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Entries associated with the tag "African Music":June 2nd - 7:09 p.m.
Over the course of his three albums, Cape Verdean singer Tcheka (born Manuel Lopes Andrade) has gently reshaped the sounds of his native land. With his nimble acoustic guitar and sweet wisp of a voice, he's created a soulful singer-songwriter style that ripples with the insinuating rhythms of the batuque, a kinetic traditional music that was once performed only by women. His third album, Lonji (Times Square), has just been released in the U.S., and it makes a big leap from its stripped-down predecessor, Nu Monda (2005). On his second visit to Chicago, Tcheka will lead a trio in a free performance on Wednesday night at the Old Town School (reservations are recommended). Today's playlist: Cat Power, Jukebox (Matador) January 10th - 5:27 p.m.
Since every post this week has been about African music, I can’t think of a good reason to stop now--especially since so many other people write exclusively about white Americans with guitars. Today, thanks to the excellent blog Matsuli, I discovered a recently launched blog from the Africa service of Voice of America, an operation that broadcasts all over the continent in English, French, Portuguese, Amharic, Tigrigna, Oromo, Hausa, Swahili, Ndebele, Shona, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, and Somali. The music holdings of the Africa service include more than 10,000 reels of tape and several thousand more albums, 45s, cassettes, and CDs. Inspired by the music posted regularly on Matsuli, VOA producer Matthew LaVoie decided to share some of his organization's collection online, and the first three posts, dating back to last month, have all been incredible. I’m familiar with the Congolese group Orchestre Bantous, the subject of the December 27 entry, but not with most of the other bands LaVoie has posted--which include L'Harmonie Voltaique and Volta Jazz, both from Burkina Faso, and a handful of contemporary groups from the Ivory Coast represented by tracks from recent cassettes. LaVoie provides informative descriptions and the artwork from the original sources. Most of this stuff is either ultra rare or nearly impossible to find outside Africa, which makes the abundant surface noise and the occasional skip from the original 45s easy to overlook. Today’s playlist: Michaël Attias, Credo (Clean Feed) January 9th - 2:57 p.m.
The recent elections in Kenya have been dogged by charges of fraud, and in their wake the country has been rocked by ethnic violence--hundreds have been murdered, there’s been widespread looting, and a national curfew has the country on virtual lockdown. The transcontinental band Extra Golden--whose fine second album, Hera Ma Nono, was released in the fall by Thrill Jockey--has several members in Kenya. Ian Eagleson and Alex Minoff, who are based in D.C., are asking the public to help their bandmates in Nairobi, Opiyo Bilongo (pictured), Onyango Wuod Omari, and Onyango Jagwasi. As it says on the band’s Web site, “They all have large extended families for whose well-being they are entirely responsible. Of course, as musicians, that well-being is provided for through nightly work at clubs. With dusk-to-dawn curfews in place, these men are all unable to work, and a subsistence that was already hand-to-mouth has become non-existent.” Eagleson and Minoff are asking for donations of just five dollars, though they’ll welcome any amount. Obviously this mess affects thousands and thousands of Kenyans, most of whom could probably use five bucks too, but at least this way you can know who you’re helping. Further details and Paypal info are available here. Today’s playlist: Brian Groder, Torque (Latham) January 8th - 7:39 p.m.
To follow up on yesterday's post, here are three more superb 2007 reissues of African music. Alèmayèhu Eshèté: Ethiopiques 22—More Vintage! (Buda) Moussa Doumbia: Keleya (Oriki Music) Various artists: Àwon Ojísé Olorun: Popular Music in Yorubaland 1931-1952 (Savannahphone) Today’s playlist: Quarteto Em Cy, Em Cy Maior (Elenco, Japan) January 7th - 5:55 p.m.
My interest in international music may be skewing my perspective, but by my reckoning the past few years have seen a veritable avalanche of killer reissues from distant parts of the globe, and 2007 was no exception. While the archives of the Western world are picked pretty clean, that’s not the case for Africa, South America, Asia, and the Middle East--until the advent of the marketing category “world music” in the 80s, barely anyone tried to sell music from those parts of the world people who didn't live there. For decades the only accessible material from Africa, for example, was either ridiculous manufactured exotica or dry ethnological recordings. Thriving pop scenes in dozens of countries were all but ignored in the U.S., and even the specialty importers who eventually started bringing in music to satisfy immigrant populations didn't make a dent in the mainstream. What that means to us now is that there are five or six decades of thrilling pop music out there that Americans have never heard. The floodgates are opening, and savvy reissue producers are releasing fantastic albums and compilations that offer an authentic, in-depth, and only lightly mediated glimpse of the history of pop around the planet. Today I’d like to mention a few of 2007's best releases of vintage African music. Many of them come from the vast holdings of Senegal’s classic Syllart label, which has joined forces with UK label Stern’s (a key outlet for all stripes of African music) to jump-start a dazzling series of reissues from the continent. For me nothing can top the double CD Authenticité: the Syliphone Years. "Authenticité" was the name given to the Guinean government's postcolonial effort to establish a progressive arts program that retained traditional roots, and the music chronicled here, produced between 1965 and 1980, reflects the most fertile period in the country’s history. Some of Guinea’s greatest bands--including Bembeya Jazz National, Keletigui et Ses Balladins, the Horoya Band, and Pivi et les Balladins--emerged during this era, nurtured not only by governmental largesse but by vigorous competition between groups. You can hear a heavy Cuban influence on most of the tracks--a common feature of West African music at the time--but the music also overflows with creativity. Lilting yet propulsive polyrhythms and gently sashaying horn arrangements give way to furious grooves, searing guitar, and fiercely declamatory singing. Pivi’s version of the ubiquitous “Samba” rocks as hard as anything I’ve ever heard from Africa, and even at its most restrained this stuff bristles with an inspired synthesis of styles and textures. The set includes a gorgeous 44-page booklet that reproduces many of the original album covers. I’m more than ready for all those albums to be reissued in full. Mali’s brilliant Rail Band, a vitally important combo that began in 1970 and carries on to this day, is the subject of a projected three-volume set of double CDs, the first of which, Soundiata, spans 1970 to 1983. The group is probably better known as the launching pad for superstar singers like Salif Keita and Mory Kante than for its actual music, but this first installment makes plain that the Rail Band has long been one of the continent’s most potent musical forces. It emerged during a time of optimism and experimentation that began when Mali became independent--similar to what happened in Guinea--and mixed Mande and Bambara traditions with Afro-Cuban elements, soul, and rock, all while sounding thoroughly Malian. When the group began it was small and had only a set of timbales for percussion, but as international businesses scrambled to gain a foothold in Mali, the Rail Band--which played for a globe-trotting clientele at the Buffet Hotel de le Gare de Bamako--also learned Egyptian pop songs, French chanson, and of course Cuban jams, alongside their meaty repertoire of originals. (Unfortunately, the sequencing isn't chronological, so it's hard to trace the development.) The group often replicated the extended jams of its live gigs in the studio, and disc one opens with an epic version of the title track that runs just under 28 minutes, permutating endlessly with elaborate embellishment from Kante and extended guitar solos by Djelimady Tounkara, the lyric genius who’s led the band for several decades now. It’s breathless stuff, stunning as much for its bravado as its rhythmic and melodic generosity. My final recommendation for the day is Ujamaa, the third installment in the Zanzibara series from Buda Records--the same French label behind the essential Ethiopiques series. It's a compilation dedicated to 60s dance bands from Tanzania--another dazzling thread in the dynamic fabric of music from Swahili East Africa, which bears virtually no resemblance to the more familiar styles of West Africa. Most of the groups included here feature the word “jazz” in their names--Nuta Jazz Band, Atomic Jazz Band, Morogoro Jazz Band--but there’s nothing jazzlike about the music. Electric guitars pick out ultramelodic licks and solos, forming a lighter-than-air lattice for the simple Afro-Cuban grooves, beautifully harmonized singing, and sparse, punchy horn parts. It’s rhythm-driven stuff but maintains a gentle feel, preferring reverb to distortion and implication to declaration. Tomorrow: A concise survey of other 2007 African reissues you should check out. Today’s playlist: David S. Ware Quartet, Renunciation (Aum Fidelity) November 2nd - 6:17 p.m.
On Sunday the Guinean musician Alpha Yaya Diallo, who’s lived in Vancouver since 1991, makes one of his infrequent visits to the area, performing at McAninch Arts Center in Glen Ellyn at 7 PM. His most recent album, Djama (Jericho Beach, 2005), is less slick than some of his earlier efforts, with more of a lovely pan-West African approach. Although the music is rooted in hypnotic Mande grooves, Diallo makes credible excursions into Cape Verde and the western Sahara.The guitar-driven sounds blend various regional styles, but he has enough charisma and presence as a vocalist to pull it off. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before, but it's still beautiful music exceptionally rendered. One year ago this Sunday local activist and jazz fan Malachi Ritscher fatally set himself in fire, ostensibly to protest the war in Iraq—among other major problems with our troubled nation. A blog post I wrote reporting the tragic news set off a veritable avalanche of comments, some intelligent, some inchoate, but almost all of them passionate in one way or another. His death ignited feverish discussion on the way the media ignored such incidents and acts in the wake of an increasingly unpopular war, which by and large was given a huge pass when it was all getting started five years ago. Today’s playlist: Peter Brötzmann & Shoji Hano, Funny Rat (Improvised Music From Japan) August 21st - 1:31 p.m.
On September 11 Crammed Discs is releasing Live at Couleur Café by the Congolese band Konono No. 1, a burning concert recorded in Brussels. It follows on the heels of the digital-only Live in Tokyo EP—in fact, the artwork for both releases is practically identical. The band is in good form, its deeply hypnotic likembe patterns sounding cleaner than on the group’s celebrated Congotronics album, where the thumb piano licks were crusted with nasty distortion. The fierce rhythms and chanted vocals present nothing new, but remain highly effective. If there’s been any kind of complaint about the group’s music it’s that their songs all sound the same, and there’s certainly a kernel of truth to that; each piece begins with a practically identical intro figure, and while there is clearly some improvisation happening in the lead likembe, the circling riffs don’t vary much from tune to tune. Konono are not sophisticated artists; rocking the party is their only real concern, which suggests than unless they severely tweak their formula, additional recordings aren’t going to heighten their appeal. They’re a live act, plain and simple. When I first listened to Introducing Kenge Kenge, the recent debut by Kenya's Kenge Kenge, I cynically assumed that non-Congolese Africans were already biting Konono’s sound—there have long been other groups in and around Kinshasa that use the same general approach (and as Congotronics 2 proved, there still are). Although Kenge Kenge don’t use likembes, their style on the one-string fiddle called the orutu is similarly minimal. But closer listening reveals that Introducing is a different can of worms entirely. The band plays the dominant form of Kenyan dance music called benga—a guitar-driven sound derived partly from Congolese rumba and partly from traditional Luo music. It was popularized by D.O. Misiani and heard more recently on these shores in Extra Golden, the transcontinental group featuring members of D.C. indie rockers Golden. The twist here is that Kenge Kenge eschews most modern instrumentation and uses ancient axes like orutu, the asili (flute), oporo (horn), and nyangile (gong). The presence of bass is the sole concession to modernity. Although benga uses melody and harmony and features loads of exquisite guitar solos, it’s another form aimed primarily at the dance floor. That's partly why it’s never really taken off in the West: it lacks the folkloric element Europeans and Americans go for. The hypnotic grooves banged out by Kenge Kenge’s five percussionists certainly recall Konono’s trance-inducing beats, but despite the limitations of a single-stringed fiddle, the licks here run circles around the Congolese group in terms of melody, as do the call-and-response vocals. Kenge Kenge emerged from the state-sponsored Catering Levy Trust Choir in the mid-90s, breaking away from religious and patriotic songs in favor of original material with the benga groove. It's sort of analogous to the way VHS or Beta once played French house music on old-fashioned instruments like guitar and drums—except Kenge Kenge don’t suck. March 20th - 11:51 a.m.
Last year Chicagoans got a rare chance to hear some benga music, the dominant dance style of Kenya for the last four or five decades, when the band Extra Golden played here during the World Music Festival. The band was started by Ian Eagleson and Alex Minoff of the Washington D.C. indie rock band Golden as a collaboration with some of the benga musicians Eagleson met while pursuing ethnomusicological studies in Kenya. While a few tracks on the band’s debut album, Ok-Oyot System, were tainted by whiffs of white funk-rock, it otherwise conveyed some of the frothy rhythmic joy of benga. Not long after the record was made the key Kenyan participant, Otieno Jagwasi, died from complications related to AIDS. His able replacement for the group’s U.S. tour was Opiyo Bilongo, a dazzling singer and guitarist who’d been a steady presence on the benga scene for more than a decade. Recently Eagleson advanced his efforts to expose this effervescent music to American audiences by starting Kanyo Records, which has released a wonderful CD of music by Bilongo and his band, Bilongo Golden Stars. What Do People Want? packs nearly 75 killer minutes of overlapping, bubbly electric guitar lines, propulsive polyrhythms, and hypnotic group vocals into six extended jams. Eagleson helped Bilongo record the music back in 2004 in two sessions at Alfrose Bar, the club where the band played five nights a week. Because benga music is made for dancers while simultaneously emphasizing its Luo lyrics, some of its most germane appeal might escape U.S. listeners who, strangely, have generally gravitated more to less frenetic African music—like the hypnotic, circular strains of Malian music. Unfortunately, this tendency has made benga a relatively obscure presence and it’s often hard to track down in record shops, although work by pioneers like D.O. Misiani and Victoria Kings can sometimes be found. This situation makes this excellent recording even more valuable. Of course, the current state of record stores in the U.S. means this CD will probably be hard to find unless you’re looking online. The CD is being distributed by Thrill Jockey, which also released the Extra Golden album. February 13th - 11:44 a.m.
Por Por: Honk Horn Music of Ghana, which is released next Tuesday, might well be the strangest recording released by Folkways Records since the Smithsonian Institute acquired the label in 1987. In decades prior the label was famous for issuing certain titles with a decidedly narrow audience—who could forget 1964’s classic Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, or 1958’s Sounds of North American Frogs, which became one of the surprise hits of the imprint's reissue campaign. But for the most part the label’s mission has been preserving vanishing musical traditions from around the globe with a mix of academic rigor and savvy packaging. The great ethnomusicologist Steven Feld is responsible for this new release, chronicling a phenomenon that’s been active in Accra, Ghana’s capital, for about seven decades, but only recently came into public view. Por por music—the name is an onomatopoetic description of the sound—is basically built around the rubber bulb horns that were once ubiquitous on children’s bicycles. In Accra these horns were used on transport trucks and over the years their use expanded. If a truck got a flat tire in a remote area the various workers would create a raucous chorus of honking and ad-hoc percussion to warn approaching vehicles that there was a disabled truck ahead. Eventually the workers began to incorporate local rhythms and with time bands started mixing in original lyrics, familiar hits, and traditional pieces. It's a clattery, nasal barrage of dance music; believe it or not, pumping up a spare tire tube is one of the preferred dance moves. In 1960 a local television program used a por por version of “There’s No Business Like Show Business” as its theme song. But for the most part por por music was consigned to funerals for fellow transport workers, offering the same kind of celebratory air as New Orleans funeral brass bands. In fact, it’s only been in the last six years or so that the music has started being heard in public performance. The Ghanaian photographer Nii Yemo Nunu—son of a truck driver—had been taking pictures of the “musicians” for years when he shared his knowledge with friend and saxophonist Nii Noi Nortey, who began jamming with the La Drivers Union Por Por Group in late 2002. Before the long the band was gigging at a number of prestigious cultural functions; in 2004 they even opened an Accra performance for the British jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine. Feld was introduced to the group by Nortey and he began chronicling the group’s work. I’ll be honest—sitting through all 72 minutes of the CD can be a trying experience. There’s not much melody within the chanted vocals, and while the rhythms are infectious, the constant hocketing barrage of single-toned squeeze horns teeters between tedium and torture. But there is method to the madness and if you can adjust your ears to the restricted tonal range you can notice how resourceful the group is, finding an unexpected contrapuntal spectrum in all of the bleating. Feld’s liner notes are typically informative, obsessively researched, and accessible, and the photos by Nunu are excellent. This CD clearly isn’t for everyone, but I can almost guarantee it’s like nothing you’ve ever heard before. January 30th - 11:49 a.m.
The German label Network Records recently issued the third installment in its excellent Golden Afrique series, book-sized double-CD sets that focus on particular regions of Africa primarily during the 70s—the continent’s golden era for popular music. Volume 3 takes aim at South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, and if only for the reason that Paul Simon’s Graceland made South African pop ubiquitous on these shores, it’s the least interesting edition thus far. That’s not to say that the choices made by its three compilers—including Günter Gretz, the German behind the indispensable Popular African Music label—are weak, although inclusions by Miriam Makeba, Brenda Fassie, and Chris McGregor ignore vastly superior work. It’s just that we’re unlikely to be surprised by tunes by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Mahlathini, and Hugh Masekela, as good as they may be. I’m shocked that kwela king Spokes Mashiyane isn’t represented, as Malawi’s Donald Kachamba delivers a dose of the style, but such quibbling could go on forever.
Disc 2, which focuses on Zimbabwe and Zambia, fares better, presenting earlier, more urgent work by the likes of Thomas Mapfumo (heard here with the great Hallelujah Chicken Run Band) and Oliver Mtukudzi, rather than the slickly produced stuff that’s gained them favor in the U.S. and Europe. But most of the tracks come from lesser-known acts. While most of the music on the first two volumes (covering West Africa and the Congo, respectively) revealed a deep clave feel, here the rhythms are more bubbly and liquid, with fluid, interlocking guitar patterns. As the liner notes point out, this music was also born under highly oppressive European regimes. Nightclubs and beer halls provided the only social outlet these natives had, and creating new music was both a salve and a vital means of expression. If you don’t have much African music this series has thus far provided as good an introduction as any I’ve encountered in recent years, but beware: this stuff is contagious. November 3rd - 12:21 p.m.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a mixture of synergy, opportunism, and fuzzy feel-goodness coalesce into a phenomenon quite like the story of Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars. The group formed in 1999 at a refugee camp in Guinea, where thousands of Sierra Leone natives had fled a brutal civil war at home. The band initially played for other refugees, which wasn't exactly a careerist move. But lo and behold, in 2002 a pair of budding American filmmakers, looking for a story amid the tragic displacement, stumbled upon the band. Bingo! A star is born. Filmmakers Zach Niles and Banker White began shooting, and admittedly they captured a compelling tale. Back in the U.S., Niles worked for high-powered ticket broker Shelley Lazar -- whose client list includes the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, and Mariah Carey -- and she began showing the trailer to various famous people, who started writing checks so the duo could finish their documentary. That backing allowed the band to clear visa hurdles and perform earlier this year at South by Southwest, where, without a record, they signed a big management and publishing deal. This summer the completed film, The Refugee All Stars, toured the festival circuit, and in September Anti- Records released the band’s debut, Living Like a Refugee, which was mostly cut in Freetown between 2003 and '04, after the violence had subsided. Most of the music is avuncular if run-of-the-mill roots reggae, with some fiery dancehall-style toasting contributed by the charismatic Black Nature. De facto bandleader Reuben Koroma wrote most of the songs in English. (That seems like a convenient move in terms of attracting U.S. audiences, but he was doing that before the band’s ship had come in.) It’s a pleasant recording with an appealingly ragged looseness to the group harmonies, but I wish there more examples of gumbe, the native style that forms the basis for the album’s best material. I certainly won’t begrudge the band’s heartwarming success -- even if it’s a perfect example of being in the right place at the right time -- but there’s no doubt that their triumph is based largely on extramusical stuff. The band plays at Martyrs' on Saturday, November 4. September 22nd - 5:33 p.m.
Some interesting Web action for the weekend: Listening to music with Ornette Coleman: New York Times critic Ben Ratliff offers the latest in a series of articles where he listens to music with major jazz figures, allowing them to comment on the records of others and relating it to their own work.The Coleman piece is one of the most fascinating installments yet. Rare African album art: Benn Loxo du Taccu is one the best MP3 sites on the web, serving up free songs from past and present; from traditional stuff to current hip-hop, from Mali to Tanzania, this place constanly opens new doors. Recently, however, the MP3 posts were interrupted to make room for a series of gorgeous album covers, most of them from the 70s. Found tapes: Jessica Hopper points to a bizarre site containing MP3s of stuff found on cassettes at thrift stores and garage sales. July 20th - 5:54 p.m.
Thomas Mapfumo, one of Zimbabwe’s most celebrated pop artists, has just released a new album, Rise Up (Real World), which is packed with roiling grooves, bubbling guitar licks, and hypnotic patterns played on the mbira—the traditional thumb piano of the Shona people. Mapfumo pioneered what's called chimurenga music, a guitar-based approximation of traditional Shona tunes, and he’ll roll into Chicago with his band Blacks Unlimited on September 3 as part of the African Festival of the Arts.
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