2 March 2011, World Cafe

Anyone who’s checked out the Electric Jive blog will have marveled at its greatness - a huge resource for anyone with an interest in South African music. If you are not a regular visitor, I suggest you check it out now. The site has just expanded its pool of contributors, and there’s even more stuff being dug up and aired. There is a link to Electric Jive from this blog.


1 Natacha Atlas & Mazeeka Ensemble – Beny Ou Benak (World Village)

Although born in Europe, as an Arab singer, Atlas is inexorably drawn towards Egyptian music. Her 2008 album “Ana Hina” is a celebration of two of the greatest modern Arab singers – Lebanese singer, Fairuz, and Egyptian, Abdel Halim Hafez. I’m not sure if “Beny Ou Benak Eih” was sung by Hafez, but it could well have been as it was co-written by one Hafez’s collaborators, the composer Kamel Al Taweel. The magnificent accordion there is courtesy of Gamal Al Kordy, who is apparently a veteran of the Egyptian scene.


2 Abdel Halim Hafez – Zay El-Hawa (Like the wind) (Soutelpan Records)

3 Oum Kalthoum (Umm Kulthum) – Arooh le Meen Prt 4 (To whom should I go) (Arabian Diamond Records)

Two of the greatest Egyptian singers … both pieces are extracts from pretty extended live versions of epic love songs.

4 Omar Khorsid – Alf Layla wa laya (A thousand and one nights) (A. Chahine & Fils)

Guitarist Omar Khorsid, whom we heard on last month’s show with his brand of Arabic surf music, worked in Oum Kalthoum’s orchestras. He did a sort of tribute LP of instrumental versions of classic Oum Kalthoum songs (“Tribute Oum Koulsoum”), sometime in the 80s.

5 Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara – Ngamen (No Limit) (Real World)

Justin Adams partly cut his musical teeth living in the Middle East and immersing himself in Arabic electric guitar music. I’m pretty sure he must have played along to Omar Khorsid records. He’s played with Natacha Atlas over the years, and over the last decade he’s played with a number of African musicians and has infused what is often called “desert blues” into his sound. Desert blues is actually pretty diverse and probably has some Arabic bits and definitely some American delta blues bit (via Chicago). One of Adams’s best partnerships has been with Gambian, Juldeh Camara, where he really lets rips, Chicago style. “Ngamen” (No Limit) comes off their very fine 2010 EP, “The Trance Sessions”.

6 Group Doueh – Badbada (Sublime Frequencies)

Group Doueh from Western Sahara have been on the show a number of times. Over the last few years the label Sublime Frequencies have been bringing out a CD per year by them, most of them culled from home recorded tapes. 2010’s release, “Beatte Harab”, slightly better recorded, draws more on classical Mauritanian music, and uses Moorish instruments like the tinidit (a three-stringed Mauritanian lute), the ardin (a kora-like harp played traditionally by women), the tbal (a clay drum) and the kass (tea glasses) alongside the guitar and Korg synth.

7 Ream Daranoi – Fai Yen (Soundway)

Soundway, like Sublime Frequencies an expert crate-digging label, in 2010 released a fabulous collection of Thai tunes from the mid 60s to the mid 70s, “The Sound of Siam”. It includes Ream Daranoi’s take on sultry Bollywood love songs. It’s called “Fai Yen” (Cold Fire), and it’s actually from the sound track for the movie “The magical love of the common people”.

8 Bich Loan and CBC Band – Con tim va nuoc mat (Saigon Rock & Soul) (Sublime Frequencies)

This song is culled from the collection, “Saigon Rock & Soul” – basically a collection of music produced during the Vietman war, in Saigon. “Overheated entertainment set up to distract grunts on leave”, the on-line mag, Dusted, puts it.

9 The Skatalites – Ghost Town (You can’t sit down) (Top Deck)

The Skalalites with their pre-reggae ska-jazz sound from mid-60s Jamaica.

10 Horoya Band National – Daba (African Pearls – Guinee 70) (Styllart)

11 22 Band – Sin Kon Mina (Mankan (Syliphone SLP 68)

In the 60s and 70s there were a number of post-independent West African governments who promoted and bankrolled Authenticité movements. Perhaps the best resourced and organized was in Guinea. The Guinean state set up the Syliphone record label to release the best of the best stuff that came out of villages and towns across the country. These two lovely recordings seem to come from the mid to late 70s. The first is on the Styllart collection “African Pearls: Guinee 70”.

12 Bavon Marie Marie & Negros Succes – Libangana libumu (Congo 70 – Rumba Rock) (Syllart)

I’ve been punting the Global Groove blog for ages on this programme – and if you can, you should really check it out. In January they put out a 7 volume collection of out-of- print stuff from the Congo (“Congo, Tours de Force”), and boy, is it fabulous. Listen to this track from Volume 1 by Bavon Marie Marie and Negros Succes. Bavon is actually Franco’s younger brother. He died in 1970 in a car crash, allegedly after a fight with Franco over a mutual girlfriend.

13 Sammy Izy – Tomany ny tamny (The Owner of the Earth) (Network)

From Sammy Izy’s wonderful 2010 release “Tsara Madagasikara”. Rageorge, a veteran musician beloved in Madagascar, plays the flute. He’s one of the veterans who have never recorded before and whom Samy features on the CD.

14 Alberto Beltan y su Conjunto Tipico – Cana brava (Ansonia)

Sammy Izy brings to mind gutsy and dextrous accordion playing. From the Dominican Republic circa 1975 here is some meringue.

15 Oidupaa Vladimir Oiun – Kaldak-Khamar (Divine Music from a Jail) (Friend Records)

Tuvan Oudupaa Vladimir Oiun spent 33 years in Soviet work camps apparently for singing protest songs, although the authorities said he was a murderer and corruptor of minors. That’s a long time to hone a sound – and it’s a pretty singular one. He describes throat singing as the sound and speaking of the spirits. He apparently still performs today.

16 Albert Kuvezin & Yat Kha – The Cry (Yat Kha Records)

From Albert Kuvezin’s new album.

17 The Wackies Rhythm Force – Betrayers Call (Wackies/Basic)

18 Harry Mudie & King Tubby – Where Eagles Dare (Moodisc)

From two series of dub encounters: The Harry Mudie and King Tubby tune comes from “Dub Conference Vol 3”, from 1978; Wackies is a New York based dub studio and collective and “Betrayer Call” comes from the LP “African Roots Act 1” made in 1980.

19 Missing Brazilians – Crocodiles Court (Warzone) (On-U Sound)

This show very often documents the largely organic, spontaneous and enthusiastic
infusion of so-labelled Western musical forms into non-Western music or world music, if you like, to create dynamic and unsettled hybrids, but what about the other way around? Like musicians everywhere if they get half a chance, musicians in the West have been mixing this up for a long time - in classical music, jazz, pop, arty rock etc. Think of Debussy, Sun Ra, Martin Denny and his lounge exoticisms … and there are many more. I’m not sure where this idea for some kind of a focus is going to go over the next few shows – but I’ll start things off in this show in psychedelic and experimental music of the late 60s and early 70s and its jazz, funk and even, perhaps, dub off-shoots into the 80s – the kind of mix one of its most well known instigators, Brian Eno, called “possible musics”, and part of something that music writer, David Toop, has called the “ocean of sound”.

In January I mentioned how Eno and Byrne’s “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” was an inspiration for Adrian Sherwood and Bonjo I A Binghi Noah to soundtrack their visions of a psychedelic Africa and form African Head Charge. Missing Brazilians was another one of their collaborations, and is certainly harsher and more extreme than Head Charge.

20 Chicago Underground Duo – Funeral of Dreams (Thrill Jockey)

Jazz has seen all kinds of exotic disruptions since Sun Ra. That Chicago Underground Duo track comes from their 2006 release “In praise of shadows”. Its lineage can be found in Sun Ra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Miles Davis, Don Cherry … we’ll be listening to those in months to come.

21 Brian Eno & David Byrne – A Secret Life (Nonesuch)

Speaking of the touchstones of these kind of fusions, infusions, diffusions – here is something from “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts”. “A Secret Life” is built around a fragment from a tune by Egyptian singer, Samira Tewfik, that Eno and Byrne found … some time we’ll listen to the original.

22 Can – Smoke (Ethnological Forgery Series No. 59) (Mute)

Can had a franker, more self-deprecating name for “possible musics” – “ethnological forgeries”. This one comes off their 1976 LP “Flow Motion”.

23 Ewan McLennan – As I Roved Out (Rags and Robes) (Fellside)

Newcomer Scottish trad singer Ewan McLennan’s version of “As I Roved Out” – harking back to classic Dick Gaughan, although perhaps slightly more ornate and mannered than Gaughan.

24 Nils Okland – Rite (Monograph) (ECM)

From Norway, the improvvy, neo medievalist, hardanger fiddler and violist off his “Monograph” album, out on ECM

25 Supersilent – 10.6 (Rune Grammafon)

Norway’s Supersilent with the sixth track off their tenth album, “10.6”.