2 October 2013, World Cafe

1 Los Desterrados – Esta Noche (Enkalador)
Album: Dos Amantes

Los Desterrados (The Exiles) are a six piece from London who draw their inspiration from Sephardic music, with all its multiple sub-categories arising in places where the Sephardic Jews moved to after their expulsion from Spain – Greece, Turkey, the Balkans and North Africa.  That was “Esta Noche”, sang in Ladino, the Latin-based language of the Sephardic - it seems to be some kind of tarantella. 

 

2 Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino – Tira Cavallu (Puglia Sounds/Discovery)

Album: Pizzica Indiavolata

Speaking of tarantella, more from Canzoniere Grenanico Salentino (check out August 2013).  They from the Puglia region of southern Italy and play a style called pizzica – similar to the tarantella and sung in the Greek dialect called Griko.  The new album, “Pizzica Indiavolata” is making waves, and it’s not difficult to see why.  Obtain forthwith.

3 Moussu T e Lei Jovents – Mon drapeau rouge (Le Chant du Monde)

Album: Artemis

The Marseilles based group with sounds inspired by the melting pot of 1930s Marseilles when blues and jazz rubbed shoulders with music from Caribbean, North Africa and Brazil and folk songs in Occitan and Provencal.   There’s also heavy does of ragamuffin in there – they are after all an offshoot of the Massilia Sound System.   “Mon drapeau rouge” is a tribute to Marseilles socialist tradition: “Pass me the red flag, let me hang it from the shutters, pass me the red flag and the black one, while you’re at it”.

4 Didier Laloy & Fabian Beghin – Ambriose’s Forest Party (Homerecords.be) (Fabian Beghin)

Album: Cryptonique

Heading to Belgium now, for an incredible interplay between chromatic and diatonic accordions. One of Beghin’s tunes off their 2008 outing. 

5 Radio Cos – Sete Cuncas (Fol Musica)

Album: Radio Cos

Radio Cos is from Galicia, North Western Spain, and essentially two singer-pandeireteiros, Henrique Peon and Xurxo Fernandes.  Henrique Peon is in fact Mercedes Peon’s brother, and just as enthusiastic as learning from and recording musicians in Galicia’s villages as her.  He draws on a rawer, old sound on this CD and is joined by accordionist Xan Pampin, violinist Nikolay Velikov and Pedro Lamas on various reeds and bagpipes. 

6 Ilaiyaraaja – Aa Kannula

Aa Kunnula

I was totally blown away when I found this old track by Ilaiyaraaja, the great composer for the Tamil film industry based in Chennai.  Rather than in Tamil, this song appears to be in Telugu, the speakers of which live just to the north of Chennai in Andhra Pradesh state.  It’s sung by SP Balasubrahmanyam Janaki.

Here’s clip from the related movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8iC-MV7Ivo

7 Shankar Jaikishan / Rais Khan – Raga Bairagi (EMI)

Album: Raga Jazz Style

Shankar Jaikishan with the sitar player Rais off their ground breaking 1968 album which helped invent the subgenre Indo Jazz.  Shankar Jaikishan is in fact a duo – Shankarsingh Raghwanshi and Jaikishan Dayabhai Panchal - who composed a mass of music for the Hindi film industry between 1949 and 1971.

8 Bachar Mar Khalife – Mirror Moon (Infine)

Album: Who’s gonna get the ball from behind the wall

We have sort special mini-focus on Beirut now, starting with something ultra-current – Paris-based and schooled classical pianist and percussionist, Bachar Mar-Khalife, the son of renowned Lebanese oud player, Marcel Khalife, and his radical interpretation of one of his father’s songs.

Here’s a clip of Bachar with his father, Marcel, on oud, brother, Rami, piano, and Bachar, on percussion doing the same tune: http://vimeo.com/51993055  
 

9 Fairuz – Marreit Beil Shawari (Voix De L’Orient) (SACEM)

Album: Rajioun

The most legendary of Beirut musicians is singer Fairuz, who’s been going since the 50s.  “Marreit Beil Shawari” is unbelievably from the early part of her career.  She was part of the three-person team (“the trinity”) with the Rahbani brothers, Mansour who wrote the lyrics and Assi, who became her husband, composed and arranged the tunes. 

A brilliant streamed podcast on Afropop Worldwide about Fairuz can be found at: http://www.afropop.org/wp/hipdeep/

10 Ziad Rahbani – Chirak  (Voix De L’Orient) 

Album: Bil Afrah

Fairuz’s son Ziad Rahbani also started coming in on the action in the 70s.  As well as a lyricist and composer, Ziad is also a playwright and political commentator.  “Chirak” is something he put together in 1972, based on an Armenian folk song.  He plays the accordion on the song.

11 Yasmine Hamdan – Shouei (Crammed Records)

Album: Ya Nass

Yasmine Hamden is another Beirutian now based in Paris.  Her praise song for Beirut from her new album called “Ya Nass”, meaning “Oh people”.  “Beirut, a flower out of season, what a waste if it withered.”

12 Jeroen Van Vliet & Sikeda – Al-Kirbah (Challenge Jazz)

Album: Thin Air

Leaving Beirut … some of might have been lucky enough to see Dutch pianist Jeroen van Vliet play with Carlo Mombelli and Kesivan Naidoo at the Mahogony Room in Cape Town in July or indeed other venues around the country.  If not (or even you did), check out this clip capturing their the Jo’burg stint of their tour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnXGhZsWAOA&feature=share

Van Vliet is a fantastic player and composer who’s actually been to South Africa quite a few times since the 90s.  “Al-Kirbah” is he put together with a group called Sikeda for the North Sea Jazz Festival in 2008.  Sikeda is a six piece which includes Iranian born percussionist Afra Mussawisade.

13 Simo Lagnawi – Tourklila (Waulk Records)

Album: Gnawa London

London-based Moroccan Simo Lagnawi with his arrangement of a traditional Gnawa tune on which he plays all the instruments – the gimbri, qaragebs (castanets), and clapping.  It’s from a superb album of basically stripped down traditional Gnawa, called “Gnawa London” out on Waulk Records.

14 Djeli Mah Damba, Baba Sissoko – Djasere (Goodfellas)

Album: Baba et sa maman

One of the sources of Gnawa is the music of the Senegambia region, and I’m not sure we can get more authentic than the music of Djeli Mah Damba Koroba, a veteran singer from the Bamana areas of Mali, and her son, Baba Sissoko, who now lives in Italy.

15 Amadou Diagne – Aida (Waulk Records)

Album: Yakar

Senegalese singer, songwriter and guitarist, Amadou Diagne’s, who now lives in Bath in the UK.  His new album, “Yakar”, is another brilliant release on Waulk Records, produced by Griselda Sanderson who also produced Simo Lagnawi’s album.  Sanderson plays violin – and, I think you’ll agree – her playing really gels with the music and is a huge part of its excitement.

16 Dieuf-Dieul de Thies – Aling Na Djimbe (Taranga Beat)

Album: Aw Sa Yone Vol 1

Mbalax is probably Senegal’s most well known musical export, and a new Dakar-based label, Taranga Beat, has been exhuming forgotten gems from the dawn of mbalax in the 70s, especially from the city of Thies.  Their latest find is the band Dieuf-Dieul de Thies.

17 The Garifuna Collective – Alagan (Cumbancha)
Album: Ayo

The Garifuna Collective, located in Belize in the Caribbean, the cultural collective that Andy Palacio belonged to, with something off their brand new album, “Ayo”, which means “Goodbye”.  There was some question about what would happen to the Garifuna Collective after Palacio died unexpectedly in 2008, but luckily they’ve come through.  Ivan Duran who let up Stonetree Records, which is based in Belize and one of the main forces in keeping Garafunan culture and music alive, produced the album. 

18 Celia Cruz – Chango (Soul Jazz)

Album: Mirror to the Soul: Caribbean Jump-Up, Mambo and Calypso Beat 1954-77

Staying in the Caribbean, one of the greats of Cuban music is Celia Cruz – known as the Queen of Salsa.  She left Cuba in 1959 following the coup and ended up being one of the voices for NYC-based Fania Allstars in 1970s, which was one of the main forces behind the NYC Salsa scene.  Here is something that doesn’t sound like normal salsa, which is probably why I like it.  I found that on the new Soul Jazz collection called Mirror to the Soul: Caribbean Jump-Up, Mambo & Calypso Beat 1954-77.  It’s film, book and CD project.


















19 Chicha Libre – Juaneco en el Cielo (Barbes/Crammed)
Album: Canibalismo

Chicha Libre are a Brooklyn based group who take chicha, the music that developed in the slums of Lima in Peru in the late 60s and 70s that combines surf guitar with Andean folk, as their point of departure.  All kinds of samples and sequencers are deployed on the fine 2012 album, “Canibalismo”. 

 

20 Bomba Estereo – Rocas (feat. B’Negao) (Soundway)

Album: Eleganci Tropical

Bomba Estereo have taken things to even trashier dance spaces building on the Afro-Caribbean tradition of their home city, Barranquilla, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.  Some of you might have been lucky enough to see them in South Africa and Swaziland earlier this year.  “Rocas” is with Brazillian rapper MC B Negao.  Singer Liliana Saumet is the group’s irrepressible front person. Wish all dance music was this good.

21 Congo Nutty feat Rebel MC, Tenor Fly, Daddy Freddy & Nanci Correia – Get Ready (Ninja Tune)

Album: Jungle Revolution

Congo Nutty used to be Michael West aka Rebel MC and started this life as mover and shaker in the UK rap and hip hop scene.  Later he was a pioneer in London’s jungle scene.  After converting to Rastafarianism he dropped out of music and went to go and live in Ethiopia.  Luckily he’s back now and firing on all five, bringing all his musical legacies together with the great Adrian Sherwood behind the mixing desk. 

22 The Jamaican’s – Ba Ba Boom (Heartbeat)

Congo Nutty’s “Get ready” draws heavily on a classic rock-steady track by The Jamaicans.   

23  John Holt – Ali Baba (Treasure Isle)

24 Tommy McCook & The Supersonics – I Shave the Barber (Pressure Sounds)
Album: Pleasure Dub

Errol Brown’s quite fantastic 1974 dub remix of John Holt’s 1969 classic Ali Baba.  The dub version is called “I shave the barber” and credited to the great Jamaican sax player Tommy McCook and one of his backing bands, The Supersonics. 

25 Clinton Fearon – One Love (Stern’s Music)

Album: Heart and Soul

Staying in Jamaica … well sort-of … Clinton Fearon started his career playing bass and guitar and supplying his wonderful baritone in one of the great reggae bands of the 70s – The Gladiators.  He now lives in Seattle and has recently taken to doing stripped down versions of songs he wrote for The Gladiators.  Here’s a fine example from his latest album, which I promised a few months ago. 

26 Alex McMurray – All my rivers (Threadhead)

Album: I will never be alone in this land

Alex McMurray is singer songwriter living in New Orleans and steeped in its various traditions.  “I will never be alone in this land” really oozes this tradition.  You’ll see in action on the Season 2 of the HBO series Treme. 

27 Mavis Staples – Far Celestial Shores (Anti-)

Album: One True Vine

Speaking of singer songwriters steeped in Americana as I so often do, I thought it would a good idea to listen to Nick Lowe, who is in fact English, sometime.  Mavis Staples, one of the greats of soul, provides a good opportunity – she did a fabulous version of one of his gospel songs on her new Jeff Tweedy produced album “One True Vine”. 

28 Bill Frisell – A Beautiful View (Okeh/Sony)
Album: Big Sur

The inestimable Bill Frisell from his really great suite of new tunes that he wrote at Glen Deven Ranch on the Big Sur coastline in California.   

29 Unni Boksasp Ensemble – Reveenka (Unni Boksasp)

Album: Kvite fuglar

Norwegian Unni Boksasp started singing traditional songs, but has moved on to write her own songs which are very much in the tradition. 

30 Christian Wallumrod –  Banadsbangla (ECM)

Album: Outstairs

From composer, pianist and harmonium player Christian Wallumrod with his usual startlingly beautiful combinations of Norwegian folk, early church music, modern classical, improv and, here, Indian devotional music.

7 August 2013, World Cafe

1 Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino - Nu Te Fermere (Puglia Sounds/Discovery)
Album: Pizzaca Indiavolata

Canzoniere Grecanico Salentina, as the name suggests, are from Salentina which is in the Puglia region of southern Italy on the Salento peninsula where a Greek dialect called Griko is spoken.  The group has been going since 1975 and one of the best exponents of pizzica, a trance like style of folk music and dance said to cure tarantula and snake bites. 

The group is run by fiddler and drummer Mauro Durante the son of Daniele Durante who established the group.  Off their fine 2012 release. 

2 Ghetonia – Quandu camini tie (Anima Mundi)

Album: Krifi

Another long standing cultural group from the same tradition as Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino

3 Banda Olifante – Barab (Felmay)

Album: Banda Olifante

Sticking in Italy, but from another tradition – the bande – which started in the 1800s with brass bands performing for funeral and religious processions in towns and villages, often in Puglia and Sicily it seems.  The bands’ mission was to bring the music of high culture to villagers and workers, but grew from there.  Over the last 10 years or so, it’s been taking in all kinds of other musical influences. Banda Olifante is a 15 piece based in Romagna in the north, and “Barab” has a Maghrebi influence.  It doesn’t seem like an accident that the band gets its name from a medieval carved ivory horn often made by Arab craftsman, the olifante. 

4 Fanfara Tirana and Transglobal Underground – Aferdita (World Village)

Album: Kabatronics

The current batch of bande often looks to Balkan brass band for inspiration, and Albania being only about 100 km across the Adriatic Sea from Puglia, I dare say is an important source.  Fanfara Tirana which is actually some kind of a offshoot from Albania’s military band recently teamed up with the British global fusion dance band, Transglobal Underground, to come up with a particularly in your face mix they call “Kabatronics”. 

5 A Hawk and a Hacksaw – Witch’s Theme (L.M. Duplication)

Album: You have already gone to the other world

A Hawk and Hacksaw have redone the entire soundtrack to Georgian director Sergei Parajanov’s 1964 movie “Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors”, about Ukrainian mountain villagers.  They’ve called their project “You have already gone to the other world”, and in my book it’s up there with the best of 2013.  From 1965 onwards all Parajanov’s movies were banned in USSR and he ended up in prison between ‘73 and ‘77 for his trouble.

6 Okay Temiz – Dokuz Sekiz (Bouzouki Joe Records)

Album: Turkish Freakout: Psych Folk Singles 1969 – 80

Let’s head across the Black Sea to Turkey.  The fusion jazz percussionist and drummer, Okay Temiz played with a huge number of musicians over the early 70s, including in Johnny Dyani and Mongezi Feza.  “Dokuz Sekiz” is a single from 1975.

7 Selda Bagcan – Yuh yuh (Turkuola)

7” single

Selda Bagcan is one of the greats of Turkish folk and rock music, singer, songwriter baglama -ist and guitarist.  Bagcan started her musical career in 1971 while studying engineering physics at Ankara University and is still going strong running a music production company in Istanbul. 

8 Timur Selcuk – Pireli Sarki (Yonca)

7” single

Timur Selcuk comes from a musical family and studied in Paris in the 60s and perhaps early 70s. After returning from Paris he reeled off a string of songs that turned out to be hits, like this one, from 1975, sounding like some kind of a Russian folk ditty.   

9 Ilaiyaraaja feat P. Susheela – Poo Poo Kkum (Finders Keepers)
Album: Ilectro Euphoric electronics and robotic funk

Ilaiyaraaja is a legendary composer for the Tamil film industry often called Kollywood and based in Chennai. In fact, he may be the only composer for the Tamil film industry.  “Poo Poo Kkum” features the wonderful vocals of P. Susheela and comes from Finders Keepers brand new collection of Ilaiyaraaja culled from stuff he put out in the 80s.

10 Debashish Bhattacharya – Kirwani One 5 + 8 Five (World Music Network / Riverboat Records)

Album: Beyond the Ragasphere

Along with VM Bhatt, whom I hope you saw playing in Cape Town recently, Debashish Bhattacharya is probably most famous slide guitarist in India.  He turns up the fusion on his latest, “Beyond the ragasphere”, with dobra player Jerry Douglas and guitarist John McLauglin enlisted on a few tracks.  “Kirwani one 5 + 8 five” features Battacharya’s teenage daughter, Anandi, doing some great singing. 

11 Dawanggang – Four Ways (JARO)

Album: Wild Tune Stray Rhythm

Thanks to the specialist music mag, “Folk Roots”, I discovered Chinese folk experimentalists, Dawanggang.  Their album, out on the German label Jaro, is called “Wild Tune Stray Rhythm” - which more or less says it all.  Song Yuzhe, who’s played in a bunch of punk bands over the years, and his crack sidemen from inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet and central China have  mixed Chinese opera, with a bunch of Asian folk and good old fashioned rock n rock.  It’s not for the faint hearted, that’s for sure. “Four ways” is probably the most user friendly track.

12 Takashi Hirayasu & Bob Brozman – Uruku Tumi Gushiku (Riverboat Records)
Album: Jin Jin/Firefly

Takashi Hirayasu and Bob Brozman with a traditional Okinawan song off their classic collaboration.  Brozman was an inveterate collaborator and had keen fascination for slide guitars of shapes and vintages – which explains his work with Debishish Bhattach over the years -  and music produced on islands which took him all around the world.  He died a few months ago under very tragic circumstances connected to him not being able to play guitar the way he thought he ought to able to.  I think of no better tribute than the music of Jin Jin which is deceptively simple, but incredibly dynamic, textured and heartfelt.  More from Brozman’s later in the show.

13 Shoukichi Kina and Champloose – Shimaguwa Song (Globe Style)

Album: The Music Power from Okinawa

Takashi Hirayasu used to play guitar with Champoose, one of the best rock bands of Okinawa, and incompassing the island’s fiercely independent spirit and its ability to absorb all kinds of culture, including Chinese, Japanese and American.  At centre of Champoose is Shokichi Kina, apparently a pretty erratic fellow, but he’s totally on form on “Shimaguwa Song” from a live set recorded in Okinawa in 1977 which goes under the name “The Music Power from Okinawa”.

14 Phonophani – Gubijinso (Rune Grammafon)

Album: Kreken

Norwegian electronic musician Espen Sommer Eide, aka Phonophani, teamed up with Japanese sound artist, Haco, to produce the tune “Gubijinso”.  It’s from Phonophani’s 2010 set.

15 Cyclopean – Fingers (Mute/Spoon)
EP: Cyclopean

Recently some of the core members of Krautrock group Can i.e. drummer Jaki Liebezeit and keyboadist Irman Schmidt got together with Burnt Friedman and Jono Podmore, called themselves Cyclopean and produced a spacey, dubby slice of ethnological forgery.  So far an EP has emerged, but there’s an album in the making I believe. 

16 Dennis Bovell – Flood of Tears (Pressure Sounds)
Album: Mek It Run

The veteran dub producer and bass player, Dennis Bovell, with something he cooked up recently in the Mad Professor’s studio post neck surgery when he was banned from bass playing and took to finishing off pieces that have long languished in the vaults.  The resulting album is pretty potent.

17 Kobo Town – The War between Is and Ought (Cumbancha)

Album: Jumbie in the Jukebox

Kobo Town takes it name from the old neighbourhood of Port-of-Spain where calypso was reputedly born, even though they all live in Toronto.  Drew Gonsalves was born in Trinidad and came to Canada as a teenager and the calypso he’s come up is infused with dancehall, ska, reggae and a touch of soca, and some nice, heavyish brass.  “Jumbie in the Jukebox” is their debut album.   

18 Bob Brozman – Strange Mind Blues (Ruf/Only Blues Music)
Album: Fire in the Mind

Bob Brozman off the last album he ever made, 2012’s “Fire in the mind”, and a self-penned song.  One the greatest, if not the greatest, Hawaiian guitarists, and one of the most generous collaborators.  The world is a much depleted place without him.

19 Valerie June – The Hour (Sunday Best)

Album: Pushin’ Against a Stone

Valerie June Hockett is from Jackson, Tennessee, and has been paying her dues for a number of years now, brewing up one hell of a concoction of old timey blues, Appalachian folk and classic 60s and 70s soul.  She teamed with the now indomitable Dan Auerbach to flesh some of songs out, and her resultant debut album is a winner

20 Sam Amidon – As I Roved Out (Nonesuch)
Album: Bright Sunny South

Sam Amidon, from Vermont originally, has been working a kind of old Appalachian folk seam for a while, cutting it with lashings of jazzing strings and woodwinds and some off kilter guitar.  He’s sounding more Appalachian these days – perhaps since he’s relocated to Blighty having married Beth Orton.  “As I roved out” is a reworking of a traditional song.  Another classic of 2013, I think.

21 Beth Orton – Magpie (Anti)
Album: Sugaring Season

And speaking of Beth Orton, I did enjoy her album of last year – just on the right side i.e. the rootsy and darker side - of singer-song writer indie folk-rock.  That’s maybe because of collaborations and lessons with Bert Jansch.  Recorded in Portland, by Tucker Martine, whose name seems to be coming up here quite often of late.

22 Bella Hardy – Through Lonesome Woods (Noe)

Album: Battleplan

Bella Hardy specializes in writing new songs that echo traditional songs, and “Through Lonesome Woods” is a very fine example of one of these.  Off her 2013 album, “Battleplan”.

23 Mukunguni – Bamba (Honest Jon’s Records)

Album: New Recordings from Coastal Province, Kenya

From field recordings of the Mijikenda tribes from the coast Kenya.  Bamba is the Mijikenda name for a metal guiro – a percussive scraper.  The music evolved in the early 20^th century based on older forms and is mainly for healing. 

24 Sambe Toure – Awn Be Ye Kelenye (Glitterbeat)

Album: Albala

Sambe Toure is one of the new generation of Songhai guitarists and songwriters emerging after Ali Farka Toure from the around the Timbuktu area of Mali.  His new record is terrific, a real advance on his previous stuff.  Another recorded last year round about when the military coup was occurring.  It’s called “Albala” which is the Songhai word for danger or risk.  “Awn be ye kelenye” is Songhai for “We are all Malian” – a plea for ethnic unity.

25 Rokia Traore – Kouma (Nonesuch)

Album: Beautiful Africa

Something from another classic of 2013. 

26 Segun Bucknor – Adanri Sogbasogba (Strut Records)

Album: Poor Man No Get Brother

Segun Bucknor was one of many great highlife musicians that operated in Nigeria in the late 60s and 70s.  He also had a passion of American soul and funk, and for protesting corruption in Nigeria and singing in English, but his best stuff is in Yoruba and decidedly laidback and funky.  “Adanri Sogbasogba” is culled from a collection of his stuff made between ‘69 and ‘75. 

27 Vicky et OK Jazz – En memoire de Bayon (EMI 1971/1976)

Album: Vicky et OK Jazz

Vicky Longomba, the great Congolese singer associated with Franco.  It seems to have been recorded in 1971.   

28 Bill Frisell – We all love Neil Young (Okeh Records) (Songtone LLC)
Album: Big Sur     

A statement I think we can all endorse.