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.