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.

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.

305: Mombasa Wedding Special, by Maulidi & Musical Party

Maulidi & Musical Party (Kenya)
Mombasa Wedding Special (1990)
8 tracks, 42 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Taarab music is most closely associated with the East African island of Zanzibar, where it first originated. The commonly accepted origin story of the style is that the Sultan of Zanzibar was so impressed by the court music of Egypt and aggrieved that there was no comparable classical music tradition on the island that he sent a musician, Mohamed Ibrahim, to Cairo in 1880 to study the music of the tarab ensemble and to bring back its core instrumentation of qanun (plucked zither), oud (lute), ney (bamboo flute), darbuka (goblet drum) and riqq (tambourine). Back in Zanzibar, Ibrahim taught the local musicians the classical Egyptian style. Over generations, the music began to take on influences of East African ngoma music and became the style that we know today as taarab.

Although this story is perhaps over-simplified, it nevertheless gives a romantised explanation for the existence of an ostensibly Arabic classical music on this small but historically important island. The sound of the taarab, which evolved variously to nowadays be performed on huge string orchestras, a single violin with two drums or – more recently – a single synthesiser and drum machine, has nevertheless become the defining sound not only of Zanzibar, but of Swahilis across East Africa.

As with any musical genre that spans such a wide geographical and cultural area, taarab doesn’t have just one sound; it changes based on who is performing and where. We’ve heard how it was adapted into twarab and then mshago in the Comoros, and with Maulidi Juma and his Musical Party, we get to hear the unique sound of Mombasa taarab. The coastal Kenyan city of Mombasa has had very close political, economic and cultural connections to Zanzibar for centuries, so it is no surprise that the taarab craze reached the city almost as soon as it had become a popular form on the island, but the cultural make-up of Mombasa led to its distinct take on the style.

As you can hear on Mombasa Wedding Special, there are many more influences than Arabic classical music on display. In fact, at first listen, the Arabic roots may be harder to hear: the group itself is made up of electric organ, electric and bass guitars, accordion, bongos, tambourine, clave and tablas. No instruments from the original tarab ensemble there, save the European analogue of the riqq. The Arabic influences can be heard in how all of the instruments follow the main melody of the vocals in heterophony, and occasionally the shape of the melody. Most interesting for me, though, are where the other influences slip in.

Being on the mainland, Mombasa had a much closer relationship to more inland cultures than Zanzibar had, and these manifest in noticeable ways in Maulidi’s music. While most of the instruments follow the vocal melody, the guitar can often be found fluttering around the melody, or else interjecting with small licks in the small gaps between the lines of the song. With the rhythms aided by the clave, this is striking in its similarities to rumba and soukous music of the Congo, which itself came from the son of Cuba. ‘Vishindo Vya Mashua’ is a great example of this more Latin-inflected sound.

And then there are sounds from the other direction, from across the ocean and the cinemas of India. When both India and Kenya were part of the British Empire, there was lots of economic migration of South Asians to East Africa and, as a major port, Mombasa in particular. These ties remained even after the Empire, and so when Indian cinema started to become an all-encompassing phenomenon, its popularity made it to Mombasa with ease. Songs such as ‘Hukomi Mpelelezi’ have a distinctly Bollywood vibe to them.

Music from Kenya, imported from Zanzibar and with equally clear influences from Egypt, India, Cuba, Congo and the Kenyan people themselves? There could hardly be a more cosmopolitan style than Mombasa taarab…and on top of all that, it’s just a great example of dance band music. Mombasa Wedding Special was recorded live at an actual wedding – you just know that was one classy do.

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.

220: Live at Café au Go-Go, by John Lee Hooker

John Lee Hooker (USA)
Live at Café au Go-Go (1967)
8 tracks, 35 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Unlike Skip James, another blues artist who featured here a couple of weeks ago, there’s no shortage of recordings by John Lee Hooker, from any stage of his career as a musician. From cutting sides while working as a janitor in a Detroit steel mill in the 40s to recording with Carlos Santana, Miles Davis and Van Morrison in the 1990s, his career was as varied as his sound was unique.

But instead of going for some of his perhaps more recognisable albums – or even those that feature his most famous singles of ‘Boom Boom’ or ‘Boogie Chillun’, as good as they are – I’ve gone for this rather low-key live recording from 1966. I think it’s so easy to remember John Lee Hooker as the popstar bluesman that he became, with ultra-polished recordings, cheesy production and guests for days, but it’s what he did before that that sets him apart. There’s a grit inherent in his work – in his voice, in his lyrics, in the tone of his guitar and the way he played it. It all sounds like a dirt road in the middle of a desert.

For this album, it’s not even like his solo recordings that you could very easily imagine being played in some lonesome town somewhere in the middle of the American nowhere. He’s already a big deal by this point, and you can tell that just by looking at the credits: engineered by the legendary Rudy Van Gelder of Blue Note fame, accompanied by Otis Spann on piano, and also with Muddy Waters adding his guitar to John Lee’s now and then, entirely without fanfare. The important thing is that it sounds raw. This is the real deal: a group of musicians that learnt their trade in the Mississippi delta, who plugged in, moved to Chicago and took the blues to the future while never forgetting the roots.

Everything is so simple. The songs are either in a 12-bar-blues or just stay on one chord all the way through, the licks are short and modest and the timing is very loose, but it’s clear that every one of these musicians are experts in what they do, because every note is in exactly the right place. There’s nothing too much or too little, and it all allows John Lee’s rough but subtle voice to cast its spell over the whole thing. Just listen to ‘Heartaches and Misery’, a lesson on the meanings of the blues and a rumination of why he does what he does; everything lines up so perfectly that you will believe every single word he says and understand it to your core.

John Lee Hooker, for all his music is recognisable, went through many different phases in his recording career, but I think none are as potent as when he just relaxed, kept things on the down-low and didn’t just play Blues Music, but really played the blues. At the Café Au-Go-Go in 1966, John Lee Hooker and his band were definitely channelling the real blues.

205: How Our Birds Sing, Vol. 1, recorded by Hans A. Traber

Hans A. Traber (Switzerland)
How Our Birds Sing, Vol. 1 (1988)
32 tracks, 52 minutes
Spotify

It’s my birthday! So as a treat to myself I’m actually picking today’s album rather than letting the robot decide, and I’ve gone for something a bit different.

It’s just a bunch of birds!

I love the sound of birdsong. I feel like it has a real restorative quality to it. When I lived in Berlin, a few times a year my job required me to be getting home at about 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning after a really long and intense day at work. To be walking home through the communal garden at that time to a complete cacophony of what sounded like hundreds of birds after a whole day of stress was like a beautiful massage for the mind, and I’d often just sit there with them for half an hour, letting the sounds bathe me before heading to bed. Now I live in London, and there are far fewer birds here. When I can, I cycle into the countryside to enjoy the quiet…and it’s interesting that the birdsong never intrudes into this quiet, it never registers as ‘noise.’ Those beautiful calls fill up my soul, ready to come back to the city and run on that as fuel.

And when that isn’t possible…that’s when Hans Traber’s work comes in. There are actually quite a few different recordings that I could have listed here (including extended Youtube videos of dawn choruses), but the variety of How Our Birds Sing is really lovely. The 32* birds recorded here are from Central Europe, so although most of them are the same as you’ll hear in the UK, including superstars such as the robin, the blackbird and the wren, there’s also a few that are more foreign to these shores, including the usually elusive nightingale.

It is truly lovely to sit and appreciate these recordings for the sounds they contain. Some are simple and short chirrups, squeaks and bleeps, others are virtuosic and long, taking wild and sometimes unpredictable turns while remaining reminiscent of human music. It’s mad when you think that it’s all basically small feathery things bellowing “fuck me” or “fuck off” isn’t it? At least they have the decency to be poetic about it.

I don’t know whether you’ll have the same reaction to these birds as I do. It may be because I’ve come from a rural area to a big and busy city; your mileage may vary. But whether or not you listen to this album, I urge you to get up (or, more fun, stay up) to see a dawn chorus every so often and revel in the sheer mastery of the bird world. Nature provides its own Good Albums, we only try our best to imitate it.

*There’s another 75 recordings across the other three volumes too!

204: Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight, by Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix (USA/United Kingdom)
Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight (2002)
18 tracks, 119 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

“A bit more volume on this one Charlie, it’s gonna need it! Let’s have a welcome for Billy Cox on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums…and the man with the guitar…Jimi Hendrix.” The words that opened Jimi Hendrix’s performance at the Isle of Wight Festival in the early hours of 31 August 1970, as well as this recording of it and several other live compilations, have been burnt into my memory since childhood. Simple yet effective. A few seconds of tuning up…and then straight in with the trio’s anarchic version of ‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. Not a bad way to start a set.

It’s Jimi #3! I’ve already covered Axis: Bold as Love and People, Hell and Angels before, and Blue Wild Angel is going to be the last Jimi on this blog, and the only live album of his. I obviously chose this one because I enjoy it (it is a Good Album, after all), but so many reviews and discussions of this set talk about how Jimi sounds dispirited, his music lacking in passion and the overall performance falling flat. That seems so strange to me, it’s as if I’m listening to a different record than the rest of them. I won’t claim that the performance is perfect, but there are so many sparkling moments all the way throughout that by far make up for any jetlag-fuelled moments of less-than-peak energy.

There’s even bits where some of the performance’s rougher edges are turned into moments of genius. The epic 22-minute version of ‘Machine Gun’ sees Jimi’s solo interrupted by walkie-talkie chatter from the festival’s security personnel interfering with the sound equipment. So what happens? He just builds it into his solo. Without warning and completely on the fly, he turns something that would derail other musicians into something that makes this one a truly unique performance. It goes almost without saying that Jimi’s guitar playing is immense all the way through here, because I don’t think he was capable of any less. His band – half Experience and half Band of Gypsies – have an easy confidence to them and, as always, I’m in awe at the drumming of Mitch Mitchell, who seamlessly turns jazz technique into the perfect accompaniment for Jimi’s heavy blues rock.

Despite what you think of this album as a whole, it’s still mad to think that, just 18 days after it was recorded, Jimi was dead at the age of just 27. What madness to achieve such a height at such a young age. His death was obviously not natural, so it obviously had no bearing on his performance at the Isle of Wight, but it nevertheless gives the whole thing a slightly surreal aspect to it. You can’t help but marvel that the fleetingness of life and the suddenness of death, even when music like this makes you feel so alive.

169: Live in the Street, by Dub FX

Dub FX (Australia)
Live in the Street (2008)
10 tracks, 52 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

In 2019, when the beatbox-and-loop-pedal, ‘all from the mouth’ sort of thing is now a well-known gimmick, the music of Dub FX still stands out as great music regardless of how it’s made. It is true that all the sounds on this album come from the mouth of Dub FX (as well as a couple of guest rappers on two of the tracks), at least at the beginning of their journey. Those sounds then go through so many layers of looping and processing that they come out as a whole selection of synths and drum machines.

What I find especially impressive is his range of production skills that are conducted entirely live and, for the most part, with his feet. As his name suggests, dub is a huge part of his sound, and he uses a lot of the same techniques as a dubmaster in his performance. Not only does he build up the loops seamlessly, he then takes the various ‘live’ looping samples of the track and process them all separately, dropping them in and out of the mix as appropriate, apply different effects and huge delays on each individually, all to craft and change the atmosphere throughout a piece. That these dub techniques are utilised on his own sound that is actually a mix of varous hip-hop and electronic styles give a really unique spin on the solo beatbox trope. And Dub FX’s use of beatbox doesn’t stray too far away from its original purpose either – at the end of it all, his dance-and-trance-inducing soundscapes are a wonderful vehicle for his raps, which he tumbles into with supreme flow.

Obviously, this album was recorded entirely live, and entirely on the street. It’s his very first album, made to sell while busking, and I really think that’s the perfect setting for his music and performance. I've seen him live in busking mode many times, actually – sometimes by chance, sometimes by design, and the connection that he shares with his audience as they all stand on the same level, just a metre apart is truly special. It sort of reinforces the whole ‘live’ nature of the performance, that even though the music has the sound of perfectly crafted electronica, at the heart of it it’s still all done on-the-fly, and the audience affects it in a very real way, whether literally getting up and taking a turn on the mic (he’s always open for new musical friends – even I’ve had the pleasure of jamming with him under a bridge in Berlin) or just in the reciprocal vibes that pass between everyone present. I caught him doing a show once on a proper stage, raised up and apart from his audience, and while the music was technically fine, the atmosphere was just shot. The street is his real home and the ideal place for his art.

I feel the same way about Dub FX’s albums. He’s released quite a few studio recordings after this one, and to be fair, they are actually really good – that production wizardry is even more in evidence when he’s behind a mixing desk rather than a bunch of effects pedals – but for me, this debut perfectly captures everything that he and his music are all about: getting down on the level, crafting the sounds organically among people, and letting the whole vibe flow easily through the microphone.

165: Best, by Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters (USA)
Best
14 tracks, 57 minutes
Inadequate Spotify playlist

I feel like I’m not getting to include enough stuff in this list by the real masters of blues music from right at the beginning of the genre’s recording to about the early 1960s. Before then, albums weren’t really a thing, it was all singles. The most that we hear of these artists, then, come in the form of compilations, and when there are so many Best of Whoever albums floating around, all with more or less the same assortment of tracks on there, it’s really hard to pick any in particular as a ‘favourite album,’ so they’ve sort of been left by the wayside here, which is a shame, because (as you already know when I’m talking about seemingly any other type of music) I absolutely adore the blues, especially the stuff of these earlier eras.

But I’m glad The Algorithm chucked up this particular album for me. Yes, it’s a Best of, and to be honest, it’s another one of those cheap bargain bin style releases. That rough image of the cover was the only one I could find online anywhere. Can’t find any release date for it, and I actually can’t find the same recordings anywhere online, they were just recorded at some mystery concert I-don’t-know-when, probably by bootleg (and if it is a bootleg recording, it’s a really good one) – the Spotify playlist I made and linked to up there contains the same songs as this compilation, but not the same versions, and it doesn’t even have some of the songs at all. If you want to hear the versions I’m listening to, get in touch.

The reason I chose this particular album instead of any other Best of – or even one of the albums the he made after the LP became a thing – is simply because it was the first time I’d ever heard a full album of Muddy’s music. It’s a great selection of tracks – it is missing some of his most classic songs such as ‘I Just Wanna Make Love to You’, ‘I’m Ready’ and his amazing solo version ‘Rollin’ Stone’, but most of the rest are there, and it does include some lesser-known ones – and Muddy and band are clearly on top form for this gig. It’s pure Chicago blues too, before his renaissance where he added a lot of influences from the rock his music helped create in the first place.

Obviously, Muddy Waters is a compete icon of blues music. He’s the most famous artist that represents the movement of blues northwards, learning his craft on the acoustic guitar in the Mississippi Delta from the old masters before moving up to Chicago, plugging in and defining that city’s sound for decades to come. This album captures that sound – the rawness and folkiness of delta blues with the groove (and solos) of the Chicago style.

Best may not be the most quintessential – or essential – of the compilations and live albums of Muddy Waters that are available out there, and despite (well, probably because of) its cheapness, it’s dropped into full obscurity and it’s probably almost impossible to get your hands on. But if you can, you may as well. It’s a great example of a master at work…and if you can’t, just give Muddy a listen in general. He’s always great and even if you think you like him, he’ll always surprise you.

157: Sacred Riverside Gathering @ Monasterio de Santa Cristina, Galicia, by Davide Salvado, Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė, David Rothenberg and Miguel Hiroshi

Davide Salvado, Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė, David Rothenberg and Miguel Hiroshi (Spain/Lithuania/USA/Japan)
Sacred Riverside Gathering @ Monasterio de Santa Cristina, Galicia (2014)
9 tracks, 53 minutes

This is another Album that is not really an album at all. It was a concert that was live streamed and – wondrous! – has been archived in full on YouTube. You can watch and listen to the entire performance there, together with some interviews and speeches, or, if you prefer, I have also turned all the musical sections into an mp3 album that you can listen to on the go. Get in touch and I’ll send you those files.

This album/video/stream or whatever you want to call it is the record of a unique musical meeting. Organised by the eco music platform Wapapura to coincide with that year’s WOMEX event, the concert was held in the beautiful 12th century Monastery of Santa Cristina along the banks of the River Sil in Galicia, Spain. In the monastery’s cave-like church, four musicians and a very small audience gathered for a one-off collaboration.

Two of the musicians come from traditional backgrounds – there’s Davide Salvado, a Galician folk singer, and Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė, a Lithuanian singer and kanklės (zither) player – and two come from the world of experimental music – David Rothenberg is a jazz clarinettist who is most well-known for his work with naturally-occurring music, most recently performing with nightingales in Berlin, and Miguel Hiroshi is a Japanese-Spanish percussionist who works with rhythms from all over the globe.

Together, the musicians take turns performing pieces from each other’s repertoire and expanding their own traditions to accommodate the particularities of their collaborators’. They take part in collective improvisation in a calm and relaxed manner; although one musician may lead a particular section, none takes a precedent over the others. In the hushed church, every smallest sound is crystal clear and reverberates around the space for a long time, meaning that the barely amplified music often plays with dynamics of quietness as opposed to the dynamics of loudness that we usually expect. In the ancient, holy surrounds, it all gives the concert a meditative, even mystical feeling, and one that is obviously shared by the audience, who click their fingers rather than clap at the end of pieces so as not to break that spell. It’s the perfect music for the perfect location.

I can only imagine what it must have felt like to experience this concert in the flesh. Although I was nearby at the time, in Santiago de Compostela, I unfortunately couldn’t go – I was working instead. It’s really great that Wapapura not only live streamed the whole event (using only solar power, no less) but continue to host it online for us all to enjoy this magnificent one-time collaborative event.

156: Farka et Haïra, by Ali Farka Touré & Khaira Arby

Ali Farka Touré & Khaira Arby (Mali)
Farka et Haïra (1986)
8 tracks, 63 minutes

I compiled an eight-track version of this tape (in mp3 form obviously) from the downloads available at both Voice of America and the worldservice blog. Check out those blogs and all they have to say about the tape, and if you want to download the whole tape directly, let me know and I’ll send it over.

Really, those blogs tell you all you need to know about the background of the tape, and any information about it that I could tell you would just be rewording their own research, so please do check them out – I’ll just give my own thoughts of the tape here.

When this tape was recorded at a live concert in 1986, Ali Farka Touré and Khaira Arby were both famous across Mali, but this was before either of them attained the international fame they later achieved. These recordings give you an idea of what both musicians sounded like without having their sound tempered towards an international audience, either in their way of playing or the sound quality that comes with it. Because that’s a big part of this record’s charm: it’s obviously been copied and recopied so many times across many decades of cassettes that everything sounds super crunchy. It really suits Ali’s guitar playing, and Khaira’s voice cuts all the way through the noise, so that the poor quality of the recording doesn’t affect the appreciation of the music it contains in any way.

It’s also interesting to hear their repertoire before they both brought the influence from the blues to the fore. With Ali’s heritage as Songhoi and Khaira’s as mixed Hassani-Tamashek, their music together bares elements from all of these cultures from the north of Mali, as well as the music of the Bamana from the south of the country. On top of all that, it just sounds like a totally relaxed gig, with the musicians taking everything at their own pace while making some absolutely stellar performances.

Really, I just included this as a little-known early recording of two great musicians who went on to have worldwide success, and I reckon more people should hear it. So if you’re a fan of Ali or Khaira, or any Malian or Saharan music in general, get those blogs linked at the top read, and definitely get these amazing sounds in your ears.

155: Egypte: Les Musiciens du Nil, by Ensemble Mizmar Baladi

Ensemble Mizmar Baladi (Egypt)
Egypte: Les Musiciens du Nil (1977)
8 tracks, 70 minutes (1988 extended CD reissue)
Spotify ∙ iTunes

In the world of music, Egypt is most well-known for its classical music: it has been considered the most glorious seat of Arabic classical music for many centuries. This album shows a different side of the country’s musical culture. I guess you would call this folk music from Upper Egypt – that’s the south of the country, named for being upstream of the River Nile. This was the first recording of the legendary group known in Egypt as the Ensemble Mizmar Baladi, but who, due to the success of this album, are known abroad under the name The Musicians of the Nile.

Across this album, the ensemble play many different instruments, but the most prominent melodic accompaniments all have a special something about them: there is the mizmar (a high-pitched shawm) and the rabab (a fiddle with one or two strings). Both of these are played in threes, and they all have quite a whining, buzzy tone that could put some off, but I find entrancing. My favourite instrument showcased on this album, though, is the argoul, the long double-clarinet. It has such a great sound – one pipe provides a drone and the other the melody, and the musician (here Mustafa Abdel Aziz) uses circular breathing to keep a continuous sound, giving it the effect of a particularly reedy bagpipe. The argoul is only featured on a couple of tracks, an untitled taksim (improvised solo) and the track ‘Tayyara’, but I find them so captivating. I actually conducted one of my rare in-depth musicological analyses on the argoul taksim on this album – feel free to get in touch if you fancy a read!

While it is obvious by the melodies and rhythms that these pieces come from an Arabic culture, it really is a world away from the classical traditions of Cairo. The timbres at play are very far removed from the shimmering tones of the oud, qanun or ney, and the baladi rhythms used throughout are nothing if not invitations to dance. The classical styles of Egypt are certainly wonderful and captivating in their own way, but I know which music I’d rather be surrounded by during an incense-and-coffee fuelled evening in Luxor.

134: 1.22.03. Acoustic, by Maroon 5

Maroon 5 (USA)
1.22.03. Acoustic (2004)
7 tracks, 29 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

I believe that there is opportunity for good in every music, and pop music is no exception (although I admit you may have to look a little harder to find the good among the pap – but it’s there! Usually!). For a while at least, Maroon 5 were, in my opinion, making some of the best pop music out there. Their debut, 2002’s Songs About Jane, was a hit around the world, and the soulful melodies, band performance and lead singer Adam Levine’s voice all set them apart from the rest of what was on the radio at the time.

This album is something a bit different. It’s only a very short one, sort of an extended EP in a way, and as you can tell from its title, it’s an acoustic set (mostly). It was recorded live at the Hit Factory in New York, and the sound quality is…fine, I guess. It’s not the best recorded live album I’ve ever heard but it’s definitely far from the worst. But of course, it’s the performances here that are what makes this one special.

The songs included are mostly from Songs About Jane, but there’s something about this performance that really highlights both the band’s musicianship and their songwriting. Performing their songs on two acoustic guitars, piano, electric bass (cheats) and a bit of a badly-tuned djembe, together with Levine’s lead vocals and some nice harmonies here and there, it’s nice to hear the songs stand on their own without the added studio flashiness. The influences from Stevie Wonder, Van Morrison and the Beatles are clear (they actually feature a quiet cover the latter’s ‘If I Fell’ here), and somehow the acoustic setting also serves to bring out the latent funkiness of the band’s music, along with the standard soulfulness that coats all of the studio album. What interests me the most, though, is the piano - pianist Jesse Carmichael has a habit of adding quite a lot of extensions on his chord playing on most of the track, which even lends a jazzy flow to the set.

I should probably also mention the bonus, non-acoustic track, a cover of AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’. It’s a bit amusing but doesn’t make for great listening, and it’s basically an unnecessary addition to the end of the album. Ah well. Ignoring that bit though, I think they were really onto something with this album. The live setting leaves it a bit lacking, but there’s great ideas here; it would have been great if they’d have used the live experiences to record proper acoustic versions of the set in a studio, ironing out the kinks and making the sound extra sparkly while leaving the organic feel. But they didn’t. Again, ah well.

It was really disappointing to hear Maroon 5’s descent from a promising band navigating the pop world with something different in their sound to basically making electropop that sounded like everything else that was out there. Perhaps their album tracks were somewhat different, but I wouldn’t know – their singles definitely didn’t reflect that. Luckily, that doesn’t take away the pleasure of listening to their earlier stuff, and Songs About Jane and 1.22.03. Acoustic both still stand up, proving that pop music – sometimes – can be really good.

109: Les Tambourinaires du Burundi, by the Drummers of Burundi

The Drummers of Burundi (Burundi)
Les Tambourinaires du Burundi (1992)
1 track, 31 minutes
Bandcamp • Spotify • iTunes

Watching the Drummers of Burundi is a spectacle that is hard to forget. You hear them before you see them – a distant booming coming closer and closer, joined by the high-pitched clacking of wood-on-wood as it gets nearer. Then you see them and it’s even more striking than that powerful sound had you expecting. A big bunch of willowy, muscular men in beautiful robes of white, red and green to match the Burundian flag, each with a gigantic wooden drum on their head, playing their infectious beat with all their might. Now there’s an indelible image.

They set their karyenda drums in a semi-circle with one (painted with the flag) in the middle for soloists, and the energy levels never let up. They keep their beat going as long as you’d like, the drummers taking turns to play different aspects of the rhythms, to solo on the main drum and to impress with acrobatic flips, jumping splits and dancing with spears and shields. At the end, they load the drums back on to their heads and troop away, never letting that beat waver. There are few musical experiences that can match watching – and feeling – the Drummers of Burundi.

And so we come to this album. It was recorded in Real World Studios in 1987, completely live – to be honest, there isn’t really any other way to record 20 drummers of this particular might. As such, you don’t hear anything that wouldn’t be there in a live performance, although there isn’t the wonderful incoming and outgoing head-bound drumming; I guess it wouldn’t have the same effect on record. There is a short call-and-response to start, the leader asking the others if they are ready and worthy to play these royal and sacred drums. Everyone decides that, yes, they’re pretty sure they are and they get to it. It is a beat that will get all the way through your body (if you play it loud enough) and the ever-evolving rhythmic patterns will do something pleasant to your brain, too. As it’s a live performance, it’s presented as one long, unbroken track – what is a little strange that it is only 30 minutes, considering that they can go for much, much longer.

If you’ve never heard the Drummers of Burundi before but the music on this album sounds familiar to you, you might be right. This album was not the first time the music of the karyenda drummers was heard in Europe, and it was most famously included in the Ocora album Musiques du Burundi in 1968. That recording became a sort of cult hit in certain circles and ended up being one of the most unlikely sources of inspiration among new wave and post-punk musicians. The rhythms of what was called ‘the Burundi Beat’ became infused into the work of bands such as Bow Wow Wow and Adam and the Ants.

Those groups had their own thing going on, but their rhythms just don’t match the Drummers for the sheer intensity and awesomeness. Of course this album is never going to fully capture what these musicians do live – the power of their beats and the chest-rattling reverberations can only ever be experienced within earshot of the actual drum – but it certainly captures a little bit of what they’re about and the mesmerising qualities of their sound.

107: Churchical Chants of the Nyabingi, by the Church Triumphant of Jah Rastafari

Church Triumphant of Jah Rastafari (Jamaica)
Churchical Chants of the Nyabingi (1983)
10 tracks, 42 minutes
YouTube playlist

We know a lot of Rastafari religious music in the form of roots reggae, but it’s not that often that we hear much of the ritual music of the Rasta church, the nyabinghi. This album is a great place to start. It’s a recording of an actual ritual – one of the biggest ever nyabinghi gatherings, as it happens – and so it captures the true musical form of the worship. A particularly interesting element of this recording is its context: the reason it was such a big gathering was in response to a visit to Jamaica by Ronald Reagan in 1982, during his presidency. The event was a reaction against the honour with which the Jamaican government was receiving its guest. As such, the songs that are on this record are not only chants to Jah and to Ras Tafari, Haile Selassie I, but they’re also filled with righteous anger directed at Reagan, the Pope and religious and white supremacist imperialism in general. The whole gathering lasted for seven days. Heavy stuff.

The music itself is all percussion and voice. The percussion is made up of three types of drums and various rattles and shakers that bring strongly to mind West African drum ensembles. The voice, however, is really a mix of things: there is lots of overlapping call-and-response between the leader and the congregation, but the harmonies and melodies obviously owe lots to the Christian tradition of hymns. The whole effect make the nyabinghi bear a lot of musical resemblance to the spiritual music of other Afrodiasporic religions in the Americas, especially Vodou in Haiti but also to some degree Santería in Cuba and Candomblé in Brazil. Rastafari is a bit different from those religions though; whereas the others developed organically from West African religions (most notably of the Ewe, Yoruba and Fon) incorporating elements of Christian practice and imagery to ‘hide in plain sight’ when the Africans’ religious practices were banned, Rastafari was somewhat more explicit in its construction, with its religious practices and rituals built from pre-existing cultural elements of Christian, Ethiopian, West African and Afrodiasporic religions as well as secular political beliefs. It’s not impossible that nyabinghi was directly influenced by the music of Vodou and similar traditions.

Listening to nyabinghi also allows for a bit of a glimpse into the creation of reggae: you can hear how, with the addition of influences from soul, gospel and rock music, this style could move towards the direction of roots reggae. But then again, this recording was made in the 1980s, when reggae was already a huge phenomenon. However it came about, and whichever cultural factors were at play Churchical Chants of the Nyabingi is a great document of a particular and epic event, and also a great document of a deep religious practice that is widely known of, but not often known about, at least in any detail.

060: A Night in San Francisco, by Van Morrison

Van Morrison (United Kingdom)
A Night in San Francisco (1994)
22 tracks, 147 minutes (2CD)
Spotify • iTunes

Van Morrison has famously always been the grumpy old man of rock, even before he was that old, and it would be an understatement to say that he’s a hot and cold performer. Catch him on the wrong evening and he will absolutely despise you for making him sing for a couple of hours. Knowing that, I wonder how hard it is to make a live album with him. For A Night in San Francisco, though, that obviously wasn’t a problem – he is on fine, fine form here.

It’s an interesting show (actually, that would be interesting shows as the album was recorded over two separate concerts – that album title is a lie). It’s almost like a gala in some ways. Van and band play as many medleys as they do individual pieces, quite often just playing a verse or two before moving onto the next song-fragment. There’s originals and covers and there’s a million musical references all the way through, it makes many of the tracks sound like live mash-ups. Even his most famous pieces aren’t safe: for my money, the best mash-up on the album is a medley of ‘Moondance’ and ‘My Funny Valentine,’ but with the bassline from ‘Is That Jazz’ by Gil Scott-Heron and an organ solo featuring Gershwin’s ‘Summertime.’

Adding to the gala-rific feel of the album are a bunch of guests who are brought on every so often to sing their bit. I know this is Van the Man’s show, but some of his guests seem a little under-utilised, and they’re not exactly B-listers either. Imagine getting John Lee Hooker to join you in your show, and only have him sing and play for a total of one minute and four seconds – I actually admire the ballsiness of it. It’s not just the guests that are top-draw; the regular band isn’t half bad either, with Georgie Fame on organ, Teena Lyle on vibraphone and Candy Dulfer on alto sax to name just three of the eleven.

The ensemble are much more than Van’s backing band. The musicians are all featured at some point, with at least one solo per piece. As such the whole vibe is much jazzier than I usually think of Van Morrison’s music – it’s usually there in the background, but here it feels like he’s making those vibes the cornerstone of his show. One slight hang-up: he’s got this really annoying thing going on where, whenever he mentions one of his musicians (which he does a lot, after most solos and several times when he gives a whole-band run through), he always says their name twice. ‘Teena Lyle, Teena Lyle,’ ‘Haji Ahkba, Haji Ahkba,’ that sort of thing. Innocuous at first but quite irritating after nearly two-and-a-half hours. But would it really be Van Morrison if he wasn’t mildly infuriating at some point in the set?

When you’ve got a ticket to see Van Morrison live, you never quite know what you’re going to get. But when he’s on song, like these two nights in San Francisco…well, what a couple of shows these must have been to witness.

052: Ecstatic Music from Sri Lanka, by Baliphonics

Baliphonics (Sri Lanka/New Zealand)
Ecstatic Music from Sri Lanka (2018)
8 tracks, 26 minutes
Listen on the Baliphonics website

This is actually a group that have been on my radar for quite a few years. They caught my eye simply because it’s not every day you hear Sri Lankan music (if you’re me, anyway), and they kept that attention through their mix of traditional drumming and jazz, as well as what appears to be (although I’m definitely no expert!) a modern take on traditional dances…including dancing with fire, which is always exciting. The concept of Baliphonics has been around for about ten years, inspired by Sumudi Suraweera’s study into the music of the bali ritual while working towards his doctorate in ethnomusicology in New Zealand. That ritual aims to heal through warding off the evil intentions of planetary gods, so it’s not a music to take lightly. Baliphonics hold onto that seriousness despite their innovation.

With Sumudi on drum kit, the traditional styles are brought to the table by Prasanna Rupathilaka on yak bera drum and Susantha Rupathilaka dancing, and both sing. When I first heard the band, the jazz used to come from a solo double bass, but now it’s the task of Reuben Derrick on clarinets big and small to provide a never-too-intrusive avant-garde sound bed for the drums and voice. I think the musical input of Sumudi himself is what makes this such a successful fusion of styles. He’s a trained jazz drummer, but his academic explorations into the traditional Sri Lankan styles have allowed him to adapt his kit playing to nicely complement both sides of his band’s sound.

Although Baliphonics have played quite a bit throughout New Zealand, Sri Lanka and everywhere in between (namely, South-East Asia) over the past ten years, they only just made it over to Europe with a couple of gigs in Poland in December. They don’t even have an official album out yet, but they have put up a bunch of tracks recorded live in 2018 on their website, which is enough to class as a Good Album in my eyes. I really hope they come a little closer to the UK soon, so that I can see them live and keep writing about them! Keep a look out for these lot, they deserve to go places.

031: Live at Sin-é: Legacy Edition, by Jeff Buckley

Jeff Buckley (USA)
Live at Sin-é: Legacy Edition (2003)
34 tracks, 157 minutes (2CD)
Spotify · iTunes

In the summer of 1993, Jeff Buckley recorded a couple of his sets at one of his usual haunts, the Sin-é coffee house in New York. Four of the best cuts were taken from those sets and assembled into the Live at Sin-é EP later that year, to get the world ready for his debut album Grace that was to be released the year after. The tracks on that EP were beautiful, but we had to wait until 2003 – six years after his untimely death – to hear more of those legendary sets as this ‘Legacy Edition.’ And more there is: there's over two-and-a-half hour’s worth of material in this double album. That’s a lot of listening, and totally worth it.

It’s a very vulnerable position. Just him and an electric guitar, in the corner of what was literally just a small café. The setting lends itself to the music, which goes through a lot of emotions throughout the set, but always retains that same vulnerability. His guitar-work is generally understated but lets through glimpses of brilliance, and his voice is just astonishing. He can blast and bark when necessary, but then he switches it up and becomes soft and delicate. His range is massive, and it’s when he uses his falsetto – soaring but fragile – that the neck-hairs really stand on end.

His studio stuff is great, but this concert shows a bit of a different side. I suppose Jeff Buckley would usually be put into some ‘rock’ box, but he does absolutely all sorts here. He proves himself just as talented as a jazz singer, in blues or folk idioms. Out of the 21 songs on the recording, 15 of them are covers, everything from Led Zeppelin to Édith Piaf. He’s just so wildly versatile. Earlier this month, I referred to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as ‘simply the greatest singer ever recorded.’ It would seem that Jeff would agree. In one of the many bits of chat recorded between the songs, he remarks “It's Nusrat, and he's my Elvis. That's my guy. I listen to him everyday...I know his nickname as a child” …and then he goes on to cover one of Nusrat’s pieces ‘Yeh Jo Halka Halka Saroor Hai’! In Urdu! Just guitar and voice! It’s frankly absurd and I love it.

There are so many tracks I can mention here: ‘Je N’en Connais Pas La Fin,’ ‘The Way Young Lovers Do,’ a spellbinding version of ‘Strange Fruit,’ the ballsy a cappella opening ‘Be Your Husband,’ and that’s not even mentioning his originals...but I’m supposed to be writing one of these a day, and it would take forever to mention every cool bit on the album. At one point he says to the audience “I’m a ridiculous person...you’re lucky you paid no money to see me” – damn right they’re lucky, but not just because of the free entry.

010: Music from the Pirin Mountains, by the Bisserov Sisters

The Bisserov Sisters (Bulgaria)
Music from the Pirin Mountains (1990)
26 tracks, 70 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

The first line of the AllMusic review for this album says ‘The Bisserov Sisters are to Le Mystère de Voix Bulgares as the New York Dolls are to Blink-182,’ and...I don’t really get the rock music references, sorry. And to be honest, I don’t know all that much about Bulgarian music either, so we’re off to a good start. But I do know that the Bisserov Sisters know their stuff, and I know they made a great record here.

The Bisserovs and their instrumentalists, the Trio Karadzovska, present traditional folkloric music from the south-west corner of Bulgaria, and especially their small village of Pirin. Their music provides a fascinating snapshot of all the historical pathways and cultural connections of their region. Bits and pieces of their music reveal shared heritage with the Balkans and Russia, Greece, Italy and Turkey; the bulgars of klezmer obviously owe a lot too.

They manage to cram in 26 tracks into just 70 minutes of CD, including an epic eight-minute medley at the end, so a lot of the pieces are quite short – right down to 29 seconds at the shortest. This many pieces means that the ensemble get to show off many different types of repertoire, from the iconic tight vocal polyphony to all-instrumental dances and special showcases of individual instruments – my favourites are the two solo performances by Krastjo Dimov on kaval flute and some kind of bagpipe or double-clarinet (Bulgarians, please get in touch!). The whole album was recorded live in concert at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, although the quality of recording is high enough that you wouldn’t really know it until the rapturous applause at the end. What a concert that must have been.

Music from the Pirin Mountains is a great introduction to the wide variety of traditional musical styles that exist within Bulgaria, even if it does present the merest glimpse of that range. It’s beautifully performed, interesting and intriguing right until the end, and it makes me want to listen and learn more and more!