Hayvanlar Alemi (Animal Kingdom) is a current band from the Turkish pych scene. They have a bunch of free downloads on their “My Space” page. “Bahar Patlatan”, the tune we’ve just listened to, comes off the Sublime Frequencies LP “Guarana Superpower”, released a few weeks ago. Pretty Western-sounding, this track.
22 Stimmhorn – Pilgerfahrt (Traumton)
BBC’s Radio 3 has a new series Music Planet presented by Andy Kershaw and Lucy Duran, which hopefully you know about. You can stream it from Radio 3’s website, and although all the episodes have already been broadcast, all are still available for streaming. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sggq0.
One of the regional styles featured on the show about mountains is yodelling. Yodelling developed in Switzerland mainly to communicate over distances, and to call and herd animals, but it has an expressive life of its own. Check out: http://www.furious.com/perfect/yodel.html for more on yodelling.
Stimmhorn are one of the great recent Swiss yodelling innovators, alas not featured on Music Planet. The track comes from the collection “Heimatklange”.
23 Henry Parsons - Rolling Waters Holler (Rounder Records)
Hollerin’ is an American cousin of yodelling. Henry Parsons with “Rolling Waters Holler”, from 1975 recorded at Spivey’s Corner, North Carolina, home of the National Hollerin’ Competition.
24 Tanya Tagaq Gillis – Surge (Jericho Beach Music)
Music Planet’s Arctic and desert programmes feature fantastic examples of throat singing, including Inuit singing from Canada by Tanya Tagaq Gillis from Cambridge Bay. The Inuit singers are keen on imitating sounds from their environment – from kittens to snowmobiles. Not sure what Tagaq is imitating on the track, “Surge” though.
25 Ayuo – Izutsu 11 (Tzadik)
New York-raised composer Ayuo wrote the “Izutsu” sequence in 11 parts for singer Mikiko Sakurai. He combines the Irish harp with the koto and a Gaguku wind section – a wind section used in ancient Japanese court music. “Izutsu” is based on a Noh play written by the 15th century writer Zeami (1363 – 1443). Old childhood friends marry, but then become estranged – the man has an affair with the empress. Part 11 deals with the woman looking into a well where she and her husband played as children and seeing her reflection changing into his likeness. Ayuo admits he is striving for an image of the old Japan, that might not ever have existed.
26 Mountain Man – River (Partisan Records)
Three university housemates got together to form Mountain Man a few years ago. Apparently only one of them had any background in the stuff, and she was forced to teach others.
27 Carolina Chocolate Drops – Snowden’s Jig (Nonesuch)
Carolina Chocolate Drops are currently one of the most exciting old-timey Americana bands. Their music comes from the Piedmont region in the foothills of North Carolina. They’ve been working under the tutelage of nonagenarian fiddler player Joe Thompson to reclaim tunes. “Snowden’s Jig” is one of those tunes and comes off their 2010 album “Genuine Negro Jig”.
28 June Tabor – I’ll go and enlist for a sailor (Topic)
A veteran of the English folk scene, June Tabor has just released her umpteenth LP, “Ashore”. The track is an instrumental, played by accordionist Andy Cutting, one of my favourite traditional players. Bassist Tim Harris is in there too.
1 Afrocubism – Nima Diyala (World Circuit)
The musics of Cuba and West Africa have had a strong interconnection for centuries, particularly in the 1950s, 60s and 70s when Cuban rhythms, melodies and even lyrics became the springboard for an explosion of styles in West Africa, including Congolese rumba and Senegalese mbalax. Even so, to me the Afrocubism project, which we’ve just listened to, sounds exploratory – and I think that is mainly because it combines the older, more traditional Mande courtly music of Mali (played on kora, ngoni and balafon) with modern urban Cuban music. As the musicologist Banning Eyre points out, the arrangements are busy, with the Cuban and Malian instruments falling into a similar frequency range, and so the hierarchical distribution of musical roles in those two styles tends to break down.
Anyway, the stellar players in the project, including Djelimady Tounkara (guitar), Toumani Diabaté (kora), Bassekou Kouyaté (ngoni), and ex-Buena Vista Social Club member, Eliades Ochoa (guitar and vocals), pull things off. The customary clear but full bodied World Circuit production, courtesy of Nick Gold, also helps.
Thanks to Sheer Music, the distributors in South Africa, for the disc.
2 Amparo Sanchez – Hoja en Blanco (Blank Sheet) (Wrasse)
Amparo Sanchez is the singer for the mestizo band Amparanoia – mestizo being a fusion of reggae, salsa and hip-hop with Spanish music. Last year she departed from her formula and teamed up with American band Calexico for the album “Tucson Habana”, which describes their approach in a nutshell – surf music, mariachi brass, Cuban son with some seriously mournful Spanish lyrics. “Hoja en Blanco” translates as “blank sheet”.
3 Los Wembler’s de Iquitos – Lemento del Yacuruna (Barbes Record)
Classic chicha from 70s Peru, Los Wembler’s de Iquitos hail from the land-locked oil boom town of Iquitos, on the border of the Amazon jungle. Chicha is actually a pejorative term in Peru – but one that has began to be worn with pride and defiance – generally referring to the music of the slums of Lima created by rural migrants from the Andes. But the style goes way beyond Lima, as this track illustrates, way beyond fusions of cumbia and rock, and way beyond the working classes – indeed many of the most famous players of chicha are schooled musicians, specializing in the more established style of criollo – music played on Spanish guitar, castanets and cajon. Check out the “Roots of Chicha 2 – Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru” for more tunes and a discussion of the lineage.
4 Angel Viloria y su Conjunto Tipico Cibaeno – Merengue cerrao (Ansonia Records)
Last month we listened to some merengue from the Dominican Republic. Merengue is actually an old Spanish dance, but was given a thorough reworking in the 50s in South America, especially the Dominican Republic. Accordionist Angel Viloria was one of the prime movers. On “Merengue carrao” he is joined by saxist Ramon Garcia and singer Dioris Valladares, who also produces scraping sounds on the “gourd”.
5 Dimba Diangola – Fuma (Analog Africa)
In the 60s and 70s, the inhabitants of Luanda’s “musseques” (shanty towns) started to create a Mardi Gras culture distinct from that of their colonial masters, centred around the two week carnival period and its year-long preparations. They combined the rural sounds of Angola with imports – Congolese rumba, Caribbean merengue, Cuban son and rock. “Fuma” sounds like some kind of a son to me. It came out in around 1968. Fuma are the worrying rumours about a person spread around town by a liar, who then vanishes when family from the villages arrives in consternation. It comes from a fabulous collection out on Analog Africa – “Angola Soundtrack: the unique sound of Luanda 1968 – 1976”.
6 Orchestra du Bawobab – Digone nga ma (Musicafrique)
The Orchestra du Bawobab (also Baobab) from Senegal is one of the great West African fusers of Cuban, African, rock and a lot more. “Digone nga ma” comes from an apparently impossibly rare LP, “Une nuit au Jandeer”, which came out in 1978. Check out the Global Groove blog if you’re interested in getting it.
7 Vicky et OK Jazz – En memoire de Bayon (EMI)
Vicky Longomba was one of Franco’s top singers and a founding member of OK Jazz. “En memoire de Bayon” is a song in memory of Bavon Marie Marie, Franco’s brother. The song came out just after he died in a car crash in late 71.
8 Timbila – Zvichapera (Timbila)
Perhaps you’d expect a New York group to produce a cutting edge combination of Chopi marimba or timbila music from Mozambique with Shona mbira music from Zimbabwe. But you’d probably not expect all the musicians to be American – which they are as far as I know. At least one of them, Banning Eyre, has serious pedigree, having spent some time in the American incarnation of Thomas Mapfumo and the Black Unlimited.
9 Bela Fleck & D’Gary – Kinesta (Rounder)
A D’Gary tune played with the virtuoso American banjo player Bela Fleck, who has tried his hand, largely successfully, at just about everything – bluegrass, new grass, funk, baroque, folk, jazz, Indian classical music. D’Gary is from Madagascar. In about 2008 Fleck traveled around Africa playing with just about every African string-playing luminary. His half brother Sascha Paladino documented all this and produced a movie, “Throw Down Your Heart”, and there’ve been a bunch of CD tie-ins around this. This song is from “Throw Down Your Heart, Tales from an acoustic planet: Africa Sessions Part 3”.
10 Ataratu - Ludu Parinna – excerpt (Smithsonian Folkways)
Madagascan culture is a serious melting pot, with one of the key ingredients being Indonesian music. This lovely version of the song “Ludu Parinna” from the island of Sumba is played on the guitar-like four-stringed jungga by Ataratu. The song is played during the threshing of the rice harvest and dispenses, in improvised verses, advice to the young including not to listen to gossip or spread rumours. It comes off the Smithsonian Folkways release, “Music of Indonesia vol 20 – Indonesian Guitar”, which was recorded in the field between 90 and 97. Ataratu originally sang a 35 minute version, but you might be pleased to know this has been shortened, first by the compiler and then by me.
11 Bounthong Keoboboula – Lam Saravane (Inedit/Maison des Cultures du Monde)
The bamboo mouth organ is probably the national instrument of Laos. It’s made of 16 pipes fitted with free reeds and arranged in a raft shape. The pipes pass through a hardwood wind chamber, each pipe with a playing hole which when covered activates the reed. This design creates a wall of sound which can be varied subtly to rhythmic and harmonic effect. Bounthong Keoboboula plays a courtship song in combination with a flute player and singer. The wooer extols the virtues of the Pakse region, near the Cambodian border. The song was recorded in 2005.
12 Meas Hokseng – Jomnes ji kor aung (Sublime Frequencies)
Here is Meas Hokseng from Cambodia, from a tie-in to the documentary “My Friend Rain” which presents musical segments, fleeting glimpses and odd sounds captured in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar/Burma. The blurb on the CD that accompanies the movie states that the music is culled from various damaged and indecipherable cassette and LP sources purchased in SE Asia. Vintage Sublime Frequencies, then.
13 The Panthers – Simmi Dance (Sublime Freqencies)
From another Sublime Frequencies collection, “Pakistan Folk & Pop Instrumentals 66-76”, which came out last year. The 10 year period 66 to 76 was one of wild rock’n’roll-propelled invention, which was snuffed out by the coup in June 77 that led to the establishment of an Islamic state governed by Sharia law. Sadly a period never to be repeated in Pakistan – there was a mass exodus of musicians to America, Canada and England.
14 TK Ramamoorthy – Sahana (EM Records)
TK Ramamoorthy was a South India based film music composer of note in the 50s, 60s and 70s. In 1969 he came up with an extremely smooth and seamless joining of the karnatak classical music and jazz. As the on-line music shop, Weirdo Music, puts it: “a sly, syncretic combination of karnatak raga and bachelor-pad lounge”.
15 Salah Ragab & the Cairo Jazz Band – Egypt Strut (Art Yard)
Salah Ragab, a major in the Egyptian army in the 60s and a jazz drummer, founded the first jazz big band in Egypt in 1968, the Cairo Jazz Band. “Egypt Strut” is a fusion of American jazz and Arabic music, similar to that played in the US at the same time by the likes of Yusef Lateef and Ahmud Abdul-Malik. We’ll be getting to some of that music in the May show.
Ragab is also well known for his friendship with Sun Ra. He helped Ra out with instruments and venues in Ra’s first pretty shambolic tour of Egypt in 1971, when the band’s instruments were held up at the border post. He also toured with Ra in the 80s around Egypt and Europe. The tune comes from a lovely 2006 Art Yard album called “Egyptian Jazz 1968 – 73” in which Ragab’s key tunes were compiled for Western consumption.
16 Diaspora (featuring Amina Annabi) – Elhem 1 (Green Queen)
Pity about the bland name, but the music of Diaspora is far from bland. The core of the band is Italian-born Luca Gatti and Frenchman Stephane Rene – they came together to work on film soundtracks in the early 2000s, and later worked with Asian Dub Foundation on the music for an opera about Gaddafi. They recently combined with Egyptian Baheeg Ramzy Mikail, a veteran violinist and vocalist who worked with Oum Kalthoum, and with French Tunisian singer Amina Annabi to come up with the album “A Jamaican in Cairo”.
17 Augustus Pablo – East of the River Nile (Original Rockers)
An alternative dub version of “East of the River Nile”. It comes off the killer 3 CD box set “The Definitive Augustus Pablo”.
18 Lee Perry (featuring Roots Manuva and LSK) – International Broadcaster (On-U-Sound)
A couple of months ago we listened to something from the recent Lee Perry collaboration with Adrian Sherwood, “Dubsetter”. “Dubsetter” is actually the dub version of “The Mighty Upsetter”. “International Broadcaster” is from the latter album and features two British rappers, Roots Manuva and LSK.
19 Erkin Koray – Turku (Dogan Plakcilik or World Psychedelia Ltd in 1999)
Turkey has long had a vast psychedelic rock scene, in which Turkish folk elements, often played on sazes (distorted to hell and gone) coexist very happily with the normal rock tropes. Erkin Koray is one of the granddaddies of the scene. “Turku” is from one of his classic albums, “Electronik Turkuler”, from 1974.
20 Arif Sag – Osman Pehlivan (Bouzouki Joe, 2010)
Arif Sag is another veteran from the Turkish psych scene. “Osman Pehlivan” is a well-known Turkish song, I believe. It comes from the collection “Turkish Freakout: Psych-folk singles 1969 to 80”.
21 Hayvanlar Alemi – Bahar Patlatan (Sublime Frequencies)
Hayvanlar Alemi (Animal Kingdom) is a current band from the Turkish pych scene. They have a bunch of free downloads on their “My Space” page. “Bahar Patlatan”, the tune we’ve just listened to, comes off the Sublime Frequencies LP “Guarana Superpower”, released a few weeks ago. Pretty Western-sounding, this track.
22 Stimmhorn – Pilgerfahrt (Traumton)
BBC’s Radio 3 has a new series Music Planet presented by Andy Kershaw and Lucy Duran, which hopefully you know about. You can stream it from Radio 3’s website, and although all the episodes have already been broadcast, all are still available for streaming. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sggq0.
One of the regional styles featured on the show about mountains is yodelling. Yodelling developed in Switzerland mainly to communicate over distances, and to call and herd animals, but it has an expressive life of its own. Check out: http://www.furious.com/perfect/yodel.html for more on yodelling.
Stimmhorn are one of the great recent Swiss yodelling innovators, alas not featured on Music Planet. The track comes from the collection “Heimatklange”.
23 Henry Parsons - Rolling Waters Holler (Rounder Records)
Hollerin’ is an American cousin of yodelling. Henry Parsons with “Rolling Waters Holler”, from 1975 recorded at Spivey’s Corner, North Carolina, home of the National Hollerin’ Competition.
24 Tanya Tagaq Gillis – Surge (Jericho Beach Music)
Music Planet’s Arctic and desert programmes feature fantastic examples of throat singing, including Inuit singing from Canada by Tanya Tagaq Gillis from Cambridge Bay. The Inuit singers are keen on imitating sounds from their environment – from kittens to snowmobiles. Not sure what Tagaq is imitating on the track, “Surge” though.
25 Ayuo – Izutsu 11 (Tzadik)
New York-raised composer Ayuo wrote the “Izutsu” sequence in 11 parts for singer Mikiko Sakurai. He combines the Irish harp with the koto and a Gaguku wind section – a wind section used in ancient Japanese court music. “Izutsu” is based on a Noh play written by the 15th century writer Zeami (1363 – 1443). Old childhood friends marry, but then become estranged – the man has an affair with the empress. Part 11 deals with the woman looking into a well where she and her husband played as children and seeing her reflection changing into his likeness. Ayuo admits he is striving for an image of the old Japan, that might not ever have existed.
26 Mountain Man – River (Partisan Records)
Three university housemates got together to form Mountain Man a few years ago. Apparently only one of them had any background in the stuff, and she was forced to teach others.
27 Carolina Chocolate Drops – Snowden’s Jig (Nonesuch)
Carolina Chocolate Drops are currently one of the most exciting old-timey Americana bands. Their music comes from the Piedmont region in the foothills of North Carolina. They’ve been working under the tutelage of nonagenarian fiddler player Joe Thompson to reclaim tunes. “Snowden’s Jig” is one of those tunes and comes off their 2010 album “Genuine Negro Jig”.
28 June Tabor – I’ll go and enlist for a sailor (Topic)
A veteran of the English folk scene, June Tabor has just released her umpteenth LP, “Ashore”. The track is an instrumental, played by accordionist Andy Cutting, one of my favourite traditional players. Bassist Tim Harris is in there too.
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