27 January 2016, World Cafe

In this show we mainly spin releases from 2015 that we didn’t get to last year.  There’s the odd outlier here and there – something older, or something from an album we did play before …

1 Vieux Farka Toure & Julia Easterlin – Bamba na wili (Six Degrees)

Album: Touristes

Definitely on the New Orleans side of funky.  “Bamba na wili” is a praise song sung in a mix of Songhai and Peul which talks about the mother of Vieux’s father Ali Farka Toure coming from the town of Bamba between Gao and Timbuktu in northern Mali.  Apparently, for Vieux the song is about addressing the heavy male bias he sees in Mali.  American Julia Easterlin provides some stunning harmonies.    

2 Kandia Kouyate – Kassi Doundo (Sterns Africa)

Album: Renanscence

After an absence of 13 years due to a stroke, one the greatest singers of modern Mali, is back.  Before the stroke she was massive star in Mali and known as the “la dangereuse”, but had only been performing internationally for a few years.  Thanks to the encouragement of her producer, Ibrahima Sylla, a big name in Mali, she’s staged a comeback, although he died before the new album was completed – his daughter ended up pulling it off. 

3 Tinariwen – Tinde Final Tinariwan (featuring Lala Badi)

Album: Live in Paris 2014

Tinde is a collection of Tuareg celebratory songs sang women during the day light hours and Lalla Badi has been one of the greatest exponents of it for the last 40 years.  Normally Tinde consists of only drumming, clapping and chanting, but Tinariwen, another great Taureg institution of a slightly younger generation, has added guitar on this live recording made in Paris in 2014.

4 Sons of Kemet – The Hour of Judgement (Naim)

Album: Lest we forget what we came here to do

This month, the seriously wonderful British saxophone and clarinet player, Shabaka Hutchings, is in Cape Town.  He’s played some very memorable gigs at Straight No Chaser, with Cape Town’s finest.  One of his London-based bands is Sons of Kemet – a double drum-sax/clarinet-tuba quartet – which combines New Orleans marching band music with Afrobeat and Ethiojazz and other things.  This is a drumless tune.

In The Castle Of My Skin video directed by Lebogang Rasethaba, conducted by choreographer Jerrel Methebula, featuring pantsula dancers of the Indigenous Dance Academy and shot in Joburg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmN3vFIukk4

5 Tiken Jah Fakoly (featuring Jah9) – Fade Away (Blue Wrasse)

Album: Racines

The Ivorian reggae star Tiken Jah Fakoly’s of Junior Byles’s classic 1975 tune from Fakoly’s album of covers of iconic reggae songs.  Some of the greats of 70s reggae provide the backing – Sly and Robbie, Mikey Chang and Robbie Lynx –  and they combine with west African reinforcements on ngoni, kora, balafon, djembe.  The guest toaster on Fade Away is Jamaican, Jah9.

6 Adrian Sherwood – Dennis Bovine Prt 1 (Tribute of Blackbeard)

Album: Becoming a cliché

From 2006, Adrian Sherwood’s tribute to the great British dub producer Blackbeard – which he calls “Dennis Bovine prt 1”.  Blackbeard aka Dennis Bovell is in the mix there somewhere.

7 Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood and the Rajastan Express – Junun (Nonesuch)

Album: Junun

Isreali singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer Shye Ben Tzur has been studying classical and folk music in Rajasthan for more than 10 years, and he’s got together a great double album – called “Junun” (or Passion) - with the 19 piece Rajastan Express and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.  The album was recorded in the 15^th century Rajput hill fort in Jodhpur and filmed by Paul Thomas Anderson

There’s cool stuff you can check out on Youtube.  

Trailer of Paul Thomas Anderson movie on the making of the album -  in the Jodhpur palace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IQdsIUfnAA

Movie outtake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5tLoceVlZU

8 Nisar Bazmi & Runa Laila – Oh my darling (Finder’s Keepers)

Album: Disco Dildar

Classic stuff from Pakastani film industry in the 70s and 80s. 

9 Stick in the Wheel – Bows of London (Stick in the wheel)

Album: From Here

The unapologetic East London voice of Nicola Kearey from the band’s first album and their version of the trad supernatural murder ballad.  From their first album.    

10 The Rheingans Sisters – Slangpolska pour une Auvergnate  (RootBeat)

Album: Already Home

Rowan and Anna Rheingans, or the Rheingans Sisters, are young fiddle players fully embedded in the English folk scene.  Both have studied and played in Sweden, Rowan is involved several English bands, and Anna is living the south of France at the moment.  A tune by Anna which combines the Swedish with the French. 

11 John Renbourn – Plainsong (Riverboat)

Album: The Attic Tapes

The very great English traditional guitarist, John Renbourne, died in 2015 but not before he’d help compile a collection of old DIY never-released-before recordings made in 1962, which is now called “The Attic Tapes” – they were apparently were found in some collector’s attic.  A lovely raw recasting of American blues and folk in some kind of English image.

12 Anna and Elizabeth – Very day I’m gone (Rambling Woman) (Free Dirt Records)

Album: Anna and Elizabeth

Anna Robert-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrelle perform as Anna and Elizabeth and they put out a great album of Appalachian mountain music very much in style of what duo of Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard were doing in the 70s. 

13 Kaia Kater – Southern Girl  (Kingswood)

Album: Sorrow bound

Although banjo player Kaia Kater is clearly heavily steeped in the music of West Virginia (think Ola Belle Reed) she’s from Toronto via Quebec.  This is her own tune.

14 Moore Moss Rutter – Lewisham Way (RBR)

Album: II

Tom Moore, Archie Churchill-Moss and Jack Rutter play fiddle, melodeon and guitar and imaginatively call themselves Moore, Moss and Rutter.   Their self-written homage to Lewisham, inner borough of SE London from their imaginatively titled second album.

15 Malinky – The Bonnie Hoose o Airlie (Private Label)

Album: Far Better Days

An old Scottish travelers’ song culled from the singing of Belle Stewart – “The Bonnie Hoose o Airlie”.  Stewart was part of British folk royalty - first appearing folk festivals in the 1950s, writing a bunch of songs, and recording folk albums in 60s, 70s and 80s.

16 Simon van Gend – Suffer Well (Simon van Gend)

Album: Suffer Well

The Capetonian is aided and abetted by drummer Ross Campbell and the fine production work of Chris Tuck of Darkpop studios.  Bassist Brydon Bolton who keeps on popping up in exciting projects all over the place at the moment provides the bottom end on the title track.

The album launch for Suffer Well is on 13 Feb 16h00 at Deer Park Cafe, Vredehoek.

Check out Simon's A song a week project: http://asongaweek.simonvangend.com/

17 Kazuki Tomokawa – A bumpkin’s empty bravado (PSF)

Album: A bumpkin’s empty bravado

Kazuki Tomokawa has been churning out stuff since early 1970s.  This is something from a few years ago which critic Alan Cummings calls “vagabond soul”.  Somewhat more subdued than he often is – he’s sometimes called the “screaming philosopher”.

18 Damily – Lalitsy (Helico)

Album: Very Aomby

The guitarist and band leader is from southwest Madagascar where one of the musical styles is called Tsapiky (tsa-PEEK).  His 2015 album largely deals with gangsterism and wide spread cattle theft in the southwest. “Very Aomby” which is the name for a state of without cattle after they are stolen.

19 Monsieur Doumani – Dissonant Judgement (Monsieur Doumani Records)

Album: Sikoses

“Sikoses” is the Cypriot term for the last day of feasting before Lent and the album is about the financial crisis – and boy, has Cyprus had its fair share of that.

20 Efren Lopez – O Gios Tou Lykou (Song of the Wolf) (Buda Musique)

Album: El Fill de Llop

Spanish born Efren Lopez (previously of Lham de Foc) mainly plays various types of Turkish sazes and tanburs or long-necked lutes, but here he plays nearly everything.

In 2015 Joanna Newsom put a spectacular new record - Divers.  It included a traditional tune “Same old man” that Karen Dalton made semi famous in 70s, and probably more so in 2000s when she was rediscovered as some kind of cult artist by all kinds of aficionados. 

21 Karen Dalton - Same old man (Trad arranged Steve Weber) (Light in the Attic)

Album: In my own time

22 Joanna Newsom – Same old man (Drag City)

Album: Divers

23 African Head Charge – Healing Ceremony (O-U Sound)

Album: Songs of Praise

The British dub outfit - African Head Charge - from Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound stable from their early 90s album.

24 Cara Stacey – Circadian Clocks (Kit Records)

Album: Things that grow

Cara Stacey should be a household name in Cape Town.  She’s been exploring ways of bringing various kinds of bows – mainly the uhadi and umrhubhe - into different musical settings for many years out of her short life, some of that in the UK it seems, and she’s now working on the doctorate at UCT.  Hopefully, we’ll get to see her play soon.  This track includes Shabaka Hutchings’s amazing circular sax playing”.

25 Ballake Sissoko – Balazando (No Format)

Album: Musique de nuit

Segal’s incredible cello playing competes with bleating goats.

26 Alif – I’tiraf (Confession) (Nawa Recordings)

Album: Aynama-Rtama

Alif are referred to rapturously in the press as some kind of Middle Eastern supergroup – perhaps the most striking member is Iraqi oud player Khyam Allami.  The band also includes electronica musician Maurice Louca, who we listened to a few months ago.  All the lyrics from their debut record “Aynama-Rtama (Wherever it falls)” draw on poetry written in classical Arabic.

27 Mahsa Vahdat – My ruthless companion (Kirkelig Kulturveksted)

Album: Traces of the an Old Vine

Iranian singer Mahsa Vahdat’s song version of a poem by Rumi.  The tune is arranged by the piano player, Norwegian Tord Gustavsen. 

28 Nils Frahm – Hammers (Erased Tape Records)

Album: Spaces

Recorded over a two year period in a number of locations and released in 2013.