Looking back at 2017Among those who died in 2017 were musician Moriba Koïta (Mali), Augustin Mawangu, leader of Konono #1 (Congo), singer Frankie Paul (Jamaica), Cuban singer Rolo Martinez [at left], tresero Papi Oviedo (Cuba), guitarist Cheikh Tidiane Tall (Senegal), pianists Mischa Mengelberg (Holland), & Fats Domino (USA), recording folklorists Charles Duvelle (OCORA) & Paul Oliver.
Concerts of the YearThere were undoubtedly some great concerts in 2017, such as the reformed Dieuf Dieul de Thiès, who toured Europe; sadly the opportunities for me to hear music of such caliber in California are slight to nil. However, the centenary of the birth of Thelonious Monk meant there were many tributes to the great American pianist and composer. SF Jazz brought Danilo Perez, Randy Weston and others to town to celebrate him. The evening with the nonagenarian Weston reminiscing about Monk and then playing with a couple of SF Jazz Conservatory students was magical.We still get Cuban acts coming through and it was thrilling to see El Septeto Santiaguero in a small club. Another transcendent evening at SF Jazz was provided by a trio of Cuban pianists Chucho Valdes, Michel Camilo and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, playing the music of the great Ernesto Lecuona. There's a wonderful anecdote about Lecuona, told by G. Cabrera Infante: Late in life Lecuona, a bit down at heel, was walking down a street in Havana and heard his own music coming from an open window. He went up and listened because the Victrola was playing a highly embellished, lush orchestral arrangement. Excuse me, he called in through the window, what is that music you are listening to? The lady of the house came to the window and replied, It's the new piece by the American genius, George Gershwin. Oh really, answered Lecuona, it says it was composed by Gershwin? Yes, but wait, it says the themes are adapted from Cuban folklore. OK, he said and left. He told his friends and they said, You can sue for copyright infringement and make some money. No, replied the composer, if the great Gershwin wants to mistake me for folklore then I am satisfied. You can read my reviews on the Cuba Live page. And catch the video of their rehearsal for the show here.
Room at the TopFor once my colleagues have totally different ideas about this year's best from your humble reporter. Here's DJ David Sharp (of Musica International)'s list:Lila Downs, Ballaké Sissoko w Driss el Maloumi & Rajery, Lee Perry (Super Ape returns), Trio Dakali w Kronos Quartet, Ammoye (The Light), Les Amazones d'Afrique, Las Cafeteras, Ahmad Jamal, Jayme Stone, Orch Baobab. You know my opinion of some of these, Les Amazones is the only one we agree on, I liked the lead-off single, but not the whole thing; Baobab was a huge disappointment to me, like a Beatles reunion album without John Lennon. Lee Perry is a good call, but it's just his classic Upsetter sides once again with fancy new toast & avocado on top. I had not heard the Ballaké Sissoko "fusion" disc, so I checked it out, and the others, on YouTube and wasn't moved to change my selection. Regarding reissues, the final appearance of Zaire 74: The African artists was welcome, but sadly, as Ken Braun pointed out, the Franco and Rochereau sets were heavily edited, so what's the point? The legacy of Ravi Shankar was carried forward with another issue in the Nine Decades series, Ghanashyam, a sparkling music theater piece. |
SON PALENQUE | |
PALENQUE RECORDS AFROCOLOMBIA REMIX (Galletas Calientes Records GC010)Perfect to get your juices flowing for your cardio workout; in fact you'd be hard pressed to listen to this sitting down. The Colombians have long cherished African music and it has become a mainstay of their sound systems, or picós. Like their Jamaican counterparts they are keen to get the rarest sides (blacking out the labels so rivals cannot find out what they have) and sample and loop and repeat the seben, stretching out the groove, overlaying it with drum patterns or other riffs for maximum dance floor impact. Much as I love my LPs I have moved into the CD then digital worlds, reluctantly. One bonus of the CD is the hour length so you are not constantly jumping up to turn over the album. This is only half an hour long, as it's an LP, which left me wanting more. Palenque has been a prime mover of the AfroColombia scene since the mid-1990s, having brought us Batata, Luis Towers, Mystic Orchestra and a bunch of other great stuff. Their motto is "We are the Real Motherfuckers of AfroColombian Music!" Champeta music grew out of the hybrid of African music with Colombian instruments such as marimba, and legendary Congolese musicians Diblo Dibala and Bopol Mansiamania have had residencies in Cartagena to add their licks to the tracks. To celebrate twenty years, Palenque invited "global bass" DJs from Europe and the Americas to remix tracks. It's very varied but also engaging. Soukous fans will love the lead-off track "Kumina" with Bopol and Son Palenque, remixed by the Dutchman Solo Moderna, with a lovely sax part. Son Palenque also provide the stunning "A Pila el Arroz" in the Ghetto Kumbé Afro Rework by a Colombian DJ. "Mini Kusuto" by Viviano Torres is the most trancelike track with echoey jungle sounds and even marimbas sounding spacey. There's a woman's voice whispering something that sounds to me like "Itsy bitsy spider" but I know that can't be right. A revelation I had listening to this is that there is a connection between pygmy flutes and Andean pan pipes, once the pan pipes looped on reverb come in, you hear that pygmy polyphony that is so mesmerizing. As Heraclitus said, "The hidden harmony is better than the obvious one."
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INNA DE YARD: THE SOUL OF JAMAICA (Chapter Two/Wagram 3342736)A decade ago the Viceroys' Inna de Yard blew me away. A band I remembered chiefly for the novelty number "Ya Ho" had survived the years and, a little worse for wear, got together in Earl "Chinna" Smith's yard in Half-Way-Tree, Kingston to record an acoustic album of what they remembered from their heyday in the late 60s. A whole series of "Inna de Yard" albums appeared but none quite had the same impact as the Viceroys working through "Heart made of stone," and "My mission is impossible." However the idea was worth pursuing and now here's a compilation, newly recorded with stripped-down acoustic versions of a few oldies and some new material, all caught live and unedited. The old-timers returning are Ken Boothe, Cedric Myton (of the Congos), Lloyd Parks, and of course the Viceroys, formerly known as the Voiceroys. "Chinna" Smith is not present but there are plenty of talented musicians such as Nambo on trombone and a plethora of drummers slapping the skins. On "Jah Power, Jah Glory" by Kiddus I we hear an organ and an accordion, but it is still propelled by the Nyabinghi beat. Lee Perry's favorite singer Cedric Myton's unearthly etherial voice floats on a tide of hand drums and a lyrical trombone. "Love is the Key" by the Viceroys is outstanding but then Ken Boothe also shows he has not lost it, and on his remake of "Let the Water run dry" the Viceroys sing backup. Boothe's "Artibella" is also a gem with that accordion hanging around to give a cafe ambiance. New to me Derajah is great on "Stone" and he is only one of several fine singers on here, including two Scots descendants, Winston McAnuff and Kush McAnuff. Winston "Bo-Pee" Bowen, best known as session guitarist in the mighty Roots Radics takes us home with "Thanks & Praises" and a little bit of night sounds, crickets, birdies and cool breeze. | |
BAIANASYSTEM | |
JUANA MOLINA | |
MALEEM MAHMOUD GANIA | |
BARGOU 08 | |
BAO SISSOKO, MOLA SYLLA & WOUTER VENDENABEELE | |
OUMOU SANGARE | |
AKSHARA |
FRUKO | |
ORIGINAL SOUND OF MALI (Mr Bongo)I am very greedy when it comes to classic Malian, Senegalese and Guinean music of their golden era, which spans post-Independence in 1960 through the 80s. As much as I discover, there's always more, and I am grateful to people like Graeme Counsel, Florent Mazzoleni, Adamantios Kafetzis of Teranga Beat, not to mention Stern's, Kanaga System, Dakar Sound and all the independent labels who find this music and restore it for us. This latest reissue from Mr Bongo is simply stunning. Looking at the tracklist you might see "Mandjou" by Les Ambassadeurs, and tracks from Rail Band and Super Djata and think to yourself, I probably have these. But chances are you don't have more than two or three of these tracks, not because they are obscurities, but because they are super-rare gems. I know, you are saying, But I have the 6-disc Rail Band set from Sterns (STCD3033-34, 39-40, 43-44), but you still don't have "Mouodilo" (a solid funk track, it came out on 45 from HMV in Nigeria!), and you might have "Fatema" by Ambassadeurs or Sory Bamba's "Yayoroba," but that still leaves a stack of stuff you need, like the two impossibly scarce and fabulous Idrissa Soumaroro tracks with his band L'Eclipse de l'I.J.A., the overlooked but far from slack Tentemba Jazz, and the Super Djata tracks which have never been reissued to my knowledge (They don't even show up on discogs.com). Idrissa Soumaroro is less well-known than other alumni of Les Ambassadeurs du Motel, and there are two cuts from his solo venture (Ampsa, 1978) presented here, bracketing the whole package: they are in a steaming R&B vein with great organ, congas, funk & rock guitar: a nice change from Afrobeat. "Fama Allah" made me think of "You keep me hanging on" as covered by Vanilla Fudge. His band L'Eclipse consisted of some of his blind students from L'Institut des Jeunes Aveugles in Bamako, including Amadou (on guitar) and Mariam (on vocals) who later had a successful breakout career in Europe and America. Back then, the European and American influences were grafted onto traditional melodies and lyrics, though occasionally some broke from tradition, like Sory Bamba whose hit "Ya Yoroba" celebrated women with large breasts. With his swirling electric organ, his group, Kanaga de Mopti, were compared to Pink Floyd. Super Djata had a wider repertoire, stylistically, than the other bands and also came to their peak powers during the 80s when the other big name bands -- Les Ambassadeurs and Rail Band -- were dropping off in popularity. In addition to Rail Band's Djelimady Tounkara and Super Biton's Mama Sissoko, Super Djata's Zani Diabaté is one of the great African guitarists. Compared to Magic Sam, Freddie King and even Hendrix, he was also a renowned percussionist and dancer. The booklet shows the covers of five Super Djata LPs that I have never seen, nor heard of before. The three tracks here stand up to the best of Ambassadeurs and the other class acts present. The whole album shows many facets of some musicians as they appeared in different configurations. The producers refer to one of "the heaviest Afro Funk cuts, 'Moko Jolo' of Rail Band" (which is on their 1973 "blue" album, Serie Folk-Rail 1, but not included here). I guess they are leaving some stuff on the side for a further smorgasbord. It's a great jam, but currently only available on a 2011 Japanese import replica CD of the original album which has three other cuts which are not in print. But there's enough here to satisfy you and broaden your collection of fabulous classic Malian music. | |
ORIGINAL SOUND OF BURKINA FASO (Mr Bongo MRBCD152)Hot on the heels of their fabulous Mali compilation, Mr Bongo drops another sonic bomb: this time from Burkina Faso, a landlocked country surrounded by Ivory Coast, Mali, Ghana, Niger, Benin and Togo. So now you know where it is: there will be a test. As Upper Volta the country was part of French West Africa so predictably is a gathering of people from different ethnic groups which span the country's borders. In addition musicians had to go abroad to record so were influenced by what they heard on these trips. Musically the compilation provides a wide variety of treats. It's not all sunshine and lollipops, there's the inevitable disco number, and you surely have the Amadou Balaké tracks already, such as the definitive Latin version of "Whisky et Coca-Cola" and "Super bar konon Moussa," that churns the funk. You may also have sprung for Bobo Yeyé, the 3-disc set that came out last year from the Numero Group, which was distinguished by a lovely hardback book of the B&W photos of Sory Sanlé (It has the photo of the guy on a moped on the cover). "Sie Koumgolo," as well as "Super bar konon Moussa," were on Analog's Bambara Mystic Soul; "A son magni" and "Yamb ney Capitale" -- Pierre Sandwidi's rocking closer -- were on Ouaga Affair (another fine comp); while others were in the Bobo Yeyé box. However there are plenty of rarities here, including the kicking lead-off cut "Jeunesse Wilila" by Abdou Cissé which you really don't want to fade out when it does. "Djanfa Magni," a famous Manding ballad which was popularized in Mali, is covered in a great version by Youssouf Diarra. Mangue Kondé's guitar playing here, with both 5 Consuls and Super Mande, is outstanding, pushing him up to the level of Sekou "Bembeya" Diabaté. The important thing is Burkina Faso's musical heritage is finally getting its due. Soon Volta Jazz, Super Volta, Dafra Star and Les 5 Consuls will be as well known as the big bands from neighboring countries thanks to the excellent detailed histories of the bands by compiler Florent Mazzoleni, and CDs such as this. We want music to suggest an alternative past for us, and this Voltaic outpouring speaks to our soul, singly or collectively: we find something familiar in it right from the start. It may have been around as long as we have and while we were listening to Paul Jones of Manfred Mann singing "Do wah diddy diddy," some kid in Ouagadougou was digging Amadou Balaké singing "Aminata" -- it's almost as if we swapped memories or recognized each other in a parallel mirrored universe. This music, so familiar after hearing it once (after all it has guitars with wahwah pedals and fuzztone, Hammond organs, saxophones), now speaks to us of our whole life, our loves and disappointments (to paraphrase Oscar Wilde in "The Critic as Artist"). What more could you want. | |
OKAY TEMIZ / JOHNNY DYANI | |
HAMAD KALKABA & THE GOLDEN SOUNDS
Analog Africa is one of the most prolific, diverse and provocative labels going. It focusses on reissues and has created a fabulous back catalogue of music we never even knew existed, from all over Africa. And Analog Africa strides ahead with yet another fantastic reissue, the second or third this year (depending whether you count disco). We are still digesting Los Camaroes' stellar album, which reappeared this summer, and here comes another previously unknown gem. This short album presents the complete works (3 singles or 6 sides) of Hamad Kalkaba backed by a band who I am pretty sure are not the same Golden Sounds of "Zangalewa" fame. The "continuing adventures of Samy" fill us in on the story of how label boss Ben Redjeb found a single by this artist and then went on a quest for more works by this one-time master of a particular Northern Camerounian rhythm known as the Gandjal. Finding the music was tough, but it was not hard to track down the artist, for, once identified, he was known to everyone as a retired colonel who had gone on to the nation's Olympic committee and thence to head the Confederation of African Athletes. As a soldier Kalkaba joined the band of the Republican guard and rose to be leader, learning the various instruments along the way. But at the time, 1970, they played European music and he wished their own rhythms could be showcased the way Makossa and Bikutsi were being performed in other parts of the former French colony. (Originally a German territory, Cameroun was divided between Britain and France after WW1, but when Independence loomed in 1960, the Northern British part opted to join Nigeria.) Like other African artists of the 70s the aim of young Camerounian musicians was to take traditional rhythms and modernize them with electric guitars, keyboards and drum kits. "Lamido," one of the harsher cuts on here, has an attack reminiscent of Fela, a grindingly funky groove, yelled vocals and an ominous organ hovering in the back with even more threatening horns punching through as the vocalist grunts "Bismillah!" I have no doubt these were massive hits in their day and shocked the people with their bold thrust away from the traditional thumb piano and rattles into electric big band sounds. They even turned some of these traditional songs into military marches. They did include a balafon and talking drum in the lineup but these recordings were made in a Protestant mission and consequently the mikes are not balanced, which is why there is a distant rumble from some of the less-audible instruments. "Gandjal kessoum" kicks right in with wild drums and wildly flailing sax in a hot take. The lyrics (which are included) are socially conscious and show how Kalakaba could have been a transformative force as a singer had he chosen to continue that career. But after his band appeared at Festac '77 as representatives of Cameroun he decided to devote himself to the more secure career of the military. This is short, sweet and mighty fine. | |
OK JAZZ | |
NAIROBI CALLING! | |
LOS CAMAROES | |
THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF CHARLES DUVELLE (Sublime Frequencies SF110)There's a brilliant travel book by Redmond O'Hanlon called Into the Heart of Borneo. He and a friend undertake a dangerous trek into the depth of the jungle, hoping to meet a tribe that have had no contact with the outside world in over 50 years. One of the Rockefellers, Michael, was allegedly eaten while trying to make contact with these people in 1961. You learn that you don't pee in the river while bathing because there's a spiny fish that loves the warm piss and will swim up the flow and lodge itself in your urethra. But when the intrepid explorers get to their destination they find natives hoping they have batteries so they can play their boomboxes again and hear the Michael Jackson tapes they love so much. For much of the twentieth century, Africa had a similar shivering-dread/romantic appeal for daredevil travelers, but by the mid-century music explorers were going armed with reel-to-reel recorders and capturing the local music made in villages. While Hugh Tracey was working his way North from Southern Africa, the French National Radio had a man on the spot in the form of Charles Duvelle who covered West and Central Africa, then the Indian Ocean, South-East Asia and the South Pacific. Duvelle grew up in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, where his father was a colonial governor. Returning to France when he was 9, he studied classical piano and began to compose, and by chance came across a collection of tapes recorded in West Africa held by radio station France d'Outre-Mer. He offered to organize them and soon had a job. He saw a chance to escape the drab motherland and get back to the bright tropics. His radio station sent him first to Niger in 1961 to help set up a radio station there and he found many badly recorded tapes, done in the studio, and told his hosts that since the music was originally played in the field, as it were, they should go and capture it in situ. He set out with the radio host, who was his entrée to the villages, and brought along a Nagra tape deck and a Sennheiser mike. With griots or small ensembles he was able to set up his mike out of the wind and capture their performance, but he also got excited by the possibility of listening in on ceremonies and capturing the sound by becoming part of the action, moving around and adjusting his set-up so, in a sense, improvising with his recording equipment. Returning to France he issued three LPs: those from Upper Volta and Ivory Coast won the Grand Prix du Disque, and not only established him as a music producer but created a market for this music among anthropologists, musicians, travelers and fans in general. Duvelle ended up in charge of the sound archives of OCORA (Office de Coopération Radiophonique), which was established in 1964. The success of these early records led to the deluxe series published by OCORA with gatefolds, cloth covers, embossing, and booklets of photographs and notes that make these discs so attractive. Duvelle returned to Africa, visiting Cameroon and C.A.R. in 62, Dahomey (Benin) and Madagascar in 63, Kenya in 65, Congo (Zaire) in 66, Senegal in 1967, and then on to New Guinea in 1974 and so on. He was involved with FESTAC 77 and, bizarrely, the soundtrack to Fellini's Satyricon. The surreal juxtaposition struck Duvelle as a brilliant idea, making the African music seem like contemporary avant-garde music. Also in 1977 his field recordings from Burundi were selected by Carl Sagan to go on the gold disc sent into deep space aboard the Voyager spacecraft. And then those recordings of Burundi drummers were appropriated by Burundi Black. He felt that some of the royalties should go back to the people who created the originals so assigned the rights to the Burundi embassy. Here, in appreciation of Duvelle, we have a book the size of an LP with 230 pages of his photographs of musicians from all over the world, plus a discography (including 94 full-color thumbnails), OCORA catalogues from 1964 to 73, notes, articles and two CDs, one of African music, one of Indian. There are a few tracks from Papua incongruously interspersed in the African side, though one or two fit into the flow. This is a celebration of a remarkable individual and, for those like me, who grew up listening obsessively to the OCORA pygmy and ritual recordings, not to mention the mesmerizing Valiha Madagascar set, this is a wonderful treat. Rakotozafy from Madagascar became a celebrity in the world music world with his home-made bicycle spoke zither and you can hear him rock out on "Samy faly (Everyone can find happiness)" here. There's a thumb piano duet, a striking (ahem) xylophone piece from Gabon and another from Guinea which makes an interesting contrast. Then out of the blue we hear a bopal solo, which is a reed instrument made from a single millet stem, played by Moussa Sandé, a Peul shepherd, who just wails for 6 minutes. This Burkinabe could get up on the bandstand with Pharoah Sanders and fit in just fine. More balafons complete the African set. The second disc is a soothing collection of South Asian music including bansuri flute and drone from India and mouth organ from Laos. It's a completely different mood but rounds out the picture of this cosmopolitan and groundbreaking music pioneer. | |
AFRICAN GEMS (Sharp Wood Productions 043)The Charles Duvelle commemorative album, which I reviewed above, got me to dig out some of my treasured OCORA albums and I started looking at the names of the people who recorded the music. Some other music pioneers, Hugh Tracey and John Low have been lionized, not only in the Sharp Wood Series, but also by Original Music of John Storm Roberts who produced wonderful reissues of their recordings. What convinced me to buy African Gems was partly that it's what you might call "tribal Africa's greatest hits," but also that Sharp Wood's A&R man, Michael Baird, is a percussionist and drummer and is going to have a different take on what the great field recordings are from your humble reporter (I admit I got my Doctor of Rhythm doctorate from a mail-order college who gave me credit for "life experience"). The importance of these recordings is obvious: between 1965 and 1984 four white men, an Englishman, a Frenchman, and two Belgians, traveled the heart of Africa recording tribal music. Since then war, famine, HIV/AIDS, not to mention the onrush of modernity, have made this traditional music quietly disappear from the earth. But they captured vital musical moments, documents of life as valid as books or movies, maybe more so because of their immediacy. Tourists go looking for it, and perhaps are treated to a mock or recreated initiation ceremony but things slide out of reality, lose their context. In 1983 I visited the Mbuti pygmies (first celebrated by Colin Turnbull), and they put on a concert for my companions and me; they hocketed, jumped about imitating monkeys and generally tore the place up -- for a small fee. We spent a week camped near them in their forest village made of leaves and twigs, and traded them sugar and flour for pot, or to take us hunting. We were offered precious stones (probably bogus), gold (ditto) and even bark cloth, which was lovely but too fragile to transport. I traded a thrift store HARVARD t-shirt for a lovely sanza (thumb piano). (The t-shirt was immediately turned for cigarettes to the local "bigmies" -- normal-sized Africans who lived off the pygmies.) Several of the little people wore necklaces that had stones and seedpods on them. One day I asked one of them who spoke French the significance of those necklaces. Some Italians were here a few months ago and gave them to us, he said, would you like one? I have no doubt one of those necklaces is now in some ethnographic collection with a note, "Ituri rainforest 1983: Mbuti pgymy." So to the disc: the opening track comes from OCORA 25 Cameroun (the one with the cover that was plagiarized by Analog Africa for their disco reissue). It is outstanding, but then so are the 11 cuts that follow. A track like "Mbilé" by a kendé (xylophone) soloist is so rich you have a hard time believing it's only one performer. He accompanied a wrestling match in Chad in 1966 and here the track is restored to its full length. The kendé is an upright xylophone struck with four mallets, according to Duvelle, who also took a photo of the performer. Then we are treated to the "traffic jam" effect of seven ivory horns with percussion (Duvelle in Congo, also 1966). It's interesting that "out" jazz arose around this time and was also a product of African-American horn players. (Note the use of the word "horn"!) The segue into Alur horns from Uganda is great and the reason I wanted to give Baird the reins on this set! The horns from Chad performing "Sirhélé" are also extra-classic. It too slides seamlessly into one of the mind-blowingest pieces of "world music": "Gandja" music from Centrafrique. This is an initiation ceremony complete with chorus and ankle-rattles but the horn polyphony is completely trance-inducing. I admire the way the ten short themes flow together and marvel at their seeming lack of time signature. The anthology ends with an epic topical song sung to a home-made guitar with the choral singer frantically tapping a bottle. It brings us back to earth, though one can see why this music is the stuff that we sent into space to convince alien lifeforms that we earthlings have soul. |