NEW WORLD

AFRICA

OLD WORLD (Asia, Arabia, Europe)

MARACA
LO QUE QUIERO ES FIESTA!! (Ahi-Nama AHI1078)

It's been a while since we heard from Cuban flautist and bandleader Maraca. He has been touring -- Cuba, Mexico, Africa, Europe, North America and Reunion Island, and trying different styles of music. He brought a band to Yoshi's at the end of August 2008, but it was a band of expatriates (plus Craig Handy, an African-American jazz saxophonist as the stand-out talent), because his regular band of Cubans cannot tour the United States. Maraca (Orlando Valle) has a French wife and lives in France. Despite the different line-up he previewed the new album and it went over big with the dancing crowd in Oakland. It starts out straight-ahead salsa but then nuances into guaguanco, guajira, and even a cumbia. "Lo que quiero es fiesta" sounds very Colombian and even features an accordeon. When they did an old Beny More standard I was over the moon. The sound was muddy but IJ went back the next night and said they had straightened out the sonic problems. The album features his regular Latin line-up but also electric guitar on five tracks. I of course would have preferred a tres, but there's plenty of traditional Cuban craftsmanship on display on piano (Alejandro Falcon), electric bass (Sergio Raveiro) and congas (Rafael Valiente). Luis Valle multi-tracked his trumpet & trombone, and there's Andres Perez on baritone sax. Vocals are handled by José-Miguel Melendez and Lester Hojas with Ammiel Castellanos shouting encouragement and a guest appearance from "El Nene" on a guaguanco dedicated to the late great conguero Tata Guines. Ceaseless touring has sharpened Maraca's band to a fine point. He drives from the sidelines, pointing out solos, singing coro, counting down to the chorus and adding percussion to the groove. He is a superb flautist but doesn't hog the mike. The title track is excellent, and so is the coda: the little percussive tribute to Tata Guines. Live, my favourite track was "Guajira para Mimi." High-energy party music to make you wind your waist.

MICRON MUSIC: EVERY MOUTH MUST BE FED 1973 to 1976
(Pressure Sounds 59; also on LP)

Pressure Sounds rarely misses a beat. (They are also on thin ice as we seem to be at the end of the CD era: hang onto those Blood & Fire discs which are now out of print as the label is defunct.) There are several styles of reggae here and while there are familiar rhythms with versions and toasts they seemed, on first listening, disjointed. Then I read the liner notes (the bits that are not in red type on green paper which cannot be read) and listened a few more times and it made sense. Micron Music was the label of Pete Weston, a bit of a chancer who had a knack for picking hits. Without production facilities the Micron team would rent studio space and use the various producers in Kingston which is why some tracks sound like Bunny Lee and others sound like Lee Perry or King Tubby. I first heard it on Rob Walsh's radio show on Sunday (it's one of the amazing things of the Net that you can find kindred spirits in other parts of the globe, so I regularly tune into Bradford Community Radio on Sunday afternoon to hear Rob's show), and Rob of course played the best cut, Junior Byles' "Aint too proud to beg." So I walked the 5 blocks to Amoeba and bought it as soon as the show was over and listened to it once, then put on a Jr Byles disc instead. But the mix grew on me, especially the appearances of I Roy & the other Jr Byles tracks. His cut "Lorna Banana" is a smoker and includes a chorus of "I wish it would rain." The version, "Revolution is for the Chinaman" by Pete Weston & The Flames, has groovy bongo. Then we get one of those payback versions, "Straight to Scratch Head." (Does Lee Perry have a brother called Sniff?) "Ska Baby" by Bobby Ellis is darn catchy. Sleepers like The Defenders are followed by a toast from U Roy called "Right to Live," which pops up over a mix of Cornell Campbell's "Keep on moving." I would like to hear the Cornell Campbell track for reference (I don't think I have it unless it's on another compilation; I need an intern to catalogue my music), and there's another instrumental which sounds like one of his tunes, so why were they omitted, other than the obvious reason to save time? Similarly there's a Tommy McCook instrumental called "Tribute to Muhammad Ali," which sounds like "Forgot to be your lover," but there's no "A" side to ground it. Maybe they are planning a second disc if this one does well, so buy it, & encourage Pressure Sounds, the bearers of the reggae flame.

DUB COLOSSUS
A TOWN CALLED ADDIS (RealWorld USCDRW155)

Dub Colossus is Nick Page, I don't know how big he is (the only other colossus I know is Rhodes which is reduced to submerged ankles), but dub he does. Page started out working with Steel Pulse before taking up bass and mixology himself. He was a founder of Trans-global Underground and a major part of their 6 albums, writing, performing and producing. Now he is indulging his passion for the Ethiopiques series of CDs on Buda Musique which document the sound of swinging Addis in the waning years of the reign of Haile Selassie before the oppressive military regime of Mengistu wiped music off the sand-encrusted map. For A Town Called Addis he found some of the old nightclub crooners and musicians still extant and added a 70s dub sensibility. Imagine playing the Mighty Diamonds in one channel and Alemayehu Eshete in the other, but ultimately that's as close at it comes. Saxophonist Feleke Hailu (a classical composer, lecturer and head of music at the Yared Music School) sounds a bit like Kenny G, maybe it's just the echo, but then the pianist Samuel Yirga also opts for space rather than sound. Teremag Weretow adds his plaintive voice; while his messenqo, a scrapey one-string fiddle, is the most interesting non-Western instrument here. The Dub takes away the exotic edge of Ethiopia but it still has a dreamlike quality as snatches of organ or flute float by. It's not earth-shaking and I don't know how much I will listen to it, but it's worth checking out.

RAVI SHANKAR
VINTAGE 78 RPM RECORDS (Saregama)

When I listen to Ravi Shankar I picture Shiva, the many-armed Hindu God, playing. I wonder if this visual effect was created by altered consciousness (drugs or starvation) when the original artist saw the blur of quickly moving arms of a dancer but their brain registered the trail as many arms. The same thought occurred to me on viewing Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase" in Philadelphia, which was painted some years after Edweard Muybridge's stop-motion photographs. However the impression on listening to Shankar is of someone with superhuman agility in their fingers and the sense that there is more than one pair of hands at work, not just the sympathetic resonating strings. It seems like a lead, rhythm and bass all going simultaneously on one instrument (Well, there is the tampura but you don't usually hear it). It's mind-altering but not in the corny psychedelic way usually associated with Shankar as father of world music, inspirer of George Harrison and everyone else from Brian Jones to Traffic to the other British bands who tried on pop sitar licks. The open-string strum that introduces many pieces is like a door to a part of your brain that is all endorphin without strenuous exercise or excitement. That part of your body that creates its own pleasurable morphine, somewhere like the pituitary gland or the hypothalamus (I think of the hypothalamus as grunting contentedly in the mud at the bottom of a lake). You might argue that it's the monotony: that the droning quality of the half-hour long ragas induces a sense of stupor, but this disc proves the opposite. Yes, it's great to bask in a long dream-like raga that is attuned to the time of day but here we are confronted with the fact that Shankar's career predates the long-playing record by decades. Saregama has assembled 18 3-minute tracks that were issued as sides of 78 rpm shellac discs between 1948 and 1956. It is phenomenal. Shankar knew that he (& long-time accompanist Pandit Chaturlal on tablas) had to take it to the top, hit it and quit, all the while with an eye on the egg timer. Ali Akbar Khan pops in with his sarod on a couple of numbers. But it doesn't seem strained, forced, truncated, or frantic. In fact it sounds as relaxed as his longer albums that contain only two or three tracks. Here is the genius at work. I argue that this disc is as great as any piece of classical music produced in the twentieth century, even though it is an agglomeration of disparate pieces. It holds together as much as any suite by Debussy, Webern, Ellington or anyone you care to name. The Duchess bought it, seduced by the package, which promises more than it contains. In fact it is just a CD in a huge cardboard box with a fake record grommeted to the front and a lot of air inside. But as Horace has it, there is an air of hidden riches, and it is in the music. Now I am tempted to get the First LP Record also put out in a fancy package by Saregama. If it is anything like this, I will be playing it in heavy rotation for a long time to come.

THE GYUTO MONKS TANTRIC CHOIR
TIBETAN CHANTS FOR WORLD PEACE (White Swan WS0086)

There is some music that is satisfying but you only need to hear it once, or every decade or so. It stays in your mind so you can "hear" it without putting on the disc. The gravelly throaty sound of the Tibetan monks is one of those (& is akin to didjeridoo or Tuvan throat singing). In fact this disc sounds a lot like the Tibetan chant album that came out on Folkways (I think) in the 60s, but still I enjoyed it and have listened to it a few times. Let me explain. There is also music you put on to send people home when the party's over but they are too inebriated to get the hint. Or when the neighbours are making a din. The Duchess has obnoxious neighbours who listen to crappy music. I don't know what it is, maybe white rap music, but all you can hear is the rhythm track which sounds like the boom-chaka button on an Electrovox or Hohner organ from the 60s. So call in the monks & crank it up, dude. Indeed this is not relaxing music that your masseuse would put on to lull you, it's Looking into the pit of Hell stuff. Zen is mentally engaging, so I like Buddhism, though I think all religion is superstition, & as Emile Zola said "Civilization will not attain perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest." Tibetan Buddhism is the Catholicism of Eastern religion, full of ritual and ceremony, though the Dali Lama is a lot hipper than that stiff in the Vatican. And you have to sympathize with their situation. I don't know how this is going to effect world peace but anything is worth a shot. The monks on here were multi-tracked by Mickey Hart to fatten the sound. They play bells and there's a drum or two and some really dull cymbals which they seem to keep dropping and which roll about in a big empty hall. Every now and then the monks stop their chants and you hear the cymbal wallah picking up the dozens of scattered cymbals, dropping them as he does (because he is bowing and walking backwards), and leaving the room (that's what I picture). It's also cold up there in Dharamsala so I imagine you can see their breath. The music paints a great picture, so let it take you on a little trip.

SEPREWA KASA (TUGCD1051)

This is really cool: Unplugged highlife music. I know people like the rocky rolly stuff, the Afro beats James Brown upside the head remixes, but give this a chance. The seprewa is like a stripped-down kora, it's a Ghanaian instrument but no longer played very much. Even Kari Banaman, guitarist from the 70s African band Osibisa, had heard about it but not actually heard it, until he encountered a seprewa player at a music festival in Switzerland. After jamming backstage the two met back in Ghana and recorded this sweet tribute to the roots of highlife. Osei Karankye, the seprewa virtuoso, was taught by his grandfather and now teaches at the University of Ghana in Legon. Another teacher, Baffour Kyerematen, one of the dance faculty, is also a seprewa player so the three men jammed under the palms. It is a relaxed and melodious set. The ten-stringed chordophone of course predates the guitar and was popular among the Akan people of the Ashanti from the seventeenth century onward. As the two seprewa players on the album had firmly held and divergent ideas about tuning they could not play together, so alternately played calabash, metal claves, bass drum, or other percussion while the seprewa duets with the guitar. In a song like "Towoboase" you can hear the connection to Rex Lawson, echoed not a little in the guitar. On "Agyese Wobre" you detect, perhaps, the origins of banjo music. Fascinating, and music-making of the highest calibre.

SUFI SOUL: THE MYSTIC MUSIC OF ISLAM (Directed by Simon Broughton; TUGDVD001)

This is an exemplary documentary that tells the story of Sufi music, the mystical outsider of Islam. The hardline mullahs, the ones we all know and hate, want to banish music. I think they would ban women too if they didn't need to procreate. They are clearly the most miserable bastards on the planet. (Because of the natural laws of balance they must exist as long as we have our own fundamentalist Nazis like BushCo throwing their weight about.) However from adversity comes strength and beauty. You know that Robert Burns was the best-selling poet in nineteenth-century Britain? Well, in 1990 the best-selling poet in the USA was Rumi, the 13th-century Afghani mystic, with his message that love is the surest path to the Divine. Sufi singers generally take a well-known verse from one of their famous poets and then improvise. Nusrat who appears fleetingly here, did this like no one on earth. We also see and hear Youssou Ndour at the Festival of Sacred Music in Fez, Nusrat's nephew Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, and Abeeda Parveen as the camera follows William Dalrymple, who has lived in south Asia for two decades, from Pakistan to Turkey, Syria, & Morocco. Dalrymple is a scholar who sees Sufism as a peaceful bastion against fundamentalism. The film opens with a stunning performance by Sain Zaheer and his bluesy banjo-like dirge, his bare feet stamping to jingle his ankle bells outside a Pakistani saint's tomb. The camerawork is exceptional and so is the editing. It is a treat to see such a well-made film about something so precious and evanescent.

I had a little religious epiphany recently. My satellite dish unlocks random world TV channels so for a fortnight I had the Sikh channel and they have a live show called "Gurbani from the Golden Temple." As it was on endlessly I would often tune in when I woke up or was falling asleep and soon found myself checking into it regularly. There were three fixed camera shots: Outside the surprisingly tiny Golden Temple in Amritsar, a large manmade lake or cooling pond, and birds flying over. You could see what time of day or night it was and occasionally pilgrims cooling their toes or queuing to get into the temple. Inside the temple there was a shot of the priest who sat before a silk-draped altar adding or removing layers of fabric, occasionally waving a large white fly whisk slowly over it. And the third shot was the band, two harmoniums, tablas and singers crammed in a corner. Behind them was the door so you saw pilgrims entering and leaving & making obeisance to something off-camera. It was fascinating. While the music was a constant and some singers were better than others it was the slow, almost static quality of the events that kept me rapt. It was so immediate in a funny way, despite being halfway around the world, it was the here-and-now. I watched a nasty rich housewife elbow a big praying man so he moved out of the spot she wanted. The priest finally got to the bottom of the pile of silk and there was a giant book! That was a great moment, but he quickly started covering it again. Though I am deeply irreligious I see its uses. Sufism has a palpable effect in the whirling dervishes, who whirl so slowly they should be called perhaps the revolving dervishes. In Lahore the devotees whirl a bit more vigorously to attain waj, or ecstacy. This is probably more what it was like in the 13th century, Dalrymple tells us, easing from the wild bhangra dhol drum to qawwali and a sample of Nusrat doing "Allah hoo." DVD extras include full performances by Turkish ney player Kudsi Erguner, Sain Zahoor, Nusrat's nephew Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, the Bhitshah Fakirs who play six identical stringed instruments, and Morroco's Rokia Riman Jilala Band.

RAIL BAND
BELLE EPOQUE 2: MANSA (Stern's STCD3039-40)

In 2007 Stern's released the first pair of discs in the projected three volume, 6-disc set of vintage Rail Band recordings. This second pair lives up to the magic of the first and adds more gems to the collection. By now we are familiar with the saga, how the young albino singer Salif Keita, though not a griot, took Bamako by storm with this explosive band. At first he refused to perform for even though he was homeless and unable to work as a teacher because of poor eyesight, he was still a noble and it would be beneath him to perform for money. Then there was his lack of skin pigment. Rumour has it he first appeared with a towel over his head. But the band clicked. In 1971 Djelimady Tounkara joined as lead guitarist from National "A" du Mali. After three years a rivalry arose when the new balafonist, Mory Kanté began to be featured more. Kanté was a child prodigy who also had an unusual way with the kora and he would grab the mike to "accompany" Keita but drown him out. Keita left and started Les Ambassadeurs, based in the local motel as opposed to the railway hotel. With Kanté at the forefront the band became more experimental and in 1977 started playing Afrobeat (e.g., "Dugu kamaleba" included here) as well as pop and traditional Malinké and Bambara tunes which they updated. This was a revolutionary move, to incorporate different ethnicities into the band and the repertoire, and the fluid mix of musicians kept the music always fresh and exciting. A few years later Kanté also departed, becoming one of the first griots to go electric, move to Paris and score disco hits. At the same time the bandleader and saxophonist, Tidiane Koné, left for greener pastures and the leadership fell to the brilliant guitarist Djelimady Tounkara, now acknowledged to be one of the finest African guitarists of all time. But after a trip to Togo with Kanté, Djelimady was barred from performing with his old outfit by the railway authorities. He responded by starting a new band, the Trio Mandingue (documented on the Oriki disc 'Allo Bamako) that soon eclipsed the Rail Band so in the end he had to be allowed back in, with his new cohorts by his side. Another shock came when Djelimady fell in love with Congolese rumba & recorded two albums in Lomé that show the influence of Docteur Nico (The fabulous "Konowale" is included here). Devoted fans will be pleased to hear the earlier version of "Mansa" (redone as the haunting title track of their 1995 Indigo album). Mory Kanté's wonderful, dreamy "Balakononifing" is here. Some of the tracks are familiar from out of print albums that were themselves recompilations of singles, put out by Syllart in the 80s. The on-line discography by Graeme Counsel is useful in keeping this straight. These essential Stern's discs provide another broad spectrum of the group, featuring major compositions from each era of the band. The Rail Band still performs when they are in Bamako but mainly they are out touring the world. With their recent masterful anthologies of Balla et ses Balladins, Bembeya Jazz, Mbilia Bel, Tabu Ley Rochereau and others, Stern's is brilliantly filling in the history of modern African popular music. With our support and encouragement, they will continue this great work.

Quickies:

Some of the outstanding albums reviewed so far in 2008 (I note where they are filed because some may be confusing, like Cheb i Sabbah who lives in San Francisco, but his music is filed under India this time around, or Dengue Fever whose Cambodian pop is based in Los Angeles):

Sidestepper Buena Vibra Sound System under Colombia
Samba Mapangala African Classics under Kenya
Alfredo Rodriguez Live: Oye Afra! under Cuba part 4
Gnawa Home Songs under Arabia
Issa Bagayogo Mali Koura filed under Mali 2
Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump filed under Nigeria
Franco African Classics filed under Congo 3
Balla et ses Balladins' Syliphone Years filed under Guinea
Rough Guide to Mali filed under Mali 2
Tcheka Lonji filed under Cabo Verde
Baobab live filed under Senegal 2
Princes Among Men filed under Gypsy
Arsenio Rodriguez' Complete RCA Victor Recordings on Cuba 4 page
Ingosi Stars filed under Kenya & Tanzania
Debashish Battycharya Calcutta chronicles filed under India
Kékélé LIVE filed under Congo 3
Chicha Libre Sonido Amazonico! filed under Peru
Dengue Fever Venus on Earth and concert review filed under USA
Les Amazones de Guinée Wamato filed under Guinée
Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar GO MARKO GO! filed under Gypsy Brass
Cheb i Sabbah Devotion filed under India