243: Call of the Soul, by Raza Khan

Raza Khan (India)
Call of the Soul (2011)
3 tracks, 41 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

I’ve mentioned qawwali quite a few times here but we’ve not had a proper album of the style yet. So, with this album, it’s probably a good time to ask…what is qawwali?

Qawwali is a style of sung poetry popular in South Asia, originating in the 13th century with the works of the poet and musician Amir Khusrow. It is a devotional form sung by followers of a mystical branch of Islam called Sufism, and its words talk of an all-consuming love of God and the Prophet through often deep layers of metaphor, often evoking erotic love or intoxication on wine (Sufis are also responsible for many incredible musical and artistic traditions around the world, from the Bayefall and Gnawa of West Africa to the Mevlevi of Turkey to the Qasidah of Indonesia and lots in between). Musically, qawwali is descended from many sources, with Indian and Persian classical music, Punjabi and Rajasthani folk and Arabic music all contributing to the sound. The modern qawwali ensemble consists of one or two soloists and a chorus of between six and ten, with one tabla and a couple of harmoniums being played between them.

And so we go back to Call of the Soul and Raza Khan. As you’ve guessed, Raza Khan is a qawwali singer, a Sufi and a Christian.

…wait, what? How can he be a Sufi AND a Christian? Because the world is just bloody excellent, that’s how. He applies Sufi teaching and practice to his Pentecostal beliefs and just gets on with it. And part of just getting on with it is apparently becoming a master qawwal. His voice is simply stunning. The ease at which his voice caresses the poetry that he sings – and the wordless syllables he improvises with – as if they are made of silk. His fingers move across the keys of his harmonium with a sharp dexterity, and the range of his voice at least equals the instrument’s. When he breaks from the rolling groove to soar into the sky, the heights he reaches are incredible…and then he goes even higher.

Qawwali is intense music and a spectacle for the ears and the heart. Naming the album Call of the Soul is no overstatement. When you listen to this music, it transports you, spiritually, to another place, whether you’re religious or not. And Raza Khan proves that the religion of the singer doesn’t matter too much either; it doesn’t matter which gods and prophets are being praised, this music brings them a little nearer to us.

242: Sketches of Spain, by Miles Davis & Gil Evans

Miles Davis & Gil Evans (USA/Canada)
Sketches of Spain (1960)
5 tracks, 42 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Although Miles Davis had been defining and revolutionising jazz for a decade when he made this record (and he would continue to do so until his death in the 1990s), Sketches of Spain was his first large-scale experimental work. And large-scale it is – his stripped back quartet of Paul Chambers on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums and Elvin Jones on percussion is joined by a 22 piece orchestra, arranged and conducted by Gil Evans.

With an orchestra comes orchestral music, and this album is one of the best examples of orchestral jazz to date. All the way through the album, the amount of actual ‘jazz’ – in terms of a definable musical style – is surprisingly small. Instead, the dominant sounds are of classical music and orchestrations based on Spanish folk music. Most notably, the pièce de résistance is a performance of the Rodrigo’s ‘Concierto de Aranjuez,’ second movement. While the piece is certainly an arrangement and does exhibit jazz vibes now and then (although only in a couple of short sections), it is also remarkably true to the original piece, and played with the utmost reverence by Miles, who takes the original’s solo guitar parts on his flugelhorn and trumpet.

The genius of Miles Davis is that whatever music he plays, he makes it Miles music. It’s a subtle manipulation of context that allows him to achieve this. In a way, when I listen to this album, I perceive it as the equal and opposite of the works of George Gershwin. Whereas Gershwin took jazz and contextualised it as classical music, on Sketches of Spain, Miles took classical music and contextualised it as jazz. It's not even that he necessarily played the classical music in a jazz way, but the whole fact that he was Miles Davis means that this music was always going to be considered as jazz, no matter what he came out with. Therefore, when he releases an album of folkloric-inspired classical music, we listen to it in a different way, our ears are already attuned to expect one thing and the record gives us, mostly, something else. That way, the classical exists in the jazz context regardless of its own style, and it causes us to think about the sounds in a different way. In his own way, Miles made this music jazz, just by telling us it was.

241: Éthiopiques, Vol. 21: Ethiopia Song, by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou (Ethiopia)
Éthiopiques, Vol. 21: Ethiopia Song (2006)
16 tracks, 74 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

We’re back with another volume of the legendary Éthiopiques series. The series is mostly known for digging out the best in the classic era of Ethiopian jazz, soul and funk, but Volume 21 is different from any other. That’s because the music of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou is entirely unique.

As with so much of the best music, hers is simple yet so complex. It’s all solo piano. There’s nothing outwardly virtuosic about her playing, but there doesn’t need to be. Every note she plays is perfect. The languid rubato, the ever-so-slight pause that she takes on some notes all give every key press a real weight and sincerity behind them.

All sixteen of these pieces are her own compositions, and no-one else writes piano music like her. Emahoy Guèbrou is completely devoted to her life as an Ethiopian orthodox nun (Emahoy is equivalent to the English ‘Sister’), and her music is deeply indebted to that devotion. From her fingers come the sound of the giant begana lyre and the solemn chants of psalms, with their connections to the ancient Ethiopian scales and rhythms, but when translated through the piano (and her time studying European classical music before her sisterly vows), it becomes something different.

I hear so much in those flowing runs and playful tinkles. There’s a real impressionist vibe, all washed-out and dappled with sunlight and shade like the best of Debussy and Chopin. I even hear some unexpected things too – zydeco and kora melodies echo in the swirls of notes, entirely in my own head, I’m sure. Above all, it is relentless in its gentleness. I evoke water metaphors a lot, but I hear it so strongly in Emahoy Guèbrou’s music. It trickles and it gushes, it swells and wanes like waves, always calm but with an ocean’s worth of awesome but benevolent power behind each note.

The recordings that make up this compilation were recorded between 1963 and 1996 (by which time she had moved to a hermitage in Jerusalem, where she lives to this day), and that wide span just shows the timelessness of her work. Emahoy Guèbrou’s music is unique because it is her own; no-one could have come up with the style because it is her own life story told in washes of sound. In the last decade or so, people have begun to wake up to the genius of this music, but none can capture the same immense beauty of her own playing. In a small, simple room in Jerusalem, surrounded by holy symbols, a nun in her mid-90s is playing music that will resonate for a long, long time.

240: Hotel Univers, by Jupiter & Okwess International

Jupiter & Okwess International (DR Congo)
Hotel Univers (2013)
12 tracks, 43 minutes
Spotify ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Jupiter & Okwess International (or Jupiter / Okwess as they have recently styled themselves) are an interesting ensemble. The eponymous Jupiter is Jupiter Bokondji, one of the most commanding frontmen I’ve ever seen. He’s incredibly striking: very tall, skinny and serious. Proper commanding, like. As the band’s name would imply, he is absolutely integral to the music and without him the band would be completely different. However, his impact on the sound-making of the group is surprisingly small. Sometimes he sing-talks his way through a song in his rich and rumbling bass voice, sometimes he plays traditional conga-like drums, but his main role is to be more of a presence. Just by being there he dictates the whole mood of the show, providing an incredibly valuable anchor from which the rest of the band can spiral high and wild with the reassurance that Jupiter is always there to bring things back to Earth at exactly the correct moments.

That’s the case for his live shows and his early recordings made in Kinshasa, at least. It’s slightly different on this record, Hotel Univers, his first ‘official’ and worldwide release. They get Jupiter upfront on most songs, which doesn’t necessarily take anything away at all, but it’s the music that will get you. Together, Jupiter & Okwess International create a really potent brew that comes from the evolutionary chain from Congolese rumba and soukous, but where those styles are bright and shiny, this music is dark. Not to say it is any less danceable, of course – it will have you up and moving and sweating until you’ve got nothing left, and then they’ll carry on. Into their mix they bring rock, funk and reggae, but what I think is most important is that even with this album, recorded in a proper studio, produced to Western tastes and with nice equipment, they still embody the sound of the streets of Kinshasa.

For more than 20 years, Jupiter & Okwess International played regularly around the Congolese capital, and this music is a fermentation of all of those performances. Their sound is soaked in the melodies of patched-up, hand-me-down and even homemade instruments, in improvised stages and in power-cuts, in political rallies and protests and in street kids spreading the word about their upcoming gigs. Their drummer’s rhythms were honed on a suitcase for a kick drum, a cowbell for a high-hat and a bushel of dried grass for a snare. Their music courses with deep influences from every single ethnic group that makes a home in that incredibly cosmopolitan city. Jupiter and his crew make music that is caked in the dust of the Kinshasa streets and is so much more powerful for that.

Hotel Univers is a great album that will give you a taste of what this band is all about, but there is no way it can compare to the intensity of a live show with its darkly heady music from Okwess International and overseen by the stern gaze of Jupiter himself. It’s then that they can fully take you on a journey to the beating heart of Kinshasa for just the wildest party you can imagine.

239: Olugendo, by Bernard Kabanda

Bernard Kabanda (Uganda)
Olugendo (1999)
9 tracks, 55 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Okay, okay. If you know me, you’ll have heard this album in at least some capacity. Because it’s an album that I consider to be basically criminally underrated. Not even underrated, actually, it’s more the fact that it is almost completely unknown. And because of that, I’ve ended up writing about Bernard Kabanda again and again in various capacities. So it’s got to this strange point where people haven’t heard his music but that I feel weird to keep writing about him. But Olugendo is undoubtedly a Good Album, so in the blog it most rightly goes.

Bernard Kabanda is one of the most mesmerising guitarists I’ve ever heard. His guitar lines are sweet and simple-sounding in a really joyous way, but there’s nothing simple about them at all. Other cultures in central/east Africa have longstanding guitar traditions in which several guitarists (and a bassist) play interlocking melodies that sound like magic when all put together. Kabanda gets that same sort of sound, but he somehow does it all with one pair of hands and six strings. Listen to any track on this album and you’ll hear it: he’s playing a bassline, he’s playing rhythmic chords, he’s playing a melody and a countermelody, all at the same time. I have no idea how he did it. Also, as you can see from the cover illustration, he had a unique horizontal way of holding his guitar that allowed him to tap out a beat on the body of the instrument with his elbow. That’s five different parts he’s playing, just on one acoustic guitar!

And we’ve not even mentioned his singing yet. What a beautiful, gentle voice. His guitar-playing, for all its complexities, provides the basis for the songs. They are light and airy and his voice is full of laughter, although his songs cover so many topics. There are fun tales, but there are also serious stories, political messages and life guidance too. You can read short synopses of each track in the full sleeve notes, available on the Real World Records website.

I guess I can’t really talk about Bernard Kabanda without telling my story of him, either, although I’ve told it many times before. I’ve been going to the WOMAD festival every year since I was 1, but obviously in those early years, I didn’t have much choice about my time there – I was just carted from stage to stage by my parents, soaking up the sounds and gaining knowledge and a passion that would last…well, at least until now. But then at WOMAD in 1999, I was looking through the programme and for some reason (I still don’t know why), I latched upon one artist in particular – Bernard Kabanda. I insisted we went to go to see him, so we did. He was on a small stage with a small audience, just him with his guitar and his friend Samuel Bakkabulindi on percussions (who you’ll also hear on this album). I was enraptured. He was the first musician I ever ‘went’ to see, and it was such a perfect performance, I’m sure it impacted me for life. I even borrowed my mum’s camera to take a picture – he spotted me lining up my shot and gave me the biggest, most beautiful smile. Wonderful. We bought his album that had just been released, and it was an instant favourite.



That was in July. In September, Bernard died from illness related to HIV/AIDS at only 40 years old. I remember when my dad told me and I was distraught. I carried it with me too, and I cried in school the next day. Can you imagine the bafflement for the teachers? An 8-year-old boy in a Cheshire village primary school is crying inconsolably at the death of a musician from Uganda. He wasn’t even famous, although I hope that if he had lived, he would have got the international career he deserved.

Flash forward to 2017. I’d just got my first British Library card with all of the access of its legendary sound archives that that allows. I had a whole history of music to delve into, but I knew exactly where my first excursion was going to take me. And there it was: 23rd July 1999 – Bernard Kabanda at the WOMAD Festival. For me, where it all started. When I listened to it on those big uncomfortable headphones in the British Library Rare Books & Music Reading Room, I cried again.

238: Strictly Personal, by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band (USA)
Strictly Personal (1968)
8 tracks, 39 minutes
Spotify

My dad is as mad about Captain Beefheart as the Captain was just mad. He always wanted me to get into the Captain’s music, but I just couldn’t. It was just weird, abstract and unpleasant noise, and no number of times being played Trout Mask Replica could persuade me otherwise. It’s rubbish! I was half-convinced he was doing it just to annoy me. You know, standard dad thing.

Then, one time – I remember it so clearly, it was when we were on our way back from Crewe station, having just picked someone up I think – the music came on, and it was a ‘What is this?!’ moment. Not only did I like it, it blew me away, I loved it straight away. I asked what it was, and I thought my dad was having me on when he said it was Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. But there it was – the album Strictly Personal. And I ‘got’ it in a way I never had before. It all made sense now, for whatever reason, and I got what all the fuss was about. The music had all of those esoteric, angular and out-there aspects of its clashing melodies, unkempt harmonies and rhythms that made no sense on any natural level, but it all worked in complementing the music rather than breaking it apart.

For me, this album worked as sort of like a ‘Rosetta Stone’ for Beefheart’s music. Because I discovered that it wasn’t just Strictly Personal that I understood, but his other albums too. I listened to his first, Safe as Milk, and the strangely controversial Lick My Decals Off, Baby, and loved them just as much. And then, after a while and with some trepidation, I tried Trout Mask Replica…and it worked! While I could still hear all of the same madness that had always put me off when I was younger, it somehow took on a different shape, like one’s tastebuds get used to complex, bitter flavours with age and perseverance, and you learn to appreciate it for exactly that complexity. It was as if Strictly Personal was the key that was necessary to understand the cipher that was Captain Beefheart.

I’ve often wondered what about this album finally struck me in the correct way that Beefheart’s other work hadn’t. I’m still not really sure. The fact that I was at the height of my blues obsession when it hit me probably helped, I think. The first line of the whole album is ‘I got a letter this morning, what do you reckon it read?,’ which would make any bluesnut prick up their ears: it’s the same line that Son House’s ‘Death Letter’ and Skip James’ ‘Special Rider’ both revolve around. But after that one line, it dissolves into vintage Beefheart – lyrics that verge on nonsense (picked mostly for their aesthetic value than any particular underlying meaning), an electrifying blues harp boogie over the top of jaunty rhythms and confusing musical tinkerings. It eases you in. In the same vein later in the album is the track ‘Gimme Dat Harp, Boy’, which, despite its off-kilter angle, should be a blues rock staple. Maybe it was also the production of the album, a self-consciously psychedelic job that was hated by Beefheart and many of his fans, but undoubtedly made the soundworld a little more familiar to those already used to hippy freak-out music. Maybe it was just a maturing of my ears and this album just happened to strike them first. I don’t know.

The music of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band is still divisive after all this time. I definitely understand people who don’t understand it. But if you are genuinely interested in learning the joy held within, I beg you not to start on Trout Mask Replica. I know many do, and get scared off by it. That album is rightly held as a masterpiece but it is difficult, often unpleasant listening. You don’t start drinking by going straight to obscure scotch. Teach your ears to love Beefheart first, and the rest will come. Strictly Personal might just be the perfect place for you to start. It was for me.

237: Pokémon: The Missingno Tracks, by Various Artists

Various Artists
Pokémon: The Missingno Tracks (2011)
28 tracks, 98 minutes
Download in full from OverClocked ReMix ∙ Soundcloud

When I started to set out writing about this album, my first thought was ‘this is probably the most embarrassing album on the whole list.’ But really, that's bullshit. You should never be embarrassed to like any music at all – unless it is music that oppresses others by its existence, in which case it belongs in the sea. But as a general rule, the whole concept of ‘guilty pleasures’ in music just shouldn’t be a thing. If you derive enjoyment, pleasure or meaning from it, in whatever form that may take, and it doesn’t hurt anyone, then it does its job as art, and is therefore good. And if I derive enjoyment, pleasure or meaning from it, then it is Good, and warrants its place on this blog. So bearing that in mind, I’m going to resolutely try to be entirely unashamed of this pick, while secretly hoping that no-one is laughing at how much of a nerd I am.

What is it then? It’s music from the Pokémon games for the various Nintendo handheld systems from the Gameboy to the DS. The tracks featured here are mostly from the first two generations of Pokémon games, whose music was based on sounds that we now think of as chiptune. You know the sort – bleepy and bloopy but with a surprising range of timbre, percussion that was just different types of white noise, and very short compositions that looped around and around depending on which in-game area you found yourself in at the time. The music of the Pokémon series was really good considering its limited resources, and could sound idyllic like a small rural village, ancient like a traditional Japanese temple, funky and action-packed for fight sequences or just one of the creepiest pieces of music ever composed.

BUT that isn’t what we’re listening to today. Not quite. Pokémon: The Missingno Tracks is an album made by the OverClocked ReMix community. OverClocked ReMix is a fun little corner of the internet where people work with video game music of all kinds and put their own spin on things. This includes remixing, remaking and reorchestrating video game music in every conceivable style, as well as making music inspired by certain games or pieces. Everything on OC ReMix is vetted before it gets posted – so the quality is usually very good – and everything is available for streaming and downloading entirely for free. Occasionally they release ‘albums’ of music based on a specific theme or game, and that’s where Pokémon: The Missingno Tracks comes from.

The way the OC ReMix project works means that the music on Pokémon: The Missingno Tracks is incredibly varied. Some tracks are obviously better than others, but the project’s vetting and compilation process means there’s very few duds in this whole set, and when the tracks are good, they’re really good. Super inventive too. There’s standard chiptune-y type remixes, but there’s also full metal rescores, piano covers, even R’n’B sort of things and original songs. But my absolute favourite has to be the remix of ‘Team Rocket Hideout’ from the original games, Pokémon Red, Blue & Yellow. This is what the original track sounds like. And this is what the remix, ‘TEEM.ROKIT’ by producer Tweex, sounds like:

How great is that?! That’s some proper industrial techno and psytrance vibes right there. I would not be embarrassed to drop it during a DJ set as long as the mood felt right. There’s dirty dub bits in there too. And I love that it still stays remarkably true to its source material – it has a lot of the same bleep-bloop atmosphere and obviously bases itself almost completely around the same melodies and countermelodies of the original, but it just ramps it up and up to the next level. It sounds (appropriately) like an evolved version of the 1996 original, and the vibe it creates is so perfect for the in-game context that I wouldn’t be surprised if something like this is exactly what composer Junichi Masuda would have had in mind if the system at the time would have allowed.

It just brings me back to a thing I seem to say way too often and that you’re probably bored of: video game music is a really untapped source of brilliant compositions, programming and ideas that are very rarely heard out of context, but that really do deserve a wider listener base than just the people that happen to play those specific games. So here’s me doing my own bit to get a wider audience, this time through the great work of the OC ReMix project. Maybe I’m still slightly embarrassed to be writing about Pokémon music on my (mostly) serious blog about the wonders of music from every bit of the world…but it’s good music, so who am I to argue?

236: Pieces of a Man, by Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron (USA)
Pieces of a Man (1971)
11 tracks, 48 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Oh yeah. I’ve been waiting for this guy to turn up. Gil Scott-Heron is surely one of the coolest human beings ever to tread briefly in our own humble dimension before continuing onward into infinity.

Before this album, Gil Scott-Heron was making his name as a writer and performance poet on the New York City scene. Pieces of a Man was Scott-Heron’s first studio album, and its cast tells you that this isn’t just your standard-fare New York poet cutting a few sides. There was something special here. Backing him on this record are famed jazz musicians Ron Carter on bass and Hubert Laws on flute and sax, as well as Bernard Purdie on drums and his soon-to-be long-time collaborator Brian Jackson on piano. The music is, all the way through, just as smooth as you could ask for. I’ve never particularly been a fan of soul, and the sonics going on here are soul through and through (although that’s not to say it doesn’t get funky when it needs to), but they never fail to lift me up and place me on some warm cloud, such is the perfection of the style.

But that’s the music. It’s great and would make a good album on its own. But when you listen to Gil Scott-Heron, you’re there for the knowledge. He was nothing short of an epic wordsmith, a deep thinker, an acid wit and a possessor of a simply brilliant mind. Most of the tracks on this album move away from the spoken word poetry of his earlier work, focusing more on songs in that soul style that his voice is so well suited for* . But that doesn’t mean his lyrics here are any less poetic, any less deep.

All the way through, the songs of Pieces of a Man lay bare in the most beautiful (or even sometimes, beautifully ugly) language the anger and the pain of a sharply intelligent and politically engaged black man in Nixon’s America. A song like ‘Home is Where the Hatred Is’ just drips with emotion – it is as despairing as it is angry and that radiates out from it like heat. He also does turn his pen to the good bits of life, such as in the song ‘I Think I’ll Call It a Morning’ and his paean to the restorative qualities of jazz in ‘Lady Day and John Coltrane’ – in these, Scott-Heron takes the joy and the beauty in whatever place he can find it, and the songs serve that same purpose in terms of the album as a whole.

But we’ve not mentioned the big one, the opening track and the piece that Scott-Heron is still most well remembered for, and for good reason. He wrote ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ sometime before he was 21. So young, but a masterpiece. It’s the only spoken word track on the album, and it’s an amazing work of poetry that shows him to be wise well beyond his years. It’s that anger again, but in the coolest way: he keeps it bubbling just under the surface, but some of those lines hit directly to the heart. I’d be genuinely amazed if this piece has not incited at least one person to pick up a brick in the name of a brighter tomorrow. Despite it being littered with very specific cultural references, the meaning of the poem speaks loud and clear from the first till the last, and resonates just as strongly in 2019 as it ever did. It is a work of pure genius that has already lived well on into the future, and I’m sure it will last much longer into the ages. ‘The revolution will be no re-run, brother; the revolution will be live.’ Good shit.

There will be more Gil Scott-Heron on this blog before the end of the year. An out genius whose talent managed to overcome his own tragedy and speak boldly, intimately and directly to millions. We’re lucky to have strolled in his garden awhile.


* Perhaps his voice suits soul singing so well because the technique he uses is just the slightest bit short of singing. It allowed him to bring the real human emotion of speech into his voice in a manner he’d honed as a poet. Sort of like sung oratory than just songs. But that’s just my idle musings…

235: Roots Rock Riot, by Skindred

Skindred (United Kingdom)
Roots Rock Riot (2007)
12 tracks, 45 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Last week we had Roots Rock Soca by Black Stalin, a play on Bob Marley’s song ‘Roots Rock Reggae’. Well, today we have another, this time in the form of Roots Rock Riot by Welsh group Skindred. Given the shared reference, it’s probably not surprising that there’s a Caribbean connection at the heart of all three. But Skindred take the ‘rock’ part very seriously.

I seem to say ‘this artist wasn’t like how I expected them to be’ quite a lot, and I was going to say it again, except that isn’t true. For Skindred, I didn’t have any expectation – when I first saw them, I had never heard of them before they came on stage. It was at the Manchester Academy, where they were supporting Gogol Bordello. I had no idea who the support was going to be, and I was expecting them to be the usual sort of entertaining but forgettable sort of act to just get you in the mood and buying an extra couple of drinks before the main band comes on. Not this time. The impact Skindred had, it was like the gig was a double-header. They were so good. They weren’t even not what I was expecting, they were playing something I’d never even thought would exist before.

Because Skindred play ragga metal. It’s like reggae pumped up to maximum aggressiveness, or if metal grew up in Jamaica. It really does seem as if the mix would just be an incongruous mess, but it just works so, so well. There are bits of hip-hop, punk and R’n’B in there occasionally too, but when they get those screaming guitars, chugging chords and double-bass pedals going under some intense ragga verses, only to flip over and have screaming and growling over electronics – that’s when it really hits the spot.

Lead singer Benji Webbe is a brilliant frontman for the group, and I just love the way he has four distinct voices in his repertoire. There’s the straight-outta-Kingston ragga-rap sound, deep and croaky; the metal screaming and growling; a surprisingly high-pitched and smooth singing voice; and his hilariously out-of-place speaking voice, warm and gentle with a strong South Walian lilt. Put them all together, and he’s the got the perfect range for a band like Skindred.

Roots Rock Riot is one of those albums that I assume I’d remember one or two songs from, the highlights, but then I listen through and I’m remembering almost every track, each as banging as the last. ‘Rude Boy for Life’, ‘Spit Out the Poison’, ‘Trouble’, ‘Destroy the Dancefloor’ and of course the opening title-track too…they’re all super hard hitting and it’s incredibly difficult to refrain from moshing along, bouncing angrily – yet merrily – off nearby household furniture. Incidentally, the album provides an amazing soundtrack for a workout, by the way. Just don’t be surprised if the other people in the gym give you a bit of a wider berth after you’ve been headbanging on the exercise bikes.

234: Carnaval Odyssey, by Dowdelin

Dowdelin (France/Guadeloupe/Martinique)
Carnaval Odyssey (2018)
10 tracks, 34 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

This album by Dowdelin is one of my big discoveries of this year – although, yes, it came out last year. I was a few months late, but as long as we get there in the end, good music is good music, right?

And this is good music. Dowdelin are a trio based in Lyon, France, with their heritage across the Caribbean, particularly the French Overseas Departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique. The music reflects that heritage, but it doesn’t quite take the form that you might expect. The rhythmic language at play is recognisably Afro-Caribbean, even occasionally using traditional percussion instruments (or samples of them) to build up the rhythmic foundations, but from there it goes in all sorts of directions. The two main strains of Carnaval Odyssey that overlap and entangle are jazz and that strangely indefinable sound of chillwave/lo-fi hip-hop.

The percussion, the jazzy sax and the soulful Kréyol vocals, but it’s the synths and the drum machines that really get me excited about this one. The synths have that very particular flavour that is nevertheless difficult to put one’s finger on; the sound is wavy, soft but still slightly distorted and comes in swells and drifts. You know that feeling you get when you’re trying so hard to stay awake and your eyelids feel like the heaviest things in the world? That’s how Dowdelin’s synths sound. No, I’m not sure I know what I’m going on about either, but still. Then those synths find their home in the mix of J. Dilla-esque drum samples and traditional beats and then with all the other sounds involved, and it all sounds like some sort of futuristic-yet-retro disco party on the beach of a French Caribbean island paradise.

When I sat down to write this entry, I went looking for what the band had done before, and I looked for quite a while. Obviously, this is their debut. Which makes sense for why I hadn’t heard of them earlier. But their sound and their vision are so fully-formed that it feels like they’ve been on their own odyssey for a long time. If this wickedly groovy album is what they came up with on their very first disc, I can’t wait to hear what happens once they’ve had enough time for all the elements to percolate for a while. Exciting times!

233: Concert for Bangladesh, by George Harrison and friends

George Harrison and friends (United Kingdom/USA/India)
Concert for Bangladesh (1971)
20 tracks, 100 minutes (2005 remaster)
Full concert film on Vimeo ∙ Album on iTunes

The Concert for Bangladesh is usually recognised as the first benefit concert of any real scale, providing a template for such epics as Live Aid. It arose from a simple idea: Ravi Shankar told George Harrison about the famine, epidemics and other crises arising from Bangladesh’s struggle for independence from Pakistan, and asked if there was any way he could help. So, he helped. He got together a small amount of his friends and they held two gigs at Madison Square Gardens, and, together with proceeds from the album, managed to get around $12 million to Bangladesh through the efforts of UNICEF. In the years since, this has risen to about $50 million. Not bad. But of course it helps when you have friends like Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Badfinger and a whole bunch more. It seriously seems like one of the best concerts ever to have taken place, and the recording (both as a film and an album) are impeccable.

With this being such a long set with so many amazing musicians taking their turn playing amazing pieces of music together, instead of running through it all explaining how amazing it all is, I thought I’d just outline a few extra-special moments to look out for:

• For some reason, I usually forget that there was an ‘Indian music section’ that started the show. Which is madness, because it is a jugalbandi (equal duet) between Ravi Shankar on sitar, Ali Akbar Khan on sarod, accompanied by Alla Rakha on tabla. That’s three of their generation’s most defining performers on their respective instruments, all playing together. So of course the music they make together is sublime. Apparently they played for about 45 minutes at the concert itself, but only one piece, ‘Bangla Dhun’, was recorded and made it onto the film and album. But the 15-minute piece is too long to be an ‘extra-special moment,’ but the bit right at the beginning is just right. George comes on stage, introduces the musicians and explains what this portion of the show will be about, setting the crowd up for what will likely be, for most of them, their first ever contact with actual Indian music of any sort beyond the Beatles’ and others rather clumsy experiments. The musicians make sure all their instruments (including their many sympathetic strings) are all still in tune and make some small adjustments…which is greeted with a polite applause and some cheers. “Thank you,” says Ravi, “if you appreciate the tuning so much, I hope you will enjoy the playing more.” Lol. Love it.
  
  
• There’s one moment that always strikes me as profoundly beautiful in a way that I’m probably projecting in an unsubstantiated way. But still beautiful: about mid-way through the set with the full all-star band, the lights go down and the ensemble shrinks to just two: George and Pete Ham, both on acoustic guitars. Tiny bit of tuning up and making sure the mics and monitors were doing the right thing, and then the unmistakable first notes of ‘Here Comes the Sun’ ring out. When he first starts playing, George is frowning a bit, which is probably something of making sure the sound is still good, but I’m pretty sure there are nerves in his eyes and across his brow. This was the first time he (or any of the Beatles) had performed that song live, ever, and he was in the very stark place of being one of two acoustic guitars in front of a sea of 20,000 expectant fans. But then the crowd recognise those first notes and a huge cheers spills forth…George looks a little bewildered for a split second before a big grin erupts under his beard. It’s happening, it’s working and they love it! Oh it gives me goosebumps, that bit.
  
  
• And Thing III: Billy Preston’s floor spot, playing his song ‘That’s the Way God Planned It’. It’s one of the best performances of the whole thing, for starters: a funky gospel piece with Preston’s heart-touchingly soulful voice singing about a perfect world, little guitar flourishes from George and Eric Clapton here and there and an organ solo that makes me do a fist-bump every time. As it goes along, the heat ramps up and up, the piece getting faster and cymbal-crashier, the refrain repeating on and over itself, lapsing into groovy syncopations, and Preston, until now singing from behind his Hammond organ at the side of the stage, just gets taken over by the energy and boogies around the stage, filling in his vocal duties on whatever the nearest microphone happens to be. It looks so much like the ecstatic spiritual trances Sufis enter when the moment hits just right, and I’m pretty sure it is basically that. When he finally makes his way back behind the keys, he makes a signal to the band, does some crazy chord on the organ (seemingly without even looking at where his fingers are going) and there is such a look of pure joy and thrill on his face that there’s no way you can’t feel it radiate into your own soul too.
  
  

There. Just three tiny, even seconds-long, moments in about an hour and forty minutes of legendary concert. But you just know that it’s all good stuff. Just think about the stuff I’ve not even mentioned. Bob Dylan’s first performance in years, wracked with stage fright and with a stripped-back group playing some of his most famous hits in an acoustic way and bringing the house down with them; George and Eric’s duelling, weeping guitars on the Beatles’ song of that nature; George’s super-catchy but commercially rather unsuccessful single ‘Bangla Desh’; Leon Russell’s voice, man.

The Concert for Bangladesh birthed many, many imitations (for better or worse), and, in that way, has had an amazing impact on the world (mostly for the better). But from a musical perspective, surely none can really live up to this particular gala of huge stars playing brilliant music together as equals. I just can’t wait till they invent that time machine.

232: Bright Like Gold / Once a Day, by April Verch

April Verch (Canada)
Bright Like Gold (2013)
20 tracks, 62 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

For a long time, I’ve known that I want to write about an album by April Verch on this blog, but I've been unsure about which to choose, as there are two that I really like that are in rather different styles. I figured I'd make my choice when it came to it. And now The Algorithm has decided that today’s the day I write about her…and I still can’t decide. So I’m going to cheat…

April Verch (Canada)
Once a Day (2019)
15 tracks, 40 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

That’s right, I’m writing about two today! And I’m counting them as one so the whole 365/every day of the year thing doesn’t get messed up. My blog, my rules. But we both have lives, you and I, so I’ll try to keep it brief…ish.

April Verch is a fiddle player, step-dancer and singer from the Ottawa Valley in Canada. She has many styles in her repertoire, and that’s why I decided to pick two. The first, Bright Like Gold, was just released when I first saw her perform live, at WOMEX in Cardiff. I’d never really considered the Canadian folk tradition before, and her show was a real eye-opener and completely spellbinding. Like Canadian culture in general, her music is reminiscent of so many other cultures that have come together into something unique. In any given piece, her fiddling can sound like zydeco one moment and Irish folk the next, her singing making like a country song but the guitar sounding Scottish. There’s a lot of bluegrass in there, even elements of Western swing and Manouche jazz.

Although there are lots of songs on this 20-track epic of an album, I feel like the focus is definitely on Verch’s fiddle playing, which is extraordinary. Not only does she bring in all of these styles in a very subtle way into her own sound and make them feel that they have always belonged in the folk tradition, but she does it with such panache, with so many extravagant slides and impressive little twiddles or slight ornamentations that give her playing a real richness. It’s a style that’s both flamboyant and flashy, but still somehow understated in what is perhaps an insensitive Canadian stereotype. I just get the feeling that it’s less ‘look how amazing and skilful and virtuosic I am’ and more like ‘hey, check out this neat thing I can do!’

But where Bright Like Gold is still grounded in the Ottawa Valley sound (even if it does go to many other places besides), this year’s Once a Day goes all the way to Nashville and stays there. This is real, high-grade country cheese. Each of the fifteen songs here are county classics from the 1950s and 1960s, rendered with a beautifully authentic sound and with an obvious joy in the performance unhindered by the lyrics of heartbreak, jealousy and betrayal. Verch still plays some fiddle here and there, injecting elements of folk into the country style (as opposed to her usual vice versa), but this album focuses much more on her singing. Her voice is distinctive – high-pitched and girlish – but it works so well within this country music setting, and when she’s joined with those delicious close harmonies, it will throw you all the way back to that classic era. This wasn’t at all what I expected from a new April Verch album, but it makes total sense in terms of her own sound, and it’s difficult not to love those schmaltzy, funny, sometimes painful and always cheesy songs and their expert arrangements.

Something that isn’t brought to the fore on either album (although there are short sections in Bright Like Gold) that definitely deserves a mention is Verch’s step-dancing. That makes sense, as it’s as much visual as it is musical, but she is a master of it. To see her graceful, playful movements somehow translated into an incredibly complex rhythmic pattern with a whole range of sounds just coming from her shoes and the floor is absolutely mesmerising. You can see a good clip of her both fiddling and step-dancing in this YouTube video, but I urge you to seek her out for a live show – her party trick of playing her virtuosic folk fiddle and creating her similarly virtuosic step-dancing at the same time is just gobsmacking. I can’t even watch telly and brush my teeth at the same time. It’s ridiculous behaviour from Verch and I heartily approve.

So that’s two albums by April Verch. They’re both so different but so great, and both worthy of your valuable time and attention. And for the purposes of this blog but absolutely nowhere else, they just happen to be classed as one single album. How weird is that?

231: Wátina, by Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective

Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective (Belize)
Wátina (2007)
12 tracks, 50 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

The first time I heard Wátina was also the first time I heard the music of the Garifuna. And my brain couldn’t process it. What was this?! It sounded distinctly African, but in a way that I couldn’t place – I couldn’t work out the musical geography of it at all. There are Latin inflections to it and it’s quite bluesy in its own way…and I didn’t recognise the sounds or the rhythms and cadences of the language that was being sung at all.

Well, that’s because while this music may be African, it’s not from Africa. The Garifuna people of Central America and the Caribbean have their origins in 1635. Two ships full of enslaved people from West Africa sank off the island of St Vincent. About half of the Africans managed to survive and make their way ashore, where they lived with and became part of the native Carib people. The Garifuna culture remains a syncretic mix of native and West African cultures with further influences from colonising European powers. So, their religion takes shamanic elements of the Caribs together with elements of West African vodou, cloaked in Roman Catholic imagery; their language is derived from Carib and Arawak with idiosyncrasies evident from African languages and loanwords from French, Spanish and English creoles. And then you have the music…

Andy Palacio had already been a star of punta music (a Belizian pop style that mixes Garifuna music with rock, reggae and other Caribbean music with the help of loads of synthesisers and drum machines) since the 1980s, but Wátina was the result of a decade of work and research into the roots music of the Garifuna people. Although Palacio himself was from Belize, for this album he worked with Garifuna musicians from all across Honduras and Nicaragua as well, and of all generations, including the old master Paul Nabor. Every song on the album is sung in Garifuna and the ensemble is packed with traditional drums and rattles that outline the unique Garifuna rhythms for shimmering guitars, the occasional ultra-tight sax-and-clarinet section and, of course, Palacio’s irresistible, soulful voice; the music is infectiously danceable but the melodies are strangely sad.

The whole decade’s work really paid off. With the wealth of talent in front of the mics as well as behind the desk (the sound solidified by renowned Belizian producer Ivan Durán), Palacio and crew created an album that awoke the world not only to this wonderful music but to the Garifuna people in general. It’s just the right balance of incredibly rootsy folk with just slight touches here and there to make it relevant to today’s ears. The effect of the album was immediate: it became a hit in world music circles around the world, and quickly saw Palacio honoured as a UNESCO ‘artist for peace’ and a recipient of the WOMEX Award, both in the same year that the album came out.

Unfortunately, Palacio didn’t get to experience the legacy of this album – he died suddenly less than a year after its release. Whether he knew it or not, though, with Wátina, he’d created a real impact that continues to be felt today. Garifuna musicians are a regular fixture in the world music scene, the band he put together are still touring the world, and the songs he wrote have even captured the imagination in other contexts: I even heard calypso legend Calypso Rose singing ‘Wátina’ at this year’s WOMAD. This album is a wonderful artefact, a perfect encapsulation of the Garifuna people in sound: unmistakably African, undeniably indigenous American, at once completely immersed in the roots while being thoroughly modern. What a legacy to leave behind.

230: Aq Beliq (White Fish), by the London Uyghur Ensemble

London Uyghur Ensemble (East Turkestan/Kyrgyzstan/United Kingdom)
Aq Beliq (White Fish) (2009)
13 tracks, 50 minutes
Nowhere to listen or download online, I’m afraid, but you can buy the album from the London Uyghur Ensemble website, or take a listen to the band together with assorted clips of Uyghur music on their YouTube channel.

What I really hold close to my heart about the London Uyghur Ensemble is what it represents in terms of the city in which it resides.

The Ensemble itself is rather a nebulous thing, with members coming and going often (hey, even yours truly was once a member, playing the dap frame drum and occasionally the long-necked tämbur lute). At the time of recording, though, the ensemble was a quartet of Rahima Mahmut on vocals, Nizamidin Sametov on the tämbur, Rachel Harris on the dutar (another long-necked lute, but with silk strings instead of steel) and Stephen Jones (who we’ve met before) on the ghijak spike-fiddle. Of those four, there are members from East Turkestan, Kyrgyzstan and the UK; they’re university lecturers, writers, translators and bricklayers. They may be amateurs in the strictest sense, but these are all people for whom the music of the Uyghurs is incredibly dear, whether in terms of personal heritage, familial or friendship ties or just an intense personal interest. As such, their performance is almost that of a professional ensemble, and they must surely be one of the top Uyghur ensembles in Europe.

But, as I said, it’s what the LUE represents that I especially love. London is such a huge place, with an unimaginably large population. Seriously, if you shook hands with one Londoner every second without stopping, it would take you 101 days to meet them all. London is also home to people of every single nationality in the world. In this environment, anyone, from anywhere in the world, can find a community to be part of in London. When you think of the Uyghurs, a people that are little known in the UK, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people of what is currently part of China, the fact that a professional-standard musical ensemble can coalesce is absolutely beautiful, and I can’t think of many other places than London that it would be possible. But it’s not just the ensemble. The Uyghur community in London, small as it may be, is nevertheless culturally active. One of the most exciting, humbling and confusing afternoons in my time in London was being invited to attend a meshrep, a traditional community meeting where there is food and music, but also notices, prayer, discussions and even a miniature court of peers. The fact that these people from all walks of life – teachers, construction workers, bouncers, shop workers and chefs – used to conducting their daily life in (mostly) English or Russian can get together regularly with people of the same heritage, to speak Uyghur and eat Uyghur food and listen to Uyghur music – and dance to it in the traditional way – is one of the magical things about London. And I have little doubt that similar gatherings happen involving people from their own respective communities from all over the world every single day in this big, beautiful city. When I listen to the London Uyghur Ensemble, that is what I think about.

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Like the last time I talked about Uyghur music, I need to bring (or keep) to your attention the plight that the Uyghur people face in their homeland of East Turkestan – known by China as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Estimates say that over two million people – mostly Uyghurs, but also from other minority ethnic groups – are detained in the disgustingly euphemistically-named ‘re-education camps.’ These are concentration camps, and people kept there are usually held without charge or explanation, and quite often they simply ‘disappear’ there, with no word to their families until somehow (months, years or never) a rumour leaks out about their whereabouts. The people in these camps are political activists and scholars, but they’re also musicians, poets, comedians, sportspeople, writers and actors. Some never make it out again. This is an attempted cultural extermination of the Uyghur by the Chinese government and the world should not only be outraged, but should be following that with action to change this wrong. If you are interested in learning more about this, have a look at the links below:

• The CESS Blog - Securitisation and Mass Detentions in Xinjiang
• The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia, a blog by Daniel Byler
• BBC - China's hidden camps: What's happened to the vanished Uighurs of Xinjiang?
• Human Rights Watch - “Eradicating Ideological Viruses”: China’s Campaign of Repression Against Xinjiang’s Muslims

Thank you to Rachel Harris for the links and advice.

229: Rodrigo y Gabriela, by Rodrigo y Gabriela

Rodrigo y Gabriela (Mexico)
Rodrigo y Gabriela (2006)
9 tracks, 43 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

With this album, their third, Rodrigo y Gabriela received quite a bit of notoriety, albeit rather short-lived in the mainstream. Their line-up is so simple: two Mexicans playing nylon-stringed guitars with techniques largely inspired by the flamenco players of Andalucia…and that’s it. All acoustic, all instrumental, no plectra. Rodrigo generally takes the lead role with Gabriela providing the rhythm (that’s chords and percussion, derived from slapping the guitar, slapping the strings and all other manner of ingenious guitar manipulation).

When they first started getting attention, a lot of the discussion around them focussed understandably on their guitar wizardry, but I remember hearing them referred to most as flamenco guitarists, or their music as Latin, but I actually don’t think that’s right – or at least it’s not where their popularity comes from.

Because although flamenco is extremely evident in the strumming patterns and the way the instruments combine and share roles, and there are definite elements of Latin music in there (as well as bossa nova, tango and jazz), their core is something very different. This is metal. Yes, they’re nylon-stringed acoustics, but it feels like every piece on this album starts from a place of metal of some kind, whether that’s thrash, death or melodic. Where they go from there varies (even to include an improvised solo from Hungary Romani violinist Roby Lakatos on the track ‘Ixtapa’), but play these pieces on wailing guitars and stick a chugging bass and speed drums behind them and there would be no doubt. I’m actually surprised that apparently only one YouTuber has taken it upon themselves to make this a reality:

It’s not as if their metalness is a secret. The two were in a metal band before they formed the duo, and this album even features a cover of Metallica’s ‘Orion’. A lot of the press surrounding the album talks about their metal influences, but on the ground, all I heard was ‘flamenco’ and ‘Latin.’ Weird. I find it interesting what makes us put complex music like this into narrow boxes and why we choose what boxes we do.

But whatever you call them doesn’t matter really, does it? This is a great album of guitar interplay that presents familiar sounds in an unfamiliar way. There’s also something so entrancing about two instruments playing in such a close manner that even makes the brain go a bit strange – there are points that you’d swear there are some piano chords going on, or a miniature flute choir or something. They play hard and they play gentle, but there’s always a passion and a fire in their fingers.

Metal, flamenco, Latin, jazz or whatever – Rodrigo y Gabriela is an album by two amazing guitarists making their own thing in an interesting way. Now all I need is more metal YouTubers to get their fingers around this one…

228: A Gathering of Strangers, by UNITE: Urban Native Integrated Traditions of Europe

UNITE: Urban Native Integrated Traditions of Europe (United Kingdom/Bulgaria/Ireland/Hungary/others)
A Gathering of Strangers (2010)
15 tracks, 70 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

UNITE were a one-album (and I think one-tour) project that came into being, said what they wanted to say and faded away into their constituent parts again. Their only-slightly-awkward backronym Urban Native Integrated Traditions of Europe gives you some idea of what they’re about. Recorded across seven European capital cities and featuring urban folk musicians from even more, this album is the sound of a Europe under one banner, making brilliant music all together, making exciting new styles while all retaining their own unique identities.

That’s right: it’s a Brexit protest! Except, it was released six years before anyone realised it was much of a problem at all and when Nigel Fridge was just a fringe nutter instead of an apparently mainstream nutter. Not that there weren’t already concerning signs: the whole reason this album was made was to show the foolishness of xenophobia and to highlight in its own small way the values of intercultural exchange and bridge building.

The project itself was spearheaded by Tim Whelan and Hamid Mantu, the core duo behind Transglobal Underground. Although the album ostensibly revolves around its guest stars and the collaborations thereof, for my money, it’s clearly at its strongest musically when they let the TGU-iness to flow forth and build up vast layers of the dubtronica in and throughout all the other influences, like some mad lasagne. Whether it’s Bulgarian bagpipes and choirs, Czech dubstep, Victorian music hall songs or whatever the next artist brings, it’s all held firmly in place as an important element of the overall sound. I think the best run to demonstrate this is the three tracks of ‘Karanka’, ‘Van Dieman’s Land’ and ‘Immigrant Song’, with that middle track being the one I come back to the most. Based on an old British transportation ballad, provided here by Irish musician Martin Furey, it also includes half-sung half-rapped Mandinka from Czech-Senegalese singer Bourama Badji and Polish throat-singing from Bart Pałyga. It’s like some strange alternate universe where the concept behind the Afro Celt Sound System bore fruit with TGU at the helm instead, and it’s full of that slight darkness that TGU are brilliant at curating.

There are so many different influences going on here that it’s not possible to describe it all together, but that’s not really the point. It’s all good stuff and it’s the plurality and heterogeneity that makes it so – it revels in it. The saddest thing is that this album, the UNITE project and the messages at the heart of both have only become more relevant over the past nine years, rather than an artefact of their own time. I hope it can start becoming less relevant – if no less banging – as soon as possible.

227: Roots Rock Soca, by Black Stalin

Black Stalin (Trinidad & Tobago)
Roots Rock Soca (1991)
11 tracks, 59 minutes
iTunes

If nothing else, you have to at least admire the balls of someone who chooses their professional performing name as Black Stalin. I never worked out why he chose that name. And, okay, maybe the name contributed a little bit for me selecting him for this list. It was definitely a big part of what urged me to listen to his music in the first place. I mean, what sort of music does someone called Black Stalin even make?!

Well, as you can tell from the name of this compilation, it’s soca, that poppier, funkier version of the classic calypso style. But Black Stalin (still feels weird to call him that, but w/e) puts his own spin on things that makes it extra special. Roots Rock Soca isn’t available on streaming services, but as it’s essentially a ‘best of,’ you can get the same gist by falling into a YouTube hole. I’d suggest starting with this song, ‘Burn Dem’:

It’s my favourite of his, and I reckon it’s a good round-up of his sound. It’s soca that is unashamed of its roots in calypso, it’s got Cuban-style horns, it’s got a reggae feel, and even rhythms that bring to mind styles from across the Caribbean and South America – what else could you want from a song to get you up dancing? And that’s how the rest of his music goes too, with more or less accent on each of those styles, and sometimes bringing in other sounds such as New Orleans piano or a South African tinge in the bass.

Although a little less so than calypso, soca is still very much focussed on the lyricism of its singers, and in that, Black Stalin also has his own way of approaching things. Unlike most soca singers and calypsonians, he is a Rasta, which influences his use of lyrics. While he doesn’t often dwell on especially religious aspects (although he does shout-out Jah quite a bit), it does lead to his lyrics often emphasising deeper political themes of black liberation, pan-Caribbeanism and pan-Africanism

For such a well-regarded musician with nuanced political thoughts conveyed in a thoughtful but entertaining manner, how bizarre to go by a name invoking the legacy of one of history’s biggest bastards. But if you can get over that, Black Stalin’s music is an ideal party music – a wonderful (and only slightly cheesy) mix of the Caribbean’s most infectious grooves.

226: Dog House Music, by Seasick Steve

Seasick Steve (USA)
Dog House Music (2006)
13 tracks, 54 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

When I was a teenager, blues was my thing. I listened widely, but blues was always my go-to. I loved the electric stuff like Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee Hooker, and the older acoustic stuff of Robert Johnson, Lonnie Johnson and Blind Willie McTell. I was even into the early periods of blues revival – like Led Zeppelin’s early stuff that we heard yesterday. But anything after that left me cold. When I thought of blues from the 70s onwards, it was all blues-rock guitar wankers such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Bonamassa, Johnny Winter and the like. Extremely technically proficient all, but (for me) completely anodyne. It was really disappointing to me that all of the ‘good’ blues was gone, put out of my reach by time. And then, at the Big Chill Festival in 2006, that changed with Seasick Steve.

On a stage just about big enough for a chair, a couple of guitars, an amp and a stomp box, a man with a big beard, denim dungarees, tattoos and a farmer’s tan came on stage and played the blues. Not in a soulless, boring way like the blues-rock dudes, and not even copying the old masters. He had his own style, heavily influenced by players such as Mississippi Fred McDowell and Son House, but also with small elements from country music and even shades of punk. Everything was rough around the edges, from his homemade stomp box to his tattered trucker’s cap and especially his electric guitar, a cheap Japanese original in red, decorated in Sharpie and glitterpen and – crucially – with only three strings, tuned wrongly and in the wrong place and played with a slide. His songs and stories all told of a life hopping freight trains and living the hobo life across the great American continent. After a while, he abandoned the tiny stage altogether, taking his acoustic guitar and jumping into the modestly-sized crowd (I took that picture!). I was hooked.

It’s been a long time since I last listened to this album, and it’s still as great as it always was. Just like that first time I saw him live, Dog House Music is completely solo (well, almost) and incredibly intimate. It was recorded in his kitchen on an old four-track recorder, and it feels like you’re right there. You can hear the squeaking of his rocking-chair and the patting of his foot on the ground; he even addresses the listener with story fragments and quips, and it all adds to the real down-home atmosphere. And the songs are to die for. He covers a surprising range: he does right barn-stomping plugged-in pieces with his three-string trance wonder, such as ‘Dog House Boogie’, ‘Cut My Wings’ and even the second half of ‘Fallen Off a Rock’, where he’s even joined by his son on crashing drum kit, but he also has surprisingly poignant and touching moments, such as ‘The Dead Song’ and the beautiful ‘Salem Blues’.

His guitar technique is exciting, his songs and stories are fun and hey – I’d finally found blues music in the 21st century that didn’t make me cringe. This was great! Of course, no-one would ever hear of him…so it was a (pleasant!) shock to see his rise to unexpected fame over the next few years. Future albums would peak at #4 on the UK album charts, he played the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, performed and recorded with everyone from KT Tunstall and Ruby Turner to Nick Cave, Dave Grohl, John Paul Jones and Jack White, and even appeared on Top Gear. So weird. And for me personally, he also opened up a whole world of not-shit modern day blues, from the old-style musicians like C.W. Stoneking to the punk of the White Stripes, Dogbreath and Bob Log III, and to whatever it is that Son of Dave does.

Yes, a lot of Seasick Steve is an act. Whether he ever hopped trains or not is probably impossible to know, but his 20 years living as a hobo is far exaggerated at best – instead he pursued a moderately successful musical career as a session musician and producer (he even played with Zakir Hussain and Aashish Khan in the shortlived project Shanti – look, there he is on bass!). Maybe those rocking-chair squeaks were added afterwards for effect, who knows. But while those revelations maybe took something away from his mystique, nothing takes away from his music. Because in the end, it doesn’t really matter that Seasick Steve is a character. He is lovable, has funny, interesting and gripping stories and, with Dog House Music, a truly superb album of blues.

225: Led Zeppelin, by Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin (United Kingdom)
Led Zeppelin (1969)
9 tracks, 45 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

I never cease to be amazed at the fruitfulness of the 1960s. To think there was a time when the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Captain Beefheart, Dr John, the Stooges, Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, Can, and, and, and… were all creating scene-defining music in their own fields all at the same time is just mind blowing. And that’s just in the vague field of rock, without mentioning all the jazz cats, the blues revivalists, the folkies on both sides of the Atlantic. And all of those intersected at important junctions too, of course. I’d hope that someday we’d look back on any era with the same awe in hindsight, but you have to admit that the line-up the 1960s had going on is kinda hard to beat.

I guess that’s a bit of a non-sequitur (can something start with a non-sequitur? Who knows), but considering the shape of popular music at the beginning of the decade, to end it with Led Zeppelin – the eponymous group’s debut album – it really shows what a transformative period this was. In this album are the inklings of what was soon to be heavy metal. In fact, when I listen to this album, I cannot help but hear it as the birth of the whole wide-ranging musical movement that metal became. Although every song has a heavy imprint of blues or British or American folk overlaid with all the trappings of 60s psychedelia, there’s something else in there. Whereas psychedelia usually revels in mellowness or trippiness, Led Zeppelin took it to a different place: in their hands, it was harder, heavier and more aggressive – and more exciting.

Even as a blues band, Led Zeppelin excel on this record. Their versions of ‘You Shook Me’ and ‘How Many More Times’ (the former made famous by Muddy Waters, the latter a development of Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘How Many More Years’) show a group that were capable of doing the blues rock thing without abandoning their own sound of burgeoning heavy metal to do it, making them stand out as more interesting and innovative than the other British blooze boom bands such as John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Fleetwood Mac and even the Rolling Stones.

Throughout this blog, you’ve probably noticed that I have a thing for in-between points in music, whether that’s music that highlights geographical-cultural-historical connections between different traditions or that marks the mid-stage of a musical evolution. Led Zeppelin is definitely one of those in-between stages, with psychedelic rock, blues and British folk as its ancestors, and all sorts of metal as its descendants. The 1960s had so many of those albums or musical moments that spun whole genres on their head, or conjured them from some genius realm, and nothing could be the same since. I wonder when the next such upheaval will happen, and what will come of it…

224: center:level:roar, by Youngblood Brass Band

Youngblood Brass Band (USA)
center:level:roar (2003)
15 tracks, 68 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Considering that the Youngblood Brass Band hail from Madison, Wisconsin, they are most definitely in the storied tradition of the New Orleans brass bands, but they don’t play the same stuff as you would hear on those streets in the 1950s. Theirs reflects the tradition’s place as folk music – music that moves with the people. So as well as playing that signature Louisiana jazz, their music is suffused with the sounds of hip-hop, breakbeat and funk. They were one of the first generation of groups to fully embrace the idea of a ‘hip-hop brass band’ along with the Soul Rebels and the Hot 8 Brass Band, which later became an important sound even in the venerable old bands such as Rebirth Brass Band and Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

So that’s what they do: their line-up – for this most exciting of their albums – is a 10-strong jumble of trumpets, trombones, tenor sax, sousaphone, drums and percussion, all set up to march with the best of them, but with the beats and funky basslines of hip-hop integral to the sound. Snare drummer David Hinzie-Skogen is also the group’s rapper, and his style ranges from almost-spoken word poetry in the more subdued pieces to the rapid-fire scream-spitting of Rage Against the Machine in the full-on bouncing tracks.

Although the raps are rich in content and rhythm, I rather prefer their instrumental tracks here – or the ones closest to instrumental – such as ‘Round 1’, ‘Camouflage’ and ‘V.I.P.’. And then there’s ‘Brooklyn’. Another instrumental track, ‘Brooklyn’ is just an incredible recording. The composition is absolutely spot-on for one thing: it moves between themes quite quickly, but they don’t come out of nowhere; each make sense with the ones around them, and each are as head-banging and foot-stomping as the others, the layers of music split between the instruments all coming together as a great barrage of sound. And you’ve got amazing solos too, from trombone, tenor sax, sousaphone and percussion as they roll through old-school New Orleans brass, soul, R’n’B and hip-hop on their journey. It’s a wonderful piece that quite rightly became the Youngbloods’ signature, and was even adopted into the brass band canon around the US.

Nat McIntosh’s sousaphone deserves a special mention too. Although the instrument is basically a fancy, stretched out and looped tuba, the sounds that McIntosh gets out of it are astounding. I’d never heard anything like it before. All throughout center:level:roar, the pieces are punctuated by the scratching of turntablism, strange synth chords and a whole range of sound effects from sirens to horses…but it’s all the sousaphone. By playing the instrument more like a didgeridoo – where the voice, embouchure and shape of the mouth cavity and throat are all manipulated to change the quality of sound rather than the pitch – McIntosh brings a whole new layer of sound to the traditional brass band set-up.

As a bit of a ‘you might also like…’, if you dig center:level:roar and a bunch of other stuff I’ve covered on this blog before, check out the Brooklyn Qawwali Party. They were formed by a few members of the Youngblood Brass Band and made a mash-up between brass band music, jazz, rock and qawwali music, their repertoire consisting solely of pieces made famous by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The results weren’t always exactly on the money, but it really is a fascinating experiment that has its special moments…and I’ve just noticed that they released a second album that I never knew existed, a whole seven years after their first. So that’s my evening sorted…

223: Árnica Pura, by Davide Salvado

Davide Salvado (Spain)
Árnica Pura (2011)
12 tracks, 41 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

In preparing to head over to Santiago de Compostela for my first WOMEX as a member of the production team (rather than just as a delegate), I decided to delve into the music of Galicia, the region of Spain in which Santiago is the capital. Galician culture is rather different from other Spanish cultures, with its language having much more in common with Portuguese and many of its ancient traditions tracing back to the Celts. Of course, the music reflects this: there are no traditions quite like Galician music. The combinations of instruments in Galician folk music is very pleasing (to me, at least, and maybe you if you like somewhat harsh tones), with melodies played on a combination of gaita (bagpipes) and zanfona (hurdy-gurdy) and rhythms backed up by the large square frame drum, the pandeiro, and the pandeireta (tambourine).

But, like most folk music traditions, the jewel of Galician music is its song. And that was what I first found in my Galician music journey. Very specifically, it was this video by singer Davide Salvado*:

I watched that video and I was awe-stuck. My mouth was literally hanging open. Everything about it is so, so beautiful to me. The setting in a woods next to a mossy, ivy-covered rock, the delicate and intimate actions of washing someone’s feet, and the connection with ancient nature-based rituals with the use of flowers. There’s a subversion of the masculine in this act too, which is really lovely, helped by the fact that Davide is so good looking. And, of course, there is the song itself. ‘Meu Meniño’ is from his debut album Árnica Pura, but the rawness of the performance in this short video makes it extra special. Its melody is simply stunning; so gentle and fragile, but with a deep sadness to it too, and the way Davide’s voice flutters around the ornaments and leans into some of the more uncomfortable notes has the effect of tugging on the heart strings. Even in a few short verses, you can hear all sorts of musical connections too, with little bits of Spanish, Celtic and even Arabic working their way into the melody.

After I watched that video the first time, I was stunned for a few seconds, and then I watched it again. And then I had to show everyone. Although most liked the song, no-one seemed as enthusiastic as I’d hoped. My friend Robin even said something to the effect of “Jim, this looks suspiciously like hippy nonsense.” And yeah, he’s right, but come on. Even hippy nonsense can be achingly beautiful sometimes – here’s proof. So, although today’s entry is ostensibly about the album, I’m basically using it as an excuse to show more people the video of Davide’s ‘Meu Meniño’ in the hopes that one of you will be struck by it as much as I was. And if you’re not, at least you have a whole album of top-notch Galician folk song to enjoy either way.


* Mad coincidence: just found out that it’s apparently Davide’s birthday as I write this…on my own birthday! Happy birthday to us!