2 September 2015, World Cafe

1 Mbongwana Star – Kimpala (World Circuit)

Album: From Kinshasa

Mbongwana Star from the DRC come out of the ashes of Staff Benda Bilili – a wonderful band we’ve heard quite a lot on this show in the past and who imploded in 2013.  Coco Ngabali and Theo Nsituvuidi have teamed up with Dublin-born, Paris-based producer and drummer Liam Farrell to come up with something spacey, dubby and fuzzy – a far cry from Staff Benda Bilili’s more verite sound.  “From Kinshasa” is Mbongwana Star’s debut album, which I’m sure will prove to be one of the great releases of 2015.

2 Verckys et l’Orchestre Veve – Nakobala yo denise (Analog Africa)

Album: Congolese Funk, Afrobeat & Psychedelic Rumba 1969-1978

Verckys or wizard guitarist and sax player, producer and much more George Mateta Kiamuanga was one of the absolute greats of Congolese rhumba. His stage name, Verkys, is a corruption of the US R&B sax player King Curtis adopted after his misheard it. He started out in Franco’s band, but in late 60s went off on his own and in 1970 started his own label “les Editions Veve”, got into production work and built his own state of the art studio.

3 Kekele – Ba Kristo (Sterns Africa)

Album: Kinavana

Another band from the Congo, the quintet Kekele from their 2006 album, very much in the old school of Congolese Rhumba.  Kekele based all the songs on the album on songs by the late Cuban songwriter, singer and guitarist Guilolermo Portabales, who was born in 1911 and died in 1970, but have rewritten all the lyrics and changed the arrangements. 

4 Tal National – Farila (Fat Cat)

Album: Zoy Zoy

Tal National is one of the new up and coming bands from Niger.  We’ve listen to bunch of the other here over the last few years – like Bombino and Etran Finatawa – both Tuareg bands.  Tal National sing in Hausa and Zarma, and in stark contrast to the spaciousness of Bombino and Etran, have constructed a fast and furious wall of sound loaded with a maze of jagged interlocking riffs, and gear shifts. 

5 Terakraft – Tafouk Tele (Outhere)

Album: Alone

Terakaft is an offshoot of Tinariwen and have just released their fifth album, which for me is an absolute winner.  The production is deftly handled by Justin Adams, who we have featured many times here. 

6 Maurice Louca - Al-Mashoub (Idiot)  (xxx)

Album: Salute the Parrot

Egyptian musician and composer Maurice Louca clearly has a thing for instigating a clash between the warm, orchestral old and the harsh new.  And he does this to compelling effect on his new album “Salute the Parrot” – the parrot in the title apparently referring to repetition in his music, which clearly he loves. 

7 Mahmoud Fadl feat Salwa Abou Griesha – We daret el ayram (Piranha) “Mohamed Abdel Wahab”

Album: Umm Kalthum 7000

The Egyptian percussionist, composer and band leader, Mahoud Fadl, created a fabulous tribute to Umm Kalthum in 2001 called “Umm Kalthum 7000”.  He re-orchestrated some songs from her late career, when apparently her powers were waning, and brought in Salwa Abou Greisha to take Kalthum parts.  “We daret el ayram” translates as “And the days have gone by …”

8 Bio Ritmo – Codeina (Vampisoul)

Album: Puerta de Sur

Bio Ritmo are from Brazil, have been going for more than 20 years and normally do wide screen, big band salsa, which is pretty great is has to be said -  but I was  totally blown away when I heard “Codeina” which they describe as “bolero meets 1960s Egyptian-classical”.  It’s from their 2014 outing.

9 Morena Veloso – Verso Simples (Luaka Bop)

Album: Coisa Boa

Basically a lovely tune from Veloso’s 2014 album.

10 Buena Vista Social Club – Black Chicken 37 (World Circuit)

Album: Lost and found

The label World Circuit has recently released a bunch of outtakes and live recordings made of the Buena Vista Social Club and some solo outings of members of the BVS recorded around 1997.  “Black Chicken 37” is a nice little studio recorded instrumental with bassist Cachaito Lopez.    

11 Dayme Arocena – El Ruso (Brownswood)

Album: Nueva Era

Dayme Arocena is a 22 year old singer, composer, arranger and choir director from Havana, who has just released her debut album on Gilles Peterson’s label Brownswood, called Nueva Era, with Peterson mainly at the production healm, although Arocena produced “El Ruso”.  “El Ruso” is about her mother being forced to learn Russian in Soviet-supported Cuba in the 80s.

12 Aurelio – Milaguru (Realworld)

Album: Landini

Aurelio Martinez released a seriously great album in 2014 called “Landini” or “Landing” named after the Honduran shoreline where Martinez used to hang out as a youth to listen to fishermen singing paranda songs into the night.   

13 Los Gaiteros De San Jacinto – Un Dub De Sangra Pura (Khaliphonic)

Album: Dub De Gaita

A wonderful collaboration of the Los Gaiteros De San Jacinto or the Bagpipers of San Jacinto from San Jacinto on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, a group that has been active since the 1940s and the great British dub producer Adrian Sherwood and some of his crew.  It’s from seems to be an EP.

14 Tuff Scout All Stars – Dub It Inna Long Acre (Tuff Scout)

Album: Inna London Dub

Here’s something from a small indie reggae label based in Camden, London, Tuff Scout.  The Tuff Scout All Stars I guess are Tuff Scout’s house band. 

15 Busy Signal – Well prepared (Turf Music)

Album: Single

New Jamaican dancehall courtesy of Busy Signal (Glendale Goshia Gordon to his mother) and Lorde (that wunderkind of New Zealand pop), whose backing track and melody for her hit Royals Busy Signal appropriates). 

16 Eska – Heroes and Villains (Earthling/Naim Edge)

Album: ESKA

Speaking of wunderkinde, Zimbabwean born Eska Mtungwazi, besides having a maths degree from LSE, and conservatory training on violin, is a multi-instrumentalist on all kinds of keyboards and string instruments, a backing singer of note for stars like Tony Allen, Baba Maal and Bobby McFerrin, and on her debut solo album, ESKA, a great songwriter.  Witness her take on classic 70s reggae. 

17 Paul De Jong – Auction Block (Temporary Residence)

Album: IF

Cellist Paul De Jong ex of the duo The Books has not abandoned his former outfit’s collage-pop absurdity as you would have heard on this tune from De Jong’s new album.

18 Le Vent du Nord – Pauvre enfant (Borealis Records)

Album: Tetu

From Quebecois band Le Vent de Nord’s (The North Wind) new album “Tetu” (Determined or Hard-headed) – you can hear the fiddle and accordion interplay of Cajun music coming through on this tune – but which way did things flow? 

19 Steve Riley & The Mamou Playboys – La Danse De Mardi Gras

Album: Voyageurs

Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys from southern Lousianna have a new album out – their 14^th after 27 years of existence.   “Le Danse de Mardi” is an old tune by Dewey Balfa Gras” and one of their signature tunes.  Balfa was one of Steve Riley’s mentors.  Apparently the cloppy hoof sounds effects on the intro and outro come Nathan Abshire’s old recordings, sampled and slowed down.

20 This is the kit – Vitamins (Brassland)

Album: Bashed Out

“This is the kit” is a band name I find hard to get my head around – but their music is fantastic.  Basically “This is the kit” is vehicle for Kate Stables and their new album is produced by Aaron Dessner of rock miserablists The National is mainly about the simple pleasures in life like, on the tune “Vitamins”, eating fresh greens.

22 Dakhabrakha – Karpatskyi Rap (Self released)

Album: Light

DakhaBrahka from Kiev have been going since 2004 starting out as a theatrical project.  Using Ukrainian vocal traditions as a jumping off point, they are quite happy to take things in all kind of adventurous directions backed by cello, concertina and percussion.  Karpatskyi Rap is from their 2010 outing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsNKSbTNd5I&feature=youtu.be

Free music from their website

http://www.dakhabrakha.com.ua/eng/music

23 Olga Bell – Perm Krai (New Amsterdam)

Album: Krai

Singer, keyboardist and composer Russian born Olga Bell is most famously a member of rock experimentalists Dirty Projectors from NYC, but in 2014 released a tribute to obscure, forgotten small towns in Russia called “Krai” which translates as “edge” or “limit”.

24 Vis Vitalis – I’ll be gone (Music for Sale Records)

Album: Vis Vitalis sings songs of Tom Waits

Russian based musician Vis Vitalis seems to often come up with stuff that crosses over between rap, funk and punk, but in 2015 released an album of Russian versions of Tom Waits.  Place, liquor and drug names etc have been changed to Russian equivalents - so California becomes Crimea; Bourbon, Vodka, downtown trains minibuses.  This is his version of “I’ll be gone” originally from Franks Wild Years which came out in 1987.

25 Mahsa Vahdat – Wind in tresses (KKV)

Album: Traces of an old vineyard

From a sublime new album by the Iranian singer-songwriter in which she has turned into songs poems by classical Iranian poets Khayyam, Hafez and Rumi.  The album was recorded in Oslo and accompanying her are Tord Gustavsen on various keyboards, Shervin Mohajer on the kamancheh (a Persian stick fiddle) and Ali Rahimi on percussion.  “Wind in tresses” is her version of the Hafez poem, “Zolf Bar Baad”.