30 November 2016, World Cafe

Programme airs on 30 November 2016, 10 - 12pm South African time on Fine Music Radio, 101.3 Fm in the Cape Town area or via live stream

http://iono.fm/embed/streampage/prov/234 or go to http://www.fmr.co.za/ and press the "Listen Live" button at the appointed time

1 Noura Mint Seymali – Richa (Glitterbeat)

Album: Arbina

Noura Mint Seymali, step daughter of the great Mauritanian singer, Dimi Mint Abba, just put out a new record, her second one, with her power trio backing band.  “Arbina” means “A call to god”.  The band includes her husband, Jeiche Ould Chigaly, playing a guitar refretted for quarter-tone scales.  “Richa” was written quite a few years ago by her father, the celebrated composer Seymali Ould Ahmed Vall.  “Art’s plume is a balsam, and a guide for enlightening the spirits of humans.”

2 Imarhan – Tahabort (City Slang)

Album: Imarhan

From southern Algeria, a terrific young Tuareg rock band with family connections to Tinariwen.  Here’s something ultra-funky, from the jangly school of funk, from their first record out this year. 

3 Abd Al-Aziz Daoud – Iyak Wa Dary (unknown)

Abd Al-Aziz Daoud started his 50 year career as a singer, oud player in the 1930s and went on later to be an orchestra leader and composer for the Sudan Radio Orchestra, playing a style simply called orchestra – oud, voice and quite a diverse backing band. 

4 Nathan Bowles – Blank Range/Hog Jank II (Amoeba Music)

Album: Whole and Cloven

Nathan Bowles likes to mix the communal spirit of old timey music with some very blissed out moments of minimalist percussive ambient introspection – if that makes any sense.  I guess it’s that last ingredient that allows him to justify playing all the instruments.  His main instrument is the banjo, and he says he likes it because “it’s a drum with strings on it”.

5 Hiss Golden Messenger – Together’s just a word (Merge)

Album: Heart like a levee

The distinctly southern soul, R&B countrified blues funk of Hiss Golden Messenger off their new record.  Add stripped down to that string of epithets. 

6 Soccer96 – The Swamp (Slowfoot records)

Album: As above so below

I’ve been obsessing about British sax player Shabaka Hutchings all year.  He’s stuff really blew me away when I saw him quite a few times in Cape Town at the beginning of year.  One of his bands is The Comet Is Coming is an off-shoot of Soccer96 with the synth player and drummer.  Obviously I’m going to play the one track on their record on which Shabaka guests.

7 FOKN Bois – Tribe Chief (pr Peet) (Self-released)

Album: Ode to Ghana

FOKN Bois have been called the clown princes of Ghanaian hip-hop, or the “South Park” of Ghanaian music.  They often incorporate highlife and Afrojazz samples, but on the “Tribe Chief” the melody is culled from Outkast’s “So Fresh, So Clean”. 

8 Vaudou Game – Cherie Nye (Hot Casa Records)

Album: Kidayu

Very much channelling the great veteran band from Benin, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, here is Vaudou Game, based in Lyon, France, and led by Peter Solo, a singer guitarist from Togo. Cherie Nye is from their 2016 outing, Kidayu. 

9 Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou – Wolou (Because Music)

Album: Madjafalao

After Vaudou Game, we had to have Orchestre Poly-Rythmo.  Fortuitously they have a new record just out, Madjafalao.  It was recorded at the old Satel Studio in Cotonou and so sound pretty authentically Poly-Rhythmo.  Three original members from the 1960s line up are still there after about 50 years. We heard the tune “Wolou”. 

10 Meta Meta – Angolana (Jazz Village/PIAS)

Album: MM3

Meta Meta are based in Sao Paulo and mix samba, candomble, jazz and rock, and on their new record MM3, north African music, inspired by visits to Morocco.  At the centre of the band are singer Jucara Marcal, sax player Thiago Franca and guitarist Kiko Dinucci.  Here’s something they call Angolana.

11 Graveola – Sem Sentido (Mais Um Discos)

Album: Camaleao Borboleta

Graveola are from the inland city of Belo Horizonte in Brazil, and they mash up a bunch of styles from across Brazil including maracutu, bossa nova, tropicalia, MPB and you’ll hear reggae in here too.  Sem Sentido is from their new record Camaleao Borboleta (Chameleon Butterfly).

12 Sociedade Recreativa- E Camarada (Jarring Effects)

Album: Sociedade Recreativa

Lyon seems to a hot bed of great music in France.  So, out of the ashes of Franco-Brazillian trio, Forro de Rebeca, which combines forro or accordion-based song and dance from Brazil with the rabeca, a Brazillian fiddle instrument with linage from Andalusia, here’s Sociedade Recreativa.  The tune is E Camarada.

13 Trygve Seim – When I See Your Face (ECM)

Album: Rumi Songs

Norwegian sax player Trygve Seim has put a bunch of poems by Sufi mystic Rumi to music.  His new record, “Rumi Songs”, is with mezzo-soprano Tora Augestad, accordionist Frode Haltli and cellist Svante Henryson called Rumi Songs.  It starts out as Nuevo Tango with more and more Egyptian and Indian modalism coming through.

14 Kayhan Kalhor, Aynur Dogan, Salman Gambarov, Cemil Qocgiri - Malan Barkir – Berivane (Exile – Diary Maid) (Harmonia Mundi)

Album: Hawniyaz

An incredible band which draws its members from the Kurdish areas of Turkey and Iran, and Azerbaijan.  The two most famous are spike fiddle or kmancheh player Kayhan Kalhor and singer Aynur Dogan.  Cemil Qocgiri is on tenbur lute and the pianist is Salman Gambarov.

15 Xylouris White – Erotokritos (Opening) (Bella Union)

Album: Black Peak

Dirty Three drummer, Jim White, and Cretan lute player George Xylouris, met and played together in Melbourne 25 years ago, when The Xylouris Ensemble, a band George has with his nephews, were based there.  They have just released a second record as the duo Xylouris White. 

16 Shabaka and the Ancestors – Nguni (Brownswood Records)

Album: Wisdom of Elders

British sax player Shabaka Hutchings and the Ancestors, all from South Africa.  The wonderful singing there is by Siyabanga Mthembu from the band The brother moves on who hail from Kempton Park on the East Rand.

17 Burning Spear – Marcus Garvey (Mango)

Album: Marcus Garvey

Burning Spear’s long time trumpeter Bobby Ellis, who died a few weeks ago, was responsible for some of the greatest brass licks in reggae, and not just for Burning Spear.  He played for Peter Tosh and for The Revolutionaries.  “Marcus Garvey” is from 1975. 

18 Dubkasm – Victory (the Mala Remix single)

Some British dub from 2015.

19 Kate Tempest – We Die (Fiction)

Album: Let Them Eat Chaos

From Kate Tempest’s epic new hiphop poem, Let them eat chaos.  Seven lonely London neighbours trapped in various way by the capital’s grubby degradations, and all unable to sleep in the small hours as they contemplate their lives.  In “We die” Alisha grapples with the death of her partner. 

20 Prince Buster – One Step Beyond (Blue Beat)

Album: Fabulous Greatest Hits

Prince Buster or Cecil Bustamente Campbell created some of the most influential sides in early ska and rocksteady.  The second recent death of veteran reggae player – he died in early September.  “One step beyond” was originally released in 1964 – and was famously covered by Madness in 1979, who actually named themselves after a Prince Buster song.

21 Sarah-Jane Summers & Juhani Silvola – Bellag the Drover (Dell Daisy Records)

Album: Widdershins

Fom Scottish fiddle player Sarah-Jane Summers and Finnish guitarist Juhani Silvola – Bellag the Drover.  Summers plays in the fiddle quartet Rant, to whom we listened a few months ago.

22 The Furrow Collective – Chuir Mathair Mise Dhan Taigh Charraideach (Hudson Records)

Album: Wild Hog

A song in Scottish Gaelic which translates roughly as “My father caused me great distress” – literally – “sent me to a house of conflict”.  It’s a waulking song from Skye - waulking is the process of washing tweed.  Here it’s done by the Scottish/English supergroup of sorts, The Furrow Collective, consisting of Rachel Newton, Emily Portman, Alasdair Roberts and Lucy Farrell.

23 Kefaya with Deborchee Bhattacharjee – Manush (Radio International Music)

Album: Radio International

Kefaya are a kind of modular emsemble with UK based musicians and producers Guiliano Modarelli and Al MacSween at the core, and drummer Joost Hendrickx and bassist Kenny Higgins regulars.  What they pedal in has been called “internationalist music” or “guerrilla jazz”.  Here’s something they recorded in a small home-studio in Kolkata with a young Indian classical singer. 

24 Finis Africae – Hassell el oso hormiguero (EM Records)

Album: Amazonia

We’re going to go out with a tribute to the British trumpeter Jon Hassell and what he called Fourth World music by Spanish band, Finis Africae, which was active in the 90s.  The title translates as “Hassell, the anteater”.