334: Cool Spring, by David Rothenberg, Bernhard Wöstheinrich and Jay Nicholas

David Rothenberg, Bernhard Wöstheinrich and Jay Nicholas (USA/Germany)
Cool Spring (2016)
5 tracks, 51 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

David Rothenberg’s music challenges the accepted – or, rather, assumed – definitions of what music is or can be. In fact, he goes further and adds questions about who or what musicians are or can be. Big themes, then. You can see why Rothenberg is not just an accomplished musician but a professor of philosophy at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Using his clarinets, a sharp mind for jazz and improvisatory music and, most importantly, an attentive and unfaltering ear, Rothenberg has plumbed new depths in research into non-human music. Over the past 15 years, he has released books, films, articles and albums about the music inherent in the lives of insects, marine mammals and birds, including creating majesterial, uncanny and ultimately ephemeral collaborations between himself and the animals, performing together on equal footings. I have been lucky enough to witness several performances by Rothenberg; by far the most memorable have been several occasions, from late night to early morning, where he created stunning improvised music with nightingales in the parks of Berlin, some of which have been captured in the recent album Nightingale Cities and film Nightingales in Berlin.

That was somewhat of a diversion. In Cool Spring, Rothenberg’s collaborators are a pair of sapient hominids like himself, electronicist Bernhard Wöstheinrich and bassist Jay Nicholas. The music is deep and intense while still managing to be relaxing in its own way; it’s chill-out that relieves parts of your mind and fully engages others. It does this as a combination of ambience, free jazz, broken downtempo beats, avant-garde, environmental sounds, spacey electronica and even hints at styles as varied as dubstep, folksong, classical. It’s surely art music in every sense of the term.

But even though this album is inescapably humanly organised sound, Rothenberg’s adventures into the sonics and songs of the animal kingdom are all over it. The most direct evidence is in some of Wöstheinrich’s samples of birds and insects, but the way Rothenberg approaches the clarinet, in his phrasing and his melodiousness, the way his lines flit and flirt with each other, obeying their own rhythmic rules but never clashing with the rest of the created aural environment. The whole flow of the pieces on this album, the shapes they trace and the stories their developments tell, is impacted by the natural world around us.

In all of his work, with humans or other animals, David Rothenberg creates in harmony with the sounds of our living planet, rather than operating above it, and is always compelling while he does it, be it in the medium of music, film or words.

333: Brûle Lentement, by Mama Rosìn

Mama Rosìn (Switzerland)
Brûle Lentement (2009)
13 tracks, 33 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

It’s taken me a long time to getting around to writing about zydeco or Cajun music, right? Some of that is down to the randomised way I’ve been picking which album to write about next, but it’s also because I really don’t know too much about the genre, and as such, I’m not really that acquainted with its crucial canon. But it’s still a style that I really dig, and this particular album is, I reckon, a great example of it, if perhaps not one for purists. It’s just a little embarrassing that my zydeco representatives here are not some old guys from the Louisiana swamps and bayous, but a trio of Swissmen. Ah well.

Quickly: what are zydeco and Cajun music? They’re the folk music of the French Creoles in Louisiana. To my ears, the styles are very similar, the main difference being that zydeco is the music of the black creoles and Cajun the music of the white creoles (I’m 1000% sure this is incredibly reductive if not outright wrong, so if you know better, please do jump in the comments and let me know! I know where my next avenue of research needs to be…). The heart of both styles is the accordion, which is played in a very recognisable way – for me it sounds like sawing wood, but if that piece of wood were somehow profoundly musical*, especially when it’s joined by a scratching fiddle, which it usually is. There’s also the washboard providing scraping and clacking percussion; all together it sounds like some very involved DIY going spectacularly and funkily wrong. As far as the musical form itself, I see it as analogous to blues and country music, and zydeco and Cajun music have borrowed liberally from those genres in very audible ways. If you want some key players, check out Clifton Chenier for zydeco and the Balfa Brothers for Cajun. It’s good stuff! And maybe next time you ask me, I’ll be able to give a more informed answer.

Aaaand back to this album. Yes, Mama Rosìn are three young white guys from Switzerland, but that doesn’t stop their zydeco from being red hot, to which the striking, Velvet Underground-esque cover alludes. The very first sound you hear as you press play is that unmistakable sawing accordion, pumped to an even higher degree by a slight distortion. It’s this distortion that hints at what’s to come. Because this isn’t old-time traditional zydeco. Mama Rosìn play the style with a raw blues-rock edge that occasionally verges into the liberated chaos of punk, by way of the occasional honky-tonk or country ballad. The instrumentation shows it too: there’s no getting away from that accordion, but there’s no fiddle to speak of and the washboard is imitated between the kit’s snare drum and a triangle, giving the opportunity for those deep zydeco rhythms while allowing the range to go absolutely crashing with cymbals too. The most important thing, though, is the feel of it. It doesn’t matter how much into the rock or blues elements the group lean, they never lose that atmosphere of an out-and-out party. It’s loud and noisy and boisterous, but it’s all played with huge smiles on their faces – no affected surliness here. It’s just a great time; a real Louisiana shin-dig, crammed into just over half-an-hour. And one that just happens to be from the middle of Europe.

Zydeco and Cajun music are really ace. They’re the most recognisable American styles sung primarily in French, and occasionally they’re like R’n’B played on the accordion with a folk fiddle and some crazy dance beat going on. Really, what’s not to like? There’s a whole scene out there, with recordings stretching back way past a century to the modern day, but others can recommend those areas much better than I. I just know that Brûle Lentement is a great album – and now you know it as well!


* Bach, lol.

332: Tambolero, by Totó La Momposina

Totó La Momposina (Colombia)
Tambolero (1993/2015)
12 tracks, 52 minutes (2015 version)
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Totó La Momposina is an icon of Colombian music, at home as well as abroad, and La Candela Viva – originally released in 1993 and re-mixed and remastered in 2015 as Tambolero – shows off exactly why she is so revered.

Before I heard this album, I hadn’t paid Latin music too much mind. I had some favourites, yes – I’ve talked about a few of them on this blog – but I usually thought of it as a pleasant diversion, a fun type of music in the moment, but rarely something I would hunt out to listen to specifically. Tambolero changed that for me. The depth of its roots was intoxicating, it feels like you can fall into Totó La Momposina’s music.

Totó’s is a traditional style that takes equal amounts from Spanish, African and Indigenous heritage, and that triumvirate of influences can be heard on every track to varying degrees. The pieces that knocked the breath out of me (and still do!) are the most stripped-back tracks, those featuring just Totó’s powerful voice leading an ensemble of drums and backing singers. ‘El Pescador’ is the perfect example. The rhythms of the drums and shakers could go back millennia in Africa or South America depending on which you pick up; the melody is mellow, sad and with a slight piquancy that could only come from Latin music; and then the group’s harmonies come in and they are utterly heartwrenching, building upon that sad melody in a way that reaches straight into the soul, using the same broad chords as heard throughout Amazonian and Andean music. ‘Gallinacito’ and ‘La Candela Viva’ are also wonderful songs in this same way. And then there are songs which are based around the kuisi or gaita paired flutes of the Indigenous Kogui people, and others that are based around cumbia and son but all have the same balance of influences to them.

Totó La Momposina’s music is saturated with the histories of three continents. When I listen to Tambolero, I hear thousands of years of culture from all over the world, all the different elements coalescing and doing their own thing before they are united in this very music. This album taught me to listen deeper and wider to Latin music, especially that of South America. Through Totó’s rootsy style, these pathways become clear and are illuminated – and with her beautiful voice echoing all the way.

331: Now, by Electro Bamako

Electro Bamako (Mali/France)
Now (2015)
12 tracks, 50 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

I opened my review of Now by Electro Bamako in the dearly departed fRoots Magazine with ‘Phwoar! Now this is an album,’ and that much really cannot be disputed (although you’re welcome to try).

The premise is simple: it’s wassoulou music from the streets of Bamako, represented here by the voice and kamelengoni harp, meets underground club music, courtesy of Damien Traini and Marc Minell from France. As a fusion, this one ain’t big and ain’t clever. It doesn’t break any major boundaries, and nothing about it particularly leaps out as a surprising, first-of-its-kind, turn up for the books. When you go into this album, you know what you’re going to get, even right down to the band’s name.

But it sure is funky. Music doesn’t have to innovate wildly at every turn to still be a bloody good time, and I feel like this album exemplifies that. Maybe the artists involved wouldn’t necessarily agree with me, and maybe they’d be put out at that assessment, but a good album is a good album, and Now is. It does everything right. Every groove it layers up is interesting and full of vibe, the Malian element is pronounced and treated with dignity while still chopping it and changing it to suit the transcontinental context, and it has beats for days. If you got rid of the three superfluous ‘radio edit’ versions at the end (the only thing I can fault of the album), it’s also a tight 40 minutes – just long enough for a satisfying time without dragging.

Now won’t create a new futuristic way of telling the time, but it’s definitely an album you can set your watch by. This is one to enjoy with no complications and no hesitations. And, after all, isn’t that what we all want from our music listening experiences, most of the time?

330: The Spotlight Kid, by Captain Beefheart

Captain Beefheart (USA)
The Spotlight Kid (1972)
10 tracks, 36 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

We’ve skipped ahead a bit since the last time we met Captain Beefheart. Then, we listened to Strictly Personal from 1968; although Spotlight Kid came out less than four years later, much had happened. Specifically, three more albums including the eternal masterpiece of Trout Mask Replica, an album that was so ahead of its time that we’re still trying to catch up to it*, and Lick My Decals Off, Baby, a more refined album but with a darker edge. So when The Spotlight Kid came around, I’m not surprised that it was met with confusion. Even those that performed on the album are quoted as being disgusted by its ‘boring’ and ‘simple’ content.

It makes sense. This isn’t the manic but tightly-reined chaos of Trout Mask Replica, and I’d even say it’s less starkly intelligent than Lick My Decals Off, Baby. But this is no bad album by any stretch: for me, this one is all about the feel. And that feel is boogie. Right from the beginning, too, with the track ‘I’m Gonna Booglarize You Baby’ – no mistaking the intent there, as a lexical or musical statement. It starts with choppy, funky and effected guitar riffs layered on top of each other before the deep, rumbling growl of the Captain comes gurgling from some primordial depths with his barely logical lyrics, only occasionally reaching up into the octave to offer a pained blues moan, while the evermoving boogie carries on underneath it all.

It carries on like that. It is much more simple than the previous few years’ material, it’s a little straighter on the rhythms here, a little more predictable in the melody there, but nothing about it can leave you in any doubt that this is the one and only Captain. It’s stamped in every sound and every word; it just shows that accessible Beefheart is still as innovative and still as…well, Beefheart.

Near the end of the album there is a basically perfect run of three tracks that keep the boogie rolling all the way through. It starts with the train song ‘Click Clack’, where the introduction doesn’t give you a clue as to where the beat is actually going to go when it finally comes in; then ‘Grow Fins’, another intensely blues-riddled tale, one of exploring the depths to get away from the banalities of solid ground, shored up by some fantastic slide guitar and blues harp interplay; and finishing up with – who’da thunk it? – a Captain Beefheart Christmas song, ‘There Ain’t No Santa Claus on the Evenin’ Stage’, replete with jingle bells and with a typically perverse spin on things, sung right at the bottom of Beefheart’s vocal register. Listen to those three and you’ll know you’ve been booglarized.

In some ways, ‘Grow Fins’ sums up Beefheart for me. Not that it is his most representative track or anything, but that the blues harp that he blows on that one is just so, so good. The Captain’s skills at the harmonica are such that if he wasn’t known for his thoroughly considered batshit compositions and poetry, if his career had taken the slightest kink along the way, I have no doubt that he would still have been known as one of the greatest blues harpists ever. And when you consider that even disregarding his music, he’s known as a legitimate fine artist and that, by all accounts, if he’d have gotten his way as a teenager, probably would have gone on to be a great sculptor instead, it becomes obvious that Captain Beefheart was an artist to the core, and would shine from the pack no matter what media he chose, be it paint or marble or words or blues harp. All that mattered was that it was him. And whatever you think about his work, you can’t deny that, if nothing else, it was him.


* To shamelessly steal words from How to Speak Hip, Captain Beefheart was such an out genius that the thing he was a genius at hadn’t been invented yet.

329: Halalwood, by U-Cef

U-Cef (Morocco/United Kingdom)
Halalwood (2008)
10 tracks, 59 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Having spent portions of his life in Rabat (his hometown), New York and London, producer and DJ U-Cef absorbed the sounds of all three, and his music is a testament to the world-meeting potential of both Moroccan and club music.

Halalwood, U-Cef’s second album, is littered with guests, and every track is credited as ‘U-Cef feat.’ up to three musicians at a time, the only exception being ‘Ya Rayah’, his remix of the Rachid Taha recording. But it doesn’t sound cluttered as you might expect. U-Cef’s production binds it together so well that the first two tracks can be as different as a downtempo techno-trance take with darbuka and synths imitating oud and ney (with the help of Steve Hillage’s Mirror System) followed by hip-hop metal based around the deep roots Gnawa of Said Damir with Bizmatik on raps, and they flow together as smoothly as anything. The whole album goes along this way, with contributions from artists as diverse as Natacha Atlas, Damon Albarn, UK Apache and Dar Gnawa.

This is a great album to not think too closely about and instead let the music give your body an education on Moroccan music of all styles and club music of all flavours. When it works, it works and sometimes that’s all that it needs – Halalwood works through 15 guest musicians and one producer who knows each of the styles at play through first-hand connection to bring it all to the dancefloor as one united sound.

328: The Tokyo Concert, by Richard Galliano

Richard Galliano (France)
The Tokyo Concert (2019)
13 tracks, 55 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

This album has some broad similarities to Llio Rhydderch’s Sir Fôn Bach, which I wrote about a month-ish ago. They’re both entirely solo instrumental albums released this year, by musicians who are considered to be at the very top of their instruments’ mastery. And, for my part, I’d not heard of either of them before I put on their albums.

Richard Galliano is a virtuoso of the button accordion and a great innovator of bal musette. You know bal musette even if you think you don’t. Imagine a romantic Parisian café in all its wistful, clichéd glory: cobbled streets; candle-lit tables; wafts of coffee, wine and garlic; a bubble of witty conversation on the light breeze, and outside is a musician playing his accordion for the sophisticates within. That is bal musette. Galliano’s music brings that scene vividly to mind, but he also goes much further.

A great comparison that I heard is that Galliano is to bal musette as Astor Piazzolla was to tango. He places the French folk style as the crucial foundations of his music, but he takes it into high-art territory by combining it with classical and jazz sensibilities of harmony, arrangement and performance. Me being me, I really love it where, on tunes such as ‘La Valse à Margaux’, the style is so utterly French while including wildly extended and dissonant chords like some outer reaches of jazz. This album also shows his comfort in bringing in Argentinian tangos and Brazilian choros into his influences or repertoire.

Probably my favourite piece on this album is ‘Aria’. It’s Galliano’s own composition, written in the style of Bach, but there’s a really lovely feature about it that makes me marvel every time it comes around. It’s quite a simple thing really. The whole piece goes along in the manner of one of Bach’s grandiose organ compositions, ebbing and flowing with grace and drama, and you can feel it building up to a perfect cadence – sort of like a musical full stop. He sets it up with the chords before it, leading into a classic iic-V-I sequence, where your brain expects to hear that last, grounding chord in a major key, giving the otherwise dark piece a ray of light at the end – what’s called a tierce de Picardie. But Galliano doesn’t do that. When it gets to that point, the final chord is left open, before a minor third comes in after a slight pause. It makes it feel both resolved and unresolved at the same, as well as tamping the imposing nature of the piece with a shy, nervous ending before it sets off once more. It happens a few times throughout the piece and it surprises me every time. It’s a perfect example of defying the audience’s expectations in a thrilling way.

This is the only album I’ve ever heard by Richard Galliano, so this might be one of his best or one of his worst, I wouldn’t know. But it must certainly be a good recommendation. He shows such an amazing verve and intelligence in every aspect of music making, from composition and arrangement to the sheer, eye-watering skill of his performance. Add into that the gentle ease at which he plays entirely alone with just an accordion to an auditorium of 5,000 fans, as cool as you like, and it really shows just how much of an expert performer Richard Galliano really is.

327: Savu, by the Ilkka Heinonen Trio

Ilkka Heinonen Trio (Finland)
Savu (2015)
8 tracks, 49 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Ilkka Heinonen is one of the leading exponents of the jouhikko, the Finnish bowed lyre. It’s a beautiful instrument. It has a very guttural sound, and often quite a scratchy one too. Where this can often make an instrument sound rather fragile, I don’t think the jouhikko does; it sounds ancient and powerful, which is helped, I think, by the fact that out of the three (traditional) or four (modern) strings, one is always reserved as a drone string, which gives everything it plays a firm, meaty backbone. It’s quite a unique instrument too. The jouhikko has very few relatives around the world: the only other surviving bowed lyres in the world are the Estonian hiiu kannel and the Welsh crwth, and the latter is only played by a handful of medievalists. Even the jouhikko was on the verge of extinction before it was brought back into fashion by musicians such as Pekko Käppi, Rauno Nieminen and Heinonen himself.

The thing about a revival, though, is that it doesn’t just keep the instrument in the past, it embraces it as part of the modern traditions. For Pekko Käppi, that means bringing the jouhikko into a metal context (it is Finnish, after all); for Ilkka Heinonen, it means jazz. The Ilkka Heinonen Trio is Mikko Hassinen on drums and electronics, Nathan Riki Thomson on double bass and Heinonen on jouhikko. The compositions that the group play are very much influenced by Finnish traditional and folk music – they all have a spatiality to them, they are weighty yet echo as if carried by an icy breeze – but it’s all explored within a contemporary jazz idiom.

There are a few different moods at play on Savu, the trio’s first – and so far only – full album, from driving and jostling to quiet and complex (I like those the best), but there is one particular piece that I want to bring to your attention, the one that turns this album from a good album to a great one.

It’s called ‘Rutto’, which is Finnish for ‘plague.’ At first, that name may seem out-of-whack with the tune itself. It starts with a brisk march on the drums and a perky, if minor-key, melody on the jouhikko that always puts me a little bit in mind of ‘Sosban Fach’. Then the double bass enters, just stomping on that tonic note in time with the bass drum. There’s a slightly creepy semitone-heavy sections before it goes back to the first tune, and this time it’s even more strident, the march more aggressive and the bass more punchy. The repetition of the melody makes it fall into headbanging territory. But then things start to change, slowly and subtly. The bass becomes more distorted, the rhythm becomes less like a march and more like a nervous heartbeat, the jouhikko begins to lose its perkiness and starts slurring, its sharp bow strokes blurring into one. The whole thing begins to slide into some sort of madness, a scary and cacophonous noise. The sound itself becomes infected by the plague. By now the tune is almost a memory within the noise, barely discernible over layers of screeching harmonics, chaotic electronic sounds and wordless primal screams. Then quiet. The heartbeat remains and a percussion that sounds like a ticking clock. The sound sighs, like a release of pressure. And slowly, the melody as it was intended returns, with the same stridency as it once had before but perhaps with more of a frazzled energy. The knowledge of the devastation just past hangs heavy over the whole thing. And that way, with a crash of cymbals, the track ends.

It’s a fantastic composition, made of just two short melody fragments, but its deterioration and reformation tells a potent story through sound alone, and makes the piece completely gripping for nearly seven minutes of runtime. It is a real centrepiece of the album, and it shows how this ancient instrument, so indelibly connected to the tradition, can be used in a way that both honours that past while creating something that is stunningly, uncompromisingly and sometimes unsettlingly modern.

326: Libye: Musiques du Sahara, by Chet Féwet

Chet Féwet (Libya)
Libye: Musiques du Sahara (2001)
8 tracks, 57 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Tuareg guitar music is great – and you know that already, seeing as we’ve already covered Tinariwen (twice) and Kel Assouf on this blog. Those groups took the pentatonic melodies and loping rhythms of traditional Tuareg music and mixed them with the heavy riffs of rock and reggae to create the unique and, as it turns out, world-beating genre essouf. That’s what you get when a whole generation of Tuareg musicians from northern Mali get obsessed with guitar music. But what if those Tuareg musicians were from elsewhere, and their musical tastes skewed in a different direction?

Enter Chet Féwet, a group from the Fezzan region of south-western Libya. They are Tuaregs, and they play traditional music with a regional twist, but they don’t use the tehardent lute, the imzad fiddles or the tende drums, or even guitars and djembe drum. They’re in Libya: their instruments of choice are the oud, the darbuka and the krakeb. It’s a really uncanny sound: the bare bones of the music is very recognisable as the Tuareg sound, the songs and the oh-so-bluesy tunes and the slightly camel-loped groove, but then everything else is different. The instruments lend themselves to different elaborations on the melodies, and so it sounds more Arabic just from being played on the oud, and the rhythms of the darbuka and krakebs pull in both east and west directions respectively.

I find this album so interesting. It’s like listening to an alternative universe version of a type of music that is so well-known – you feel as if you know it but it’s totally new at the same time. Add in the fact that so little Libyan music is heard outside the country itself – I think I only know of one other Libyan musician, the pop singer Ahmed Fakroun – and this disc offers up so many unexpected delights for the ears and the mind. It makes me wonder what other alternate musical histories that culture clashes around the world have thrown up – things like Uyghur psychedelic folk electric guitarist Ekhmetjan or the 100% Bollywood of Kenyan Swahili singer Juma Bhalo - and all of those doubtless myriad fascinating musical coincidences that I’ve never heard and may never still. What a wonderful world of music we live in.

325: Resiliencia, by Taína Asili

Taína Asili (Puerto Rico/USA)
Resiliencia (2019)
12 tracks, 54 minutes
Spotify ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

The word that comes to mind to describe Taína Asili and Resiliencia is badass.

My first contact with both album and artist came at work, where I was supposed to give it a listen through and make sure it was suitable for inclusion in the magazine. I only actually listened to a few seconds. Not only could I immediately tell that we needed to feature it (it ended up getting a top review, so I felt pretty validated) , but I also knew that I didn’t want to listen to this album at work, it deserved a proper non-office-based rocking debut to my ears. Turns out: perfect music for a barbecue.

The music is punk in its outlook and a mix of everything danceable in its sound. It reflects Asili's upbringing as a cosmopolitan Puerto Rican in New York, and your limbs are just as likely to be moving to ska, reggae, hip-hop and rock here as they are to salsa, cumbia and reggaetón – there are even Indian moments and, on the track ‘Plant the Seed,’ a definite African swing that seems in the mid-point between Senegalese and Congolese flavours of rumba.

So it’s already fire just on the sound of it alone, but the lyrics are incredible. According to the album’s blurb, it is ‘inspired by stories of resilience Taína witnessed in interviews she conducted with women of color in various parts of the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada over the course of several years.’ Along with Asili’s own experiences, the songs on this album are those women’s lives, their struggle, their power. She explores themes of solidarity, self-identity, empowerment, justice and that all-pervading resilience of women around the world. As well as bringing these women’s voices to her songs, she also allows them to speak for themselves – Asili is also a documentary film-maker, and is in the process of making a series of ‘music video documentaries,’ which are just what you’d expect, a cross between the both. Here’s the first, talking to farmer and food justice campaigner Leah Penniman alongside Asili’s song ‘Plant the Seed’:

To feature such incisive lyrics with important subjects, and to use her platform to advocate for others at the same time as making super-cool music that compels the body to get up and dance is a formidable set of skills. Taína Asili is an incredible force for good in music and beyond – keep an eye on that name. So badass.

324: The Complete Recordings: The Centennial Collection, by Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson (USA)
The Complete Recordings: The Centennial Collection (2011)
42 tracks, 111 minutes (2 CDs)
Spotify ∙ iTunes

I’ve named this specific album because it seems to be the ‘canonical’ one, but the name of the compilation itself doesn’t really matter – by now there are plenty of releases that give you exactly the same 42 tracks, maybe just in different orders. That’s because 42 is all there is. For us living in the now-times, Robert Johnson’s work consists of just 29 songs and 13 alternative takes – and one of those was only found in 1998. And yet there is a good argument to be made that he is the most influential single musician ever to have lived.

Robert Johnson is known as the ‘King of the Delta Blues.’ His sound is, by now, almost archetypical of the style, such is his impact. The well-known story is that when he first started out, playing his guitar in the Mississippi jukejoints, he was notoriously terrible, to the degree of being chased out of the door. He went away for a while and came back with a prodigious talent that seemed for many to be unaccountable. People say he ‘sold his soul to the devil.’ More likely he just went away and actually learnt how to play. Either way, he’d developed his own style and a way of playing that was exciting and engaging. In his own time – in the 1930s before he was, in all probability, murdered by a jealous husband at age 27 – Johnson was a pop star. We know him for his delta blues, which is where he excelled and what he recorded, but he played all sorts of styles and popular songs of the day, even including show tunes, touring all over the US and even Canada. Only months after his death, he would have performed at Carnegie Hall.

But those short years have turned into almost a century of music. The stuff we listen to today simply would not be the same if it weren’t for Robert Johnson. His playing and singing have struck musicians from every generation, from his contemporaries and protégés to those just hitting the scene now. Even a list of artists who have directly covered Johnson’s songs is a roll-call of genre defining musicians: Elmore James, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Led Zeppelin, Cream, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan, Cassandra Wilson, Gil Scott-Heron, the White Stripes, Red Hot Chili Peppers…and that doesn’t include all of those that have cited him as an important influence on their work.

With all of the talk and acknowledgement over how influential and important Robert Johnson’s music has been within blues, rock and everything that followed, it’s easy to lose sight of just how good he really was. I know I forgot sometimes, taking his legendary status for granted until whim takes me and my ears are astounded all over again So take a listen, and try to bring fresh ears if they aren’t already. You can take your pick of the tracks: ‘Sweet Home Chicago’, ‘When You Got a Good Friend’, ‘They’re Red Hot’, ‘If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day’, ‘Last Fair Deal Gone Down’, ‘Come On in My Kitchen’…or literally any other of his songs – ‘Me and the Devil’ how could I forget!; ‘Love in Vain’ – and be taken back to the Mississippi Delta of the mid-30s. His high-pitched voice is spellbinding and his guitar has that deliciously (and deceptively) simple sound. There is something incredibly special about these recordings that is difficult to explain. It’s haunting, which makes sense for the most low-down and heartfelt blueses, but even when he’s doing his dancier, wittier party pieces, there’s still that strange essence that floats through the speakers, carried on the graininess of the recording and across the ages. The superstitious would say that’s the devil, of course, and indeed some of it may just be the baggage of mystique that Johnson’s music carries with it. But I think part of it must also be the brain’s innate sense of a unique, overwhelming talent.

Robert Johnson’s life and music are – occasionally quite literally – legendary. Even this collection, ironically named The Complete Recordings can’t tell the whole story of Johnson’s recording career. He actually made over 50 recording, but all the rest have been lost to history. I don’t even think we know what those recordings were. They might have been different songs entirely. We will probably never know, although considering the last ‘lost recording’ was found in 1998, maybe there’s still a little hope to be had. But that slight unknowableness, of his life, of his skills, of his music and of just how all helps to make Johnson that bit more, that bit mythical and that bit magical. This is special stuff.

323: Music and Rhythm: WOMAD 1982-2007, by Various Artists

Various Artists
Music and Rhythm: WOMAD 1982-2007 (2007)
45 tracks, 220 minutes (3 CDs)
Unfortunately I can’t find anywhere to stream, download or buy this compilation. It seems like your best luck would be to lurk around on the album’s Discogs page and see if anything ever crops up. Or alternatively come round to my house and we’ll have a listening session!

I’ve mentioned WOMAD a lot on this blog, but I’m not sure I’ve ever talked about it specifically. So for those not in the know: WOMAD is the World of Music, Arts and Dance, a music festival that started in the UK in 1982 and has since put on events all over the world, with an annual festival in the UK as its flagship event. Nowadays, WOMAD festivals are held every year in Australia, New Zealand, Spain (one in Extremadura and one in Gran Canaria) and Chile as well as in Charlton Park in Wiltshire.

Ever since its founding (famously with the help of Peter Gabriel), the aim of WOMAD has been the same: to present the most exciting music from across the world on one stage*. Many people think of it as a world music festival, but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. It’s much wider than that. In fact, in its early years, the term ‘world music’ wasn’t even in common parlance (that came about in 1987). Artists from all over the world – from megastars to up-and-comers to humble, unknown masters – are invited to WOMAD, and their style actually matters very little; styles such as rock, hip-hop, jazz and dance music are all represented each year, but not at the sake of traditional, classical, tradimodern or pop styles from anywhere else in the world. I wouldn’t go as far as saying you can hear every type of music at WOMAD, but it’s not too far off.

This compilation was released in 2007, to celebrate 25 years of the festival as well as its first edition in its new UK home, having moved from Reading just that year. It’s a really beautiful thing too. It is all packaged around a 96-page book full of breath-taking photographs from over the years and many interesting, intriguing and amusing recollections from the people involved with the festival, from producers to artists to attendees. And, perhaps most importantly, it comes with three CDs full of great music. It’s not just your usual compilation of tracks taken from albums. Well, some are album tracks that represent important moments from across the festival’s history, but most were recorded live on stage, capturing some of the most special moments that came to define WOMAD as a whole. Although there are too many gems to name them all, there are a handful from the first CD that are extra special: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s ‘Mustt Mustt’, recorded during a stunning all-night performance at WOMADelaide in 1995; Echo and the Bunnymen’s ‘Zimbo’, a live performance at the very first WOMAD in 1982 in Shepton Mallet alongside the Drummers of Burundi, showing exactly the spirit of open-mindedness and equal footing that the festival facilitates; and ‘Raindrops Pattering on Banana Leaves’ by the Tianjin Music and Dance Ensemble, a popular Chinese sizhu piece – this is a recording of the very first piece of music performed at that very first edition. The discs here collect music by artists from at least 28 countries (on my count) and really shows the breadth and depth of the wonderful music that the festival brings to tens of thousands of people every year.

I think to say that WOMAD has changed my life would be less of an understatement and more of an inaccuracy: it hasn’t changed my life because it has formed it. I doubt I would have been a music journalist had WOMAD not existed, nor would I have studied ethnomusicology, nor would I have even heard of a large percentage of my favourite artists. Before I was even one year old, WOMAD has been a crucial element of my life, and no matter what happens in the future, it will always be so. Listening to the music on this triple album is nothing like being there in the flesh, of course, but then WOMAD only lasts for four days a year (unless you can jet-set at will). Music and Rhythm will help you keep the spirit alive for the rest of them.


* Metaphorically speaking, of course. Some of the festivals have one stage, some have many.

322: Pop Makossa: The Invasive Dance Beat of Cameroon 1976-1984, by Various Artists

Various Artists (Cameroon)
Pop Makossa: The Invasive Dance Beat of Cameroon 1976-1984 (2017)
12 tracks, 67 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

The thing with reviewing albums for publication is that you usually cannot base your opinions on the long-term, slowly matured listening experiences that people who buy the album would typically get. There just isn’t the time. You can listen to it once and gain the important first impressions, maybe give it a second go through to give yourself a chance to catch things you missed the first time, usually while reading the sleeve notes and doing a little deeper research, but by then the deadline is already closing in and you have to write the bloody thing. Perhaps you listen to one or two specific moments to inform the specifics of your review, but then it’s written and you have to send it off to get printed and then it’s crystallised in ink-and-paper for posterity.

I’m not saying that album reviews are bad – of course I’m not, I do a big bunch of them. I think they can give potential audiences a useful window into the music and its wider context and be very helpful in deciding whether the album would be right for them or not. Besides, reviews can be entertaining to read in their own write (lol).

But human brains are weird. When we listen to things once, we don’t hear it in the same way as when we listen to it for the second or 30th time. The brain makes new connections and neural pathways with every repetition and it changes how we think and feel. That’s why you can listen to a crappy pop song on the radio and near-despise it, but then a few weeks of enforced exposure later you’re singing along and buying tickets to see the artist live. The results of this repeated listening are usually difficult to gauge – and near impossible to review.

I reviewed Pop Makossa for a magazine when it first came out a couple of years ago, and I gave it an overall positive review. I talked a bit about the history of the makossa genre and its importance to the Cameroonian people; I talked about the particular sub-genres that this compilation represents, mentioned a couple of highlights and expressed my admiration for its in-depth accompanying booklet. It’s all true and I stick by what I said, but reflecting on it now, I reckon I’d write something a bit different.

Because the tracks that have stuck with me, two years later, aren’t the ones I expected. Of the two tracks I mentioned in the review, I wouldn’t have been able to recall how they sounded if I hadn’t have relistened to it just now (and they’re still good). In fact, it’s actually the very song that I disliked most the first few times around, the one that made me cringe in its cheesiness, that has slowly become a track I come back to again and again. It’s my go-to track from the album, now. No matter how embarrassing the synth lines are, or that most of the backing sounds a bit like some dodgy disco keyboard setting, the fact is that it’s catchy af and a little part of my brain has been singing it over and over ever since I first heard it. It’s just been lodged in there and the repeated brain-listenings have completely won me over. It’s my favourite track on the album now, and I love it with no irony whatsoever.

Album reviews are an important part of how we interact with music, and they’re a valuable part of the recorded music ecosystem. But they can only ever really discuss the album as it hits the ear. They can’t review how its contents rattle around your head after you’ve listened to it, after a week, or a month or years later. That’s the adventure that you have to take for yourself. And you never know quite where it will lead you.

The best track on this album, by the way, is ‘Nen Lambo’ by Bill Loko. Have a listen to it. Maybe you’ll like it or maybe you won’t, but let me know how you feel in 2021.

321: Making History, by Linton Kwesi Johnson

Linton Kwesi Johnson (Jamaica/United Kingdom)
Making History (1983)
7 tracks, 33 minutes
YouTube

Linton Kwesi Johnson really is the quintessential dub poet. His poetry is hard-hitting, intelligent and cool. His work offers an unabashed and uncompromising view of life in Britain as a black man, and specifically as a Caribbean immigrant, told with the exact amount of smouldering anger it deserves yet with a crystal clear gaze and a healthy wit to it too.

The ‘dub’ of Johnson’s poetry comes from within rather than without. When he speaks his poetry, there is a music to it. The lilt of it, the rhythms and cadences inherent in the words he writes and the melody provided by his still-Jamaican accent make it dub, unmistakably, even when he performs alone. It also means that when he performs – as he often does – alongside dub music, the fit is completely natural and mutually enriching for both artforms.

When performing with music, Johnson’s partner and collaborator is, more often than not, legendary UK-Barbadian producer, guitarist and bassist Dennis Bovell, also known as Blackbeard, and it’s Bovell and his band that shore up Johnson’s spoken poetry on Making History. Bovell’s usual medium is, as you’d expect, dub, but on this album they do something a bit different. Dub definitely permeates the lot – with Linton Kwesi Johnson, it can’t not – but they also experiment in letting the poetry float among other styles. ‘Wat Abou Di Working Class’ is a slinky jazz-blues with some really hot solos, ‘Di Great Insohreckshan’ is a very 1983-sounding synth pop and ‘Raggae fi Radni’ is ever-so-slightly Latin. It’s interesting to hear the dubwise style of production, performance and poetry turn all of these types of music into the perfect backdrop for Johnson’s truth, his words moulding the music into the appropriate sound, rather than the other way around.

It’s also very pleasing that Bovell isn’t precious about the position of music within the sonic space. At times, when it’s appropriate, the music drops out entirely, allowing Johnson to speak directly to the audience on his own, without backing. These bits actually make the music more effective, as its presence on the album never feels like clutter – the whole thing is neat and tidy, the backing playing its role when it benefits the poetry, and letting the words stand on their own when they need to.

All of Linton Kwesi Johnson’s work is essential in the way he tells the stories of the black British experience with beauty, clarity and thought. Making History is a high-point in his musical output, however, for the almost telepathic connection between poet and producer in crafting the perfect settings for the verse, whether that is a dense musical arrangement or stark silence. Those settings give us the optimal opportunity to learn from Johnson’s thoughts and teachings – which are sadly often as relevant today as they were more than 35 years ago.

320: The Sound of Siam, Vol. 2: Molam & Luk Thung from North-East Thailand 1970-1982, by Various Artists

Various Artists (Thailand)
The Sound of Siam, Vol. 2: Molam & Luk Thung from North-East Thailand 1970-1982 (2014)
19 tracks, 67 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

It’s our third journey to the world of molam and luk thung – the musics of the country folk of Laos and the Isan region of Thailand. We’ve had the traditional, acoustic side of things from the Molam Lao ensemble and the modern, plugged-in yet still traditionally-grounded electric phin of Khun Narin. Now, with this compilation from Soundway Records, we get to hear what happens when the musicians take those sounds and take them to another place altogether.

The great thing about this album – and its equally good predecessor, with the subtitle Leftfield Luk Thung, Jazz & Molam in Thailand 1964-1975 – is that it explores such a wide range of music, all connected by the broadest definition of molam and luk thung. The pieces here may have a soul-funk feel (such as Saksiam Petchchompu & Pornsurapon Petchseethong’s organ-led ‘Jeb Jing Jeb Jai’), or a surf-rock vibe (Banyen Sriwongsa’s ‘Lam Plearn Kon Baa Huay’), or a sultry jazz sway (Angkanang Kunchai’s ‘Kid Hod Chu’). And they all have different relationships to the traditional source: for some, only the subject matter or poetic structure remain the same; for others, it’s just a couple of amplifiers and a rock drummer that separate them from the music’s deepest roots. My favourite track of the whole thing falls into this latter category, the sparring khaen and electric phin of the Petch Phin Thong Band on ‘Bump Lam Plearn’ bringing all of the inherent funk of the molam to the fore while still sounding irrefutably Thai at every juncture.

Since recorded music has been the norm, styles can change rapidly. Musical forms with long histories can spin off into hundreds of sub-genres and hybrid styles. The Sounds of Siam compilations do a great job of documenting the explosion of molam and luk thunk from traditional Lao and Isan music into pop styles of many different faces from the time when these musical experiments were at their height. The result is a wonderful musical tree with united roots and excitingly diverse fruits. It’s an extremely pleasant 67 minutes to swing among its bows.

319: London Zulu, by Doreen Thobekile

Doreen Thobekile (South Africa)
London Zulu (2005)
9 tracks, 50 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

This album is London Zulu, and so was Doreen Thobekile. She worked with many artists of all different styles while living in London since the 1970s, all while keeping her Zulu roots very much alive. This was her debut solo album, and she made it aged 60.

In many ways you could think of this as a Transglobal Underground album: Tim Whelan and Hamid Mantu provide the production, most of the musical backing and Sheema Mukherjee gets a couple of guest slots on sitar and bass too. The approach is very much TGU-like and fans of that outfit will of course love this one as well.

But that is not to diminish Doreen’s all-important place on the album at all. The whole thing really does revolve around her. As well as her striking vocals, she also plays the concertina, mouth harp, musical bow and mbira, and the tracks are just as often based around the elements of maskandi or mbaqanga as they are electronica. It’s actually super interesting to hear how Doreen works with TGU: where the group’s music travels to every cultural corner of the world without stopping, Doreen’s influence takes that adventurousness but focuses it like a magnifying glass, concentrating it specifically to work for her own style.

I need to make a quick diversion here to talk about one particular highlight of this album. The track ‘Umhlahlo’ has at its foundations a short sample of Ravel’s ‘String Quartet in F major’, and it’s one the funkiest uses of classical music that I can think of – it’s tied in first place with Busdriver’s ‘Imaginary Places’ with its use of Bach’s ‘Badinerie’. So if you’re in a hurry and you need to get a feel for the album in one song, now you know where to turn.

London Zulu – in its resulting sound as well as its perfectly succinct title and powerful cover art – really reflects who Doreen was: deeply cosmopolitan, unmistakably South African and always both at all times. It’s heavy at times and a joyous party throughout. Doreen left us in 2010 but the spirit and musical philosophy of London Zulu continues in the work of her daughter, Ingrid Webster, who performs this music and more almost every month in London, proving that it’s far more important than just a funky record – it’s a legacy.

318: Power in Numbers, by Jurassic 5

Jurassic 5 (USA)
Power in Numbers (2002)
17 tracks, 56 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Record shops are great, aren’t they? Rooms filled to the brim with CDs and LPs and the like that you’re allowed – nay, encouraged! – to finger through, taking in the artwork and imagining what exciting new sounds are contained within. A good record shop will have albums of all sorts, laid out in a way to guide you on a voyage through a world of music as you stroll around. Go into the right shop in the right mind-set and you can come out with armfuls, each new record you pick up leading you to the next one. They’re also a great place to hear music – the soundscape of the record shop is usually controlled by its guardians, those shadowy entities that lurk by the tills.

That’s how I came across Power in Numbers. It was in the Manchester branch of Fopp, when that shop was still a small independent chain before they got bought out by HMV. They had the great combination of both a huge selection and cheap prices, and the music they pumped out into the shop was usually stellar, ensuring you’d always want to stay in there as long as possible. And so it was with this album: they played it all the way through. I was intrigued by the first track (not including the intro), hooked by the second, and I think I’d already bought the CD by the third. There’s no better way to sell an album than by showing people how good it is.

I think this is probably my favourite straight-up hip-hop album. J5’s whole thing is that they hark back to the old-school, and that really shines through in every aspect of Power in Numbers, from the rhythms of the MCs’ flows to the samples they use (an excellent array of funk, soul and jazz) to the topics they tackle. All of it has a gloriously vintage vibe, but at the same time they keep everything up-to-date and polished. Their sound is classic without smelling musty. It also helps that this album features stand-out performances by Chali 2na on almost every track. His deep baritone and simple but effective flow make him one of the most recognisable voices in hip-hop, and acts as a stable counterweight to the other members of the group, all the while shored up by the inspired and intelligent work of producers Cut Chemist and DJ Nu Mark.

Really, the best thing about this album is just how cool it is. Everything is laid back, even when the tempo speeds up. They deal with issues that are sometimes quite weighty, but they’re all approached from a more mature point-of-view, without undue excitement or hysteria. And the music itself is just the embodiment of that coolness – even if this album was entirely instrumental it would be a great soundtrack for strutting down the street in the sun or kicking back to chill. It’s not aloof either. The undisputed highlight is the track ‘A Day at the Races’; it’s completely next level stuff, and although it’s still as cool as the rest of the set, there is so much fun in it too.

For me personally, Power in Numbers always reminds me to keep my ears open and allow myself to be taken in by the unexpected. I probably didn’t go into Fopp that day expecting to come out with a hip-hop album, but hearing it played over the shop’s sound system made it an inevitability. Take a listen – how could you not?! It’s an all-round hit, and I owe a lot to a record shop for having it in my life. Bless those temples to recorded music – they may be teetering on endangered, but they’re really important to our musical ecosystem. Head down to your local record shop and discover something new today!

317: The Hottest New Group in Jazz, by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross

Lambert, Hendricks and Ross (USA/United Kingdom)
The Hottest New Group in Jazz (1960)
10 tracks, 29 minutes (original release); 39 tracks, 123 minutes (1996 extended edition)
Extended edition: Spotify ∙ iTunes

You know jazz is my bag, but it’s mostly the instrumental styles that stir me. While I appreciate the skills of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Sarah Vaughan and the likes, they never raise my heart-rate in the same way as a crack small-band hard-bop group does. The crooner style of the Rat Pack does even less for me.

That said, there is one group of jazz singers that really turn me on in a way that can compare to Coltrane, Coleman, the MJQ and all the rest. That’s the trio of Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross. And I reckon I know why – ‘singers’ isn’t strictly the right adjective. These musicians are vocal instrumentalists. They use their voices in the same way as those great soloists do, to create wonderful musical adventures that twist and turn and blossom forth from improvisation. They do this in two ways, and all three singers are masters of both.

Firstly there’s scatting. This is one of the most well-known types of jazz singing. The vocalist sings without using words; usually they use vocables (nonsense syllables), but they can also use open vowels or humming instead. This way they can improvise in the same manner as any other melodic instrument, and the syllables they employ allow them to shape the texture and timbre of the solo as well as its tune.

And then there’s vocalese. LHR didn’t invent this style, although they perfected it, and the term ‘vocalese’ was first coined to refer to their work. It’s essentially the practice of making songs – with real, sensible lyrics – out of jazz solos. That is, instrumental jazz solos are transcribed and lyrics are written for them that match the rhythms and melodies of that solo. It’s a ridiculous skill that is really uncanny when it’s pulled off well.

That’s exactly what Lambert, Hendricks and Ross do, and they show off the best of both techniques on their 1960 album The Hottest New Group in Jazz. There are 10 tracks on this album, and each of them is perfect. Their voices – each with their own qualities – weave between each other or huddle into close harmony or even jump about to create one multi-layered melody. They go through all sorts of jazz styles, from swing to bop to gospel to jump blues, and all of it suffused with incredible fun to match the virtuosity. It’s near impossible to pick a highlight of this album, as the quality never wavers, but on sheer impressiveness I’d have to point to ‘Cloudburst’. It’s performed at a blistering pace to start off with (I make it at 300 beats per minute) and then Hendricks takes off into his solo. In the main chunk of the solo, he spits 280 words in just under 48 seconds. That’s averaging 5.83 words per second, and that’s even including a few particularly tricky tongue twisters. And every single word is crystal clear. How one man’s tongue can move that fast I have no idea. It’s quite literally awesome. But that’s the party piece – every other track on the album lives up to it in sheer musical quality.

Although the original version of The Hottest New Group in Jazz is a perfect 10, nowadays it’s easiest to come across the extended edition, where that album is packaged together with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross Sing Ellington from 1961 and High Flying from 1962 and a few extra tracks at the end too. That’s a total of 39 tracks and just over two hours of music. It’s a whole lot, and there’s so much to love in there too. I won’t go through the whole thing, but here are some particular favourites that I just had to pick out:

‘Come On Home’

One of two covers from Horace Silver’s Finger Poppin' with the Horace Silver Quintet to appear on High Flying (the other is ‘Cookin’ at the Continental’), I love this one because it’s a distillation of what vocalese can be. It is almost exactly the same as Silver’s original in every way. The solos are replicated note-for-note – Lambert takes Blue Mitchell’s trumpet solo, Hendricks takes Junior Cook’s tenor sax solo and Ross takes Silver’s own piano solo – and each one is sung with lyrics that reflect one situation as told from three points-of-view. I find that an incredible feat of songwriting. I also find it fun listening to it as a pair with the original, too; you can literally sing LHR’s lyrics along with the instrumental solos. Very satisfying.

‘Swingin’ Til The Girls Come Home’

This cover of Oscar Pettiford’s tune has two amazing solos. The first is Dave Lambert’s nod to Pettiford in the way he sings just like a bowed cello, with just the right amount of buzz from his tongue, and even incorporating a sneaky quote of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. Then it’s Jon Hendricks’ turn and he takes things down a notch: he’s the double bass. After a few cycles of all-purpose double bass-like scatting over stop-time from the band, he stops and declares, "Percy Heath." Then he proceeds to solo using Heath’s inimitable phrasing and rhythms, before doing the same with "Paul Chambers," "Ray Brown," and, simply, "Mingus!" How ballsy is that?! He’s going through the best bassists of their generation, hitting each of their unique styles to a T. It could be heard as being so arrogant if it wasn’t done with such obvious love. After two minutes of this jaw-dropping stop-time solo, he brings the band back in, wraps up and they go back to the song. As so often with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, I come away from it thinking ‘well now, that’s just showing off.’ But I’m so glad they did.

‘Popity Pop’

This one stands out because of yet another Jon Hendricks genius moment. For the most part, it’s a typical LHR piece. Written by Slim Gaillard, it has a frenetic pace, uplifting tune, nonsense lyrics and a big bunch of unhinged and improvised scatting. But right in the middle of it all, everything drops out and it’s just left with Hendricks on his own, completely a cappella. He drops the tempo a little bit, and sings a melody that sounds as if it could be lifted from an American patriotic song. His voice is so pure and so sweet that you can’t help but pause when you listen to it. It makes you concentrate and reflect, and your mind just about begins to cloud over into whistfulness…until he’s back scatting at breakneck speed with the full band again and it’s like a bolt of electricity zaps it back into place. Magnificent.

I think I’ve used every superlative in my vocabulary to describe this package of albums, so I think I better stop. And you know what your job is now. I’ve hyped it – now get on to Lambert, Hendricks and Ross – there’s two thrilling hours of amazing vocal jazz waiting for you. How exciting!

316: The Journey, by Maryam Mursal

Maryam Mursal (Somalia)
The Journey (1998)
8 tracks, 53 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

For a long time, Maryam Mursal’s The Journey was the only album of Somali music to make any real impression on the so-called ‘world music’ scene. Released on Real World Records, produced by Simon Emmerson and Martin Russell of Afro Celt Sound System, and featuring guest stars such as Peter Gabriel, it’s obvious that this album was an attempt at exploding Mursal as the next big thing in world music, similar to the ways that releases by Baaba Maal and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, with their similar collaborative productions, had worked in the past.

Unfortunately, it didn’t really turn out that way. This was the only album that Mursal made for Real World – although she had also contributed to the album of more traditionally Somali music by Waaberi, New Dawn, the previous year – and in fact, I can’t find that she’s recorded any albums since. Looking back now, the album hasn’t aged well. Whereas other similar productions built upon the traditional styles, taking them in different directions and creating something new from the cultural collisions at play, all of the funky, dubby, world-spanning sounds on The Journey take away from the original styles more than they add to them and in a way that sounds particularly dated from two decades in the future.

The album is redeemed, however, through the sheer power of Mursal’s performance. Even despite the clunkiest and most distracting of the production elements, her low-pitched and throaty voice shines through, drawing the attention with her cool delivery. The vocals feel ever so slightly detached from the rest of the instrumentation as if lagging behind minutely in a relaxed, easy-going way, which lends a really nice and laid-back swing to it all. And then, at times, Mursal’s vocals and the production do come together as one and create a really great track, such as ‘Somali Udiida Ceb’.

I wanted to include this as a Good Album more because of what it meant than how it actually turned out. This album was a well-respected world music record label giving a seal of confidence in Somali music as a modern musical form and with international appeal for the first time. The way they went about it wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t until K’naan’s 2005 album Dusty Foot Philosopher that Somali music gained any further international presence. In the last few years, with the re-discovery of the Dur-Dur Band back catalogue and the crate-digging of Ostinato Records (which resulted in Sweet As Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa) and Analog Africa (Mogadisco – Dancing Mogadishu (Somalia 1972-1991), which comes out in December), Somali music has really taken off as a world music genre, as people realise how exciting these melodies and rhythms can be.

Before this album came out, Maryam Mursal was already respected as a singer among Somali people around the world; The Journey solidified her as a star, the first Somali singer to cross over to audiences outside East Africa. Nowadays she sings in public less often (she runs a fabric shop in Southall), but whenever she does she’s hailed as a real grandmother of modern Somali music. This album represents a milestone – its cultural significance outstripping its success as a musical artefact. And sometimes that’s just as important in determining what is or isn’t a Good Album.

315: Bana Congo, by Papa Noel & Papi Oviedo

Papa Noel & Papi Oviedo (DR Congo/Cuba)
Bana Congo (2002)
10 tracks, 54 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

For countries more than 6000 miles apart, the musics of the Congo and Cuba have been intertwined for a long, long time. Kongo people made up a significant percentage of Africans trafficked to Cuba as slaves, and due to the system of cabildos – ethnic institutions where slaves were separated by place of origin – elements of their languages, religions and music survived and continued to be passed down, and eventually became part of the internationally-influenced sound of Cuban popular music, most strikingly in the omnipresent conga drums. Cuban music also made its mark on the music of the Congo in return – son and rumba provided the root sounds of Congolese rumba lingala that itself became the basis of genres such as soukous and kwassa kwassa that have ruled Congolese popular music for almost 70 years, not to mention all of the other Africa-wide styles that have derived thereof.

It’s a bit unusual, then, given the long give-and-take relationship of the two countries and the modern world music scene’s eternal fascination with cross-cultural collaborations, how few direct meetings of Congolese and Cuban musicians have been committed to disc. Even stranger when you get an album like this one, in which the two countries’ styles are brought together with such apparent ease to wonderful results.

Bana Congo is a meeting of stalwart members from two legendary bands: Papa Noel, singer and guitarist in Franco Luambo’s TPOK Jazz from DR Congo, and Papi Oviedo, tres player of Orchestra Revé, a key group in Cuba’s changüí style, and featuring an ensemble of musicians from both countries. Both artists come from spheres totally indebted to each other in terms of their roots, and their work together here sounds completely natural. It’s not possible to listen to this album and pick out ‘oh that bit is taken from the Cuban side of things, that bit is Congolese,’ the musicians have met on a totally equal footing, and each made their own style subsume into the other, layering and tying them together into one.

The whole thing is so obvious, but that’s in no way a negative thing. Every track makes me think ‘of course!’ Of course these tracks are great, and engaging, and danceworthy. No matter what the mood, whether the beautifully romantic ‘Juliana’ or the title-track with a groove so dapper it could join the sappeurs, it all works so well because it’s made by brilliant musicians who know how to make each other’s styles work for themselves. The only surprising thing about the album is that it didn’t happen earlier…and that there hasn’t been any other such high-profile collaborations since. Cuba and Congo together again; this album was 500 years in the making, of course it’s such an exciting and joyful listen.

314: Abbey Road, by the Beatles

The Beatles (United Kingdom)
Abbey Road (1969)
17 tracks, 47 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

It took some time to decide which Beatles albums I was going to include on this blog. I gave myself a limit of three, and there were some obvious ones: Revolver was always going to be in there as one of my favourite albums of all time; Beatles For Sale is an abomination that should be disregarded from the group’s discography by any self-respecting fan. But what others to choose…?

When I considered Abbey Road, there were lots of things that jumped to mind. The top-of-the-head trivia about it being the last record the Beatles created (although it ended up being released before Let It Be), and the fact it contains both the shortest and the longest songs in their recorded repertoire. Then there are stylistic considerations of them aiming for a rawer sound, getting back to the rockier, bluesier sound in some way coming full circle to their days as mop-topped rock’n’rollers, while still incorporating the exciting new synthesiser technology of the Moog. Then there are individual songs that stand out: George Harrison’s stunning contributions of ‘Something’ and ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and Lennon’s majestic-in-different-ways pair of ‘Come Together’ and ‘Because’…and on the other side of the scale, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, a song that usually comes on-or-near the top (bottom?) of lists of the worst Beatles songs.

But the deciding reason I chose Abbey Road above the rest is the track ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’. Like Revolver, it took me a long time to really give this track a proper brain-listen as opposed to an ear-listen – when I was little, I somehow never paid that particular track much attention. It was a lot later that I listened to the album as a whole and was stopped in my tracks by it. ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ is that aforementioned longest Beatles piece at 7’46”, and for the first four-and-a-half-ish minutes of those it’s a fairly standard song, albeit an excellent one. Built on bluesy riffs and minor arpeggios with simple, repetitive lyrics (there are only 14 different words in the lyrics), a deliciously and uncharacteristically subtle guitar solo from John Lennon and lush organ fills by the incomparable Billy Preston, the song would have been impressive if it had just finished there, but it doesn’t. It just carries on with a never-ending loop of the piece’s opening arpeggio. It goes round and around in a perfect circle of tension and release and building tension again. There’s no lyrics in this section, just the hypnotic cycle that draws you in until you’re utterly mesmerised. All the way through is an ever-increasing tidal wave of white noise and wind that threatens to consume everything in its path; it starts silent, but by the end it’s almost deafening, the guitars struggling to be heard over its distorted roar. And then after three-or-so minutes – it stops. Out of nowhere, in the middle of the chord sequence, silence. And that’s your lot for Side A. It’s a genius way to end the song. There would be no satisfying way to finish such an immovable progression without sounding lame, so instead they make it as unsatisfying as possible. After having dragged you along for so long, letting the repetitions get up inside your head until it’s fully inside and you can think of nothing else, it disappears, and it’s like waking from a strange and intense dream into complete mundanity. It feels vaguely embarrassing yet exhilarating at the same time.

Abbey Road is a great album. It has some missteps, but when they get it right, it shows the Beatles at the top of their game – when you consider that it was made while the band were in the process of splitting up, it’s even more awe-inspiring. How blessed we are that these four musicians and their carefully selected collaborators got together to make music for ten years and – in the process – completely rewrote the history books several times. For them to go out making an album like Abbey Road just

313: Chikaha Rahma, by Chikaha Rahma

Chikaha Rahma (Algeria)
Chikaha Rahma
6 tracks, 38 minutes
Awesome Tapes from Africa

Perhaps the biggest sound from Algeria on the world stage (as well as at home) is the pop style of raï. Raï has created so many superstars, with Khaled, Rachid Taha, Faudel, Cheb Mami and Cheb Hasni representing just a small number of singers that have thrilled international audiences. You may notice that all of those names are men. This is no coincidence – raï is a predominantly male genre, and female musicians have been met with a lot of opposition for their art. It wasn’t always that way, though. Two of the most direct ancestors of raï are medh and meddaha music – women’s genres that came to prominence in the 1920s and provided the music for women-only marriage and circumcision celebrations. The music on this Awesome Tape is the real roots of raï: it’s the style that came after meddaha, using its aesthetic while singing on profane themes to both male and female audiences in cafés and other such venues of low repute.

As ever, low repute gives us the spiciest music. This is really raw music. There’s not much to it – just two gaspa end-blown reed flutes and a large riqq (tambourine) accompanying Chikaha Rahma’s voice, but each one of those sounds complement each other and still fill the full range of timbre and pitch to leave the ear satisfied on every level: the gaspa are reedy, a sound filled with overtones so that even though they play in quite a low register, their resonances stretch all the way up; the riqq has a similarly broad range from the jangly cymbals to the booming skin. Together, the three instruments push forward insistently and without respite, so by the time Rahma adds her throaty and occasionally raspy Arabic song to the mix, it’s hypnotic to the point where it’s a losing battle to try to keep still. It’s music to move to and it will do its job whether you want it to or not.

There’s also an unnamed man who comes in at the beginning and the middle of each track to introduce the musicians, the record label, the studios and other such important information. It’s a technique that goes right back to the dawn of recorded music as a very basic anti-piracy measure: although it doesn’t stop the album from being stolen, it does make false attribution impossible. It also adds an interesting element to the music too, an ‘in the moment’ vibe of realness, clarifying that these are real musicians making music together in a studio, as is their job. It’s one of those things that you don’t get with most music – especially not pop music – in which the performer often inhabits some sort of character when they sing, and it’s interesting to have that expectation flipped on its head in that way.

There’s always an old behind a new. Behind the masculinity of raï lays the femininity of meddaha – in the middle is the music of the Cheikhas and Chikaha Rahma is one of the best. You can almost hear the folk becoming pop. This all-acoustic album is just a synthesiser and a drum machine away from filling the discothèque, but when you can make all of this noise from just two flutes, a tambourine and an amazing voice, who needs them?

312: La Grande Folie, by San Salvador

San Salvador (France)
La Grande Folie (2015)
4 tracks, 26 minutes
Bandcamp
This is the only real release that San Salvador have made, and it’s an EP. I’ll also recommend you take a listen to Choeur Populaire – Massif Central, a four-track live recording from 2016 EP – it’s available to listen on Soundcloud, and the two sets only double-up with one song, so if you put them back-to-back you’re even getting near album length, huzzah!

So, about the band themselves. Well, sometimes – and I know it’s very hard to believe, but it’s true – sometimes, I’m wrong. Shocking, right? But I am. The first time I heard San Salvador was about a year ago at WOMEX in Gran Canaria. Their write-up in the programme sounded vaguely interesting – voice and drum music from the Occitan region of France – but when I saw them, it left me completely cold. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that the sound system was incredibly loud, to a painful degree, or maybe I just wasn’t feeling it. I left before long.

Thing is, afterwards, almost everyone I talked to was raving about them, to the degree that they sounded like one of the successes of the event. I was baffled, but okay. They must have heard something I didn’t. Then the next summer rolled around, and San Salvador were scheduled to play at WOMAD, and on one of the biggest stages, the Siam Stage, too. I thought they would surely not be able to command a stage that large, but I decided to check them out nonetheless, remembering the hype that followed their show last time.

It was jaw-dropping. I finally heard what everyone else did and I’m so glad. They are just six voices – three men and three women – who between them play two floor tom drums, a tambourine, a small pair of cymbals and lots of handclapping, but it’s completely gripping. These young musicians have taken a polyphonic tradition that is often dour and usually performed with austere expressions and turned it into something electrifying by the sheer weight of their performance. The music itself is still largely traditional, but there is such an energy to San Salvador that brings it fully to life, whether their voices are skipping and jumping in and around each other, creating interlocking melodies, singing in complex harmony or thrashing out thundering polyrhythms with palm, drumstick and cymbal. Performed live, their pieces are very long – I think they only managed to fit in five or six over their hour-and-a-quarter set – and it allows them to develop themes and motifs slowly, create a slowly evolving shape and to refer back to earlier material throughout. It is an amazing live show, and it left the WOMAD audience (and myself) completely entranced. One of the top highlights of this year’s festival.

I was wrong. The crowd had it right at WOMEX: San Salvador change the game for Occitan music. The recordings that they do have, such as this EP, give a glimpse of what they can do, but don’t quite capture the raw energy of their live show, so let’s all hope that there’s an album on the way soon that will explode out of the speakers just as the band do on stage. The most important thing is to give artists second chances – you may never know what you’re missing otherwise.