7 January 2015, World Cafe

A review of some of the musical highlights of 2014.  There’ve been many: recorded, live and commemorative and historical, and some invariably originating in 2013.  And there’ll be more in the next show too.   

1 The Bhundu Boys – Foolish Harp/Waerera (Cooking Vinyl Records)

Album: Friends on the road

A collaboration between Zimbabwe’s the Bhundu Boys and Scottish harpist Savourna Stevensen from 1993.  Probably my main reason for playing this is that the Bhundu Boys where a favourate of the great British DJ John Peel who died 10 years ago this year – in fact this appeared as part of one of John Peel’s legendary Festive Fifties.  Found it on collection brought out by Uncut some years ago.

2 Julie Fowlis – Puirt A Beul Set  - Fodor Dha Na Gamhna Beaga (Fodder for the small stirks) (Machair)

Album: Gach Sgeul: Every Story

Julie Fowlis released an album in 2014 with some great goes at puirt a beul or mouth music.  Like a lot of Scottish trad songs its about a specific farm animal, this time a yearling bullock or heifer.

3 The Gloaming – Song 44 (Real World)

Album: The Gloaming

The Gloaming came up with a fantastic re-imagining of Irish music – improvy, textural with the treated piano to the fore.  The Gloaming is fiddle player Martin Hayes and guitarist Dennis Cahill (a magnificent duo I hope you’re all heard) and hardanger fiddler Caoimhim O’ Raghllaigh, pianist Thomas Barlett and singer Iarla O’Lionaird.

4 Mamani Keita – Djigihia (World Village)

Album: Kanou

Mamani Keita produced one of my favourite albums of 2014. After spending a good deal of her career supplying backing vocals and spice to fusionist, electronic and jazz settings with others at the helm, she’s now writing her own stuff and has some players of serious pedigree and grit in her band – Rail Band guitarist Djeli Moussa Kouyate and ngoni player Moriba Keita.

5 Tinariwen – Emajer (Pias)

Album: Emmaar

The Touareg group has been making great albums for the last 13 years starting out in Libyan refugee camp.  Their latest, Emmaar, was recorded in Joshua Tree in the Mojave Desert, and has quite a relaxed, natural sound.  Nothing obviously incendiary or spiky, but very pleasant all the same. 

6 Adrian Raso & Fanfare Ciocarlia – Swing Sagarese (Asphalt Tango)

Album: Devil’s Tale

Something more obviously thrilling, although you might only be able to take this in limited doses, is Toronto guitarist Adrian Raso’s collision of French manouche and Romanian brass, in the form of Fanfare Ciocarlia.  

7 Rob Heron and the Tea Pad Orchestra – Crazy Country Fool (Tea Pad Recordings)

Talk about the weather

More gypsy swing, this time cut with western swing and old time Americana courtesy of a band from Newcastle, in the UK.  BTW this bunch get quality assurance from Pokey LaFarge. 

8 Russo Passapusso – Paraquedas (Mais Um Discos)

Album: Role: New Sounds of Brazil

Russo Passapusso is from the Brazilian State of Bahia and its capital city, Salvador, and this is his fantastic updating of the MPB with added grit.  

9 Rodrigo Amarante – Tardei (Mais Um Discos)

Album: Role: New Sounds of Brazil

Hardly surprising that there’re a bunch of great Brazilian releases this year, I suppose.  One of the best is a collection out on the Mais Um Discos label called "Role: New Sounds of Brazil".  The Russo Passapusso track was from that collection, and so is this distinctly laid back and folky one.  Rodrigo Amarante is from Rio.

10 Quantic – Muevelo Negro (feat Nidia Gongora) (Tru Thoughts)

Album: Magnetica

DJ, producer and musician Quantic aka Will Holland put out one of the grooviest albums of the year – dance music for the well-listened, perhaps.  It draws mainly on a cross section Colombian music, but there are other sounds in there too – from the Caribbean and South America, Angola and even Ethiopia.  The singer and songwriter Nidia Gongora guests.  She comes from the jungle river areas of the Pacific coast of Columbia – Timbique, to be precise.

http://www.okayplayer.com/news/quantic-plays-new-music-live-in-session-kcrw-video.html

 11 Felix Martinez y sus Chavales – La Gallina (Tiger’s Milk Records)

Album: Peru Maravilloso: Vintage Latin, Tropic and Cumbia

2014 was certainly not bereft of collections exhuming vintage music from very localized scenes.  Tiger’s Milk Records Peruvian collection covered the rich hybrid scene in the 60s and 70s heavily spiked with psychedelia,  As one write-up I read puts it, La Gallina by Felix Martinez y sus Chavales is a “briskly bitter kiss-off to an unfaithful woman”.

12 Aurelio – Nafagua (Real World)

Album: Landini

Aurelio Martinez, who took over the mantle of champion and stalwart of Garifuna music and culture from Andy Palacio, put out a new record in 2014. He says it draws more heavily on the village based, traditional music of his mother’s generation, to whom the album is dedicated.

13 Steve Tilston Trio – Courting is a pleasure (Hubris Records)

Album: Happenstance

Martha Tilston put out a great record of traditional English stuff in 2014, but instead of that, here’s something from a recent album her father, Steve Tilston.  (Steve actually plays on Martha’s record which we'll sample in the next show).  It’s a song that the great traditional guitarist and singer, Nic Jones, used to play – and may still play, aided by his son on guitar now.  And to labour things even more, we can also dedicate this song to the traditional singer and flautist Maggie Boyle, who died in November 2014 – she was also Steve Tilston’s wife and stepmother to Martha …

14 The Rails – William Taylor (Island)

Album: Fair Warning

Channeling the sound and spirit of Richard and Linda Thompson, the Rails, daughter of Richard and Linda, Kami Thompson, and her husband James Walbourne, put out fabulous album, on Island Records’ specially revived pink label.  This is a traditional song The Rails wrote.

15 Willy Mason – Pickup Truck (Fiction/Polydor)

Album: Carry On

2014 saw some great concerts in Cape Town.  There was Cat Power and Willy Mason at the Baxter.  Cat Power is way too chilled for this show.  A fun fact about Willy Mason gleaned from Wikipedia: he’s a direct descendant of the 19th-century philosopher William James, the brother of novelist Henry James, on his mother’s side.

16 Vieux Farka Toure – Borei (Six Degrees)

Album: The Secret

A live high point of live music in Cape Town, was definitely Vieux Farka Toure’s scorching blow out at Cape Town World Music Festival at the City Hall. 

17 Derek Gripper – Bokoye (New Cape)

Album: One Night on Earth: Music from the strings of Mali

At the CTWMF, Vieux Farka Toure’s slot was directly followed by an incredible show by Derek Gripper on the City Hall’s rooftop tented stage in the middle of rain storm.  Derek played his wonderful transcriptions of kora music for classical 6 string guitar.  “Bokoye” was written by Ali Farka Toure, Vieux’s father.

18 Toumani & Sidiki Diabate – Bagadaji Sirifoula (World Circuit)

Album: Toumani & Sidiki

One of Derek Gripper’s his top musical heroes is Toumani Diabate, and it seems that in 2015 someone (actually Mats Hjelm) is making a documentary of Derek going to Mali to meet Diabate and hopefully actually meeting him.  Anyway, Toumani and his son Sidiki, put out an album of kora duets in 2014.  “Bagadaji Sirifoula” is a district in Bamako with the main market and Mosque in the city.  According to Toumani, the religious families in the area did a great job in keeping things calm during the crisis in Mali.

19 National Wake – Time & Place (Light in the Attic)

Album: Walk in Africa

2014 also saw the thirtieth anniversary of SA indie label, Shifty Records, which meant a lot to me in my teenage years and early twenties.  One of the founders of Shifty was Ivan Kadey, who had formed National Wake in the late 70s – a punky reggae band born out of commune in Jo’burg.  The band split in ‘82, and two of its members, brothers Gary and Punka Khoza have died since.  Their sole release was the album, “Walk in Africa”.  Only 500 copies were pressed apparently, but luckily “Light in the Attic” reissued the thing in 2013, I think.

http://electricjive.blogspot.com/2013/10/greetings-from-africa-michael-lbs-and.html

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/03/national-wake-south-africa-punk-apartheid

http://mg.co.za/article/2014-08-29-rebooting-shifty-recordss-mighty-rebel-yell/

20 Hollie Cook – Twice (B Corbelet, M Pelanconi, G Toto) (Mr Bongo)

Album: Twice

Totally love Hollie Cook and Prince Fatty’s reinvention of lovers rock. 

21 Lee “Scratch” Perry – Words Re-Vision (Dubplate) (Upsetter Music)

Album: Back on the controls

The indomitable Lee Perry was back in the studio in 2014 multiple times it seems – but by far the best of his forays was orchestrated by English producer Daniel Boyle, who tried to create the ambient and technological conditions of the Perry’s legendary Black Ark Studio active between 73 and 79 until Perry supposedly burnt it down.  In the mix there is veteran drummer Style Scott who died in October 2014.  Scott was part of the Root Radics and on loads of On-U recordings as part of the Dub Syndicate, the New Age Steppers and Singers and Players.  This is Perry's new take on the Congo’s classic “Words”.

22 Dennis Bovell – Itous (Glitterbeat)

Album: Glitterbeat: Dubs and Versions I

Dennis Bovell’s stupendous dub version of Tamikrest’s Itous which came out on a new label called “Glitterbeat”, an off-shoot of the Glitterhouse label, and concentrating on West African music.

23 Dub Colossus – Family Man (Independent)

Album: Addis To Omega

And speaking of collisions of African music and dub, Dub Colossus put out what the Financial Times called “probably the first dub concept album about the banking crisis”.  It has less Addis than Kingston, apparently because of high airfares and visa costs. Dub Colossus did manage to enlist the talents of the Horns of Negas and singer PJ Higgins – who is just the best … 

24 Woima Collective – The Castle (Kindred Spirits)

Album: Frou Frou Roko

German Afro-jazz funk aces Woima Collective released another great collection of tight, inventive tunes in 2014 called “Frou Frou Roko”. 

25 Driss El Maloumi – Intidar (Contre-Jour)

Album: Makan

Morrocan oud player Driss El Maloumi put out a massively impressive album in 2014 with two percussionists, one his brother, Said, the other Lahoucine Baquir. 

26 Thepporn Petchubon - Fang Jai Viangjan (Soundway)

Album: The Sound of Siam vol 2: Molam & Luk Thung 1970-82 from North-East Thailand

Thepporn Petchubon from Soundways terrific collection of 70s and early 80s Molam and Luk Thung music from Northeastern Thailand, although I’m not sure that “Fang Jai Viangjan” would qualify as either molam or luk thung.