350: Shahen-Shah, by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Qawwal and Party

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Qawwal and Party (Pakistan)
Shahen-Shah (1989)
6 tracks, 71 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

After so many times of talking about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s worldly collaborations, his inclusions on compilation albums, people who have covered his songs (in often unusual ways), his protégés, relations and fellow qawwals…we finally get to listen to a whole album of Khan Sahib doing what he did best: singing qawwalis alongside his party, in a traditional style and being simply the greatest singer of all time.

Shahenshah mean ‘king of kings,’ and that’s who Khan was – the shahenshah-e-qawwali. That title was bestowed upon him before he made this album; he was already held in the highest regard among Sufi Muslims and South Asians with even a passing interest in music, his songs reaching across barriers of language and faith. Then came Shahen-Shah, the album. Recorded in 1988 at Real World Studios, and released the year after, it was Khan’s first album on Real World Records. It wasn’t his first release in the west, but it’s the one that turned him from a superstar in half the globe, to a megastar all over it.

No wonder. I can’t imagine being able to listen to this album and not be transported. Religiously, spiritually, cerebrally, whatever’s your bag, Khan takes you somewhere else. Khan himself would call it wajd – the state of spiritual ecstasy that marks a nearing to God. And all it takes is two hand-pumped harmoniums, a pair of tabla drums and nine massed male voices, of which Khan is naturally the focal point. The poetry is in Urdu, Punjabi and Farsi and can date right back to the founding of the Sufi orders, some even to the 10th century. They talk about the love for God, for his prophet Muhammad, for the Caliphs and for the Sufi saints, often in swirling metaphors of drunkenness, intoxication or erotic love but always with the divine at the core of their very meaning.

And Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s voice is heavenly. It’s exquisite. He makes the soul swoop, and brings tears to the eyes. What he creates comes from somewhere deeper than the lungs, and lands deeper than the ear – it is heart-to-heart music. Any superlatives can be applied without overstatement. I have never heard a voice that comes close. Deep-chested bellows; impossibly high-pitched almost-screams; whispered fast-paced passages; long meditations on one single syllable that slide between notes with majestic weight; impishly playful flutters up and down and through and in between ragas, talas and his own accompanying singers and musicians; all of it is perfection. What more to say about such a singer, such a messenger, such a more-than-man?

I’m not sure if I ever saw Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan perform live. I probably did, if I was paying attention, but I was far too young to notice, and no memory of it remains. I wish I could experience that again, with a conscious, memory-making mind, but it’s never to be. A whole concert of hour upon hour of such mastery, unbound to 15 minute pieces, must have been a miracle to witness. His music, however, is luckily not so tethered to this mortal coil as he himself was. Shahen-Shah and albums like it are so beautifully recorded that the music echoes throughout time, crystal clear, reverberating the soul. We should honour and treasure such relics – they surely came from another place.

342: People's Colony No. 1, by Temple of Sound & Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali

Temple of Sound & Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali (United Kingdom/Pakistan)
People's Colony No. 1 (2001)
10 tracks, 65 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

I’ve always seen this album as sort of the younger sibling of the collaborations between Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Michael Brook. Those releases weren’t too much earlier than this one – Mustt Mustt was from 1990, Night Song from 1996 – but they really set the stage for just what could be achieved in bringing sacred Sufi qawwali music from South Asia into the realm of world dubtronica. Together, Temple of Sound and Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali took to that stage and made it their own.

With the pedigree on display, this was always going to be an impressive album. Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali is headed by the brothers Rizwan and Muazzam Mujahid Ali Khan, nephews of Nusrat and heirs to his impressive legacy; Temple of Sound are Neil Sparkes and Count Dubulah, producers and multi-insturmentalists both, then fresh from their departure from Transglobal Underground, of which they were co-founders.

The Khan/Brook collaborations yielded indisputably genius results, but focused more on the ambient and ethereal side of electronica with more of a chill-out vibe than necessarily one for the dance floor. This album takes a different tack. This one is darker and feistier, dancier and dubbier. The programmed drums and synths pump things up to trance levels, with the tabla cycles and harmonium vamps always crucial in the mix. The soaring and ecstatic wailing from the massed voices of the qawwali party is key to the whole thing, too. The mood of the pieces is dictated by the shape of the qawwali, and the dubwise beats and bass are its servants. The album still has its more meditative moments that provide pools of cool among the fever, which slowly build back up into the most intense sections.

The idea at the core of People's Colony No. 1 was that it should be ‘21st century qawwali’ and these ebbs and flows reflect that. I would also go further and say that this is ‘international qawwali.’ Qawwali itself was always a fusion, mixing poetic and musical forms from India across to Persia, and occupying the space between classical and folk music; with Temple of Sound, Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali have kept the emotional resonances and spiritual impact of the original form while turning it into something completely different. It is clear and audible in the music that this was a real collaboration – Sparkes, Dubulah and the two Khans always there together, creating and consulting with each other all along the way.

304: Rûwâhîne, by Ifriqiyya Électrique

Ifriqiyya Électrique (Tunisia/France/Italy)
Rûwâhîne (2017)
9 tracks, 44 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Ifriqiyya Électrique are responsible for one of the most intense musical experiences I've ever had – twice. This record – their debut – gives a good idea of the sound of their music, but it cannot convey the sheer power of its live performance.

The Banga are black Africans, descendants of West African slaves, who live in the Djerid desert in the south of Tunisia. They are a Sufi community, and as such they use their music as worship, reaching out to Sufi saints and the spirits of their ancestors in large-scale healing ceremonies, where initiates fall into ecstatic trance, vehicles for the unknowable forces.

Ifriqiyya Électrique is a collaboration between four Banga musicians and Italian-French industrial noise duo Putan Club, with additional electronics from Pierpaolo Leo and extensive samples from on-the-ground recordings of the rûwâhîne (spirit) ceremony. On the face of it, these collaborators may seem to have very little in common, but their musical aesthetics align in wonderful ways. Both use sound to break the brain. Banga music and industrial noise are both used to confuse the ears, to detach the listeners from mundane reality and occupy the entirety of body and cranium.

Together, they create an overwhelming wall of noise. Clattering krakebs, wildly distorted bass, pounding Tunisian tabla barrel drums and naghara kettle drums, smashing cymbals, anguished massed cries of religious utterances, wailing electric guitar, garbled synthesised sound, low-pitched rhythmic chanting and authentic sounds of late-night ceremonial hubbub. All of it combines to create something terrifying, exhilarating, raw and passionate. The intensity comes in waves – sometimes the noise is all encompassing, but at others it is smouldering, tension building and just as captivating, and both modes work to increase the impact of the other.

In live performance it is ear splitting. In the dark, shoulder-to-shoulder with other humans, moving together, sweating together, it becomes an assault of simultaneous sensory deprivation and sensory overload. The only way the feeling could be more acute is if it were conducted in the ceremony’s rightful location, in the deserts and tiny huts, surrounded by candles and in air suffused with many incenses, teas and highly-spiced food.

You won’t get that from this album, but you will get a flavour of it. Play it as loud as possible, turn off the lights, turn up the central heating and bring your neighbours around and you’ll get closer. But, if you can, experience Ifriqiyya Électrique in the flesh. There’s nothing quite like it, and you may never feel quite the same again.

303: Navajo Songs from Canyon de Chelly, by Sam Yazzie Sr. and group

Sam Yazzie Sr. and group (USA)
Navajo Songs from Canyon de Chelly (1990)
13 tracks, 48 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

We listen to so much music from the USA. The country has been the coalescing place for so many of the most popular and enduring musical styles that have impacted the culture in almost every corner of the world. But this American culture only dates back about 500 years at the very earliest and springs from peoples who have either taken the land for themselves or who were forcibly relocated from their homes an ocean away against their will. Very little do we hear the sounds of the original custodians of the land.

Perhaps you’re like me: when I considered Native American music, it was always in the frame of New Age music. You know the sort, echo-y chants, pounding drums, wooden flutes and panpipes of origins from anywhere across the American continents, backed by layered synthesised drones and variously accompanied by cheesy saxophones, wolf howls and gongs of indeterminate Asian origin. But as ever, that association of Native American music with New Age pap is just one curated by white people dumbing down, making bland and generally ruining anything that the Native Americans touched, as has happened for centuries, for shame.

We can counter these narratives – and our own involuntary associations within ourselves – by listening to Native American music as it is performed traditionally. For me, this journey began with this album – recorded in 1975 – of music of the Navajo people, whose nation spans Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The music presented on this album is of many different functions. Many of the songs are important in the Ndaa’ or Anaa’ji’ music and dance ceremonies, which are held to purify Navajos after battle. As such, they hold a lot of sacred meaning. But although Native Americans are often regarded as incredibly solemn and spiritual people, the music here isn’t always so serious. Other songs included are work shanties, songs to accompany games and sports and songs whose sole purpose is as entertainment.

For those not accustomed to this sort of music, it can be quite difficult to listen to. The preferred vocal style is not what we’re used to, with very heavy vibrato and often quite a guttural tone, and the melodies are sometimes limited in their range to just two or three notes. There is however a hypnotic quality to a lot of it, the insistent rhythms, repetitive lines and recurring song structures. This music rewards close listening, although it may take some getting used to.

Of course, Navajo traditional music is only a small drop in a massive ocean of Native American music that stretches across a whole continent, and there are many more cool and fascinating styles out there – another recommendation is to listen to the intense and exciting pow wow music of the Hopi people. My own knowledge of these cultures is still scant and I’m looking forward to improving it. Listening to the music of indigenous and oppressed peoples is a powerful way of recentring and recalibrating cultural assumptions that may have been derived from inaccurate sources, and can also lead to further knowledge and understanding of these peoples’ wider cultures, beliefs and histories. The story of America is many millennia older than the USA, and its musical heritage deserves proper recognition too.

274: Se Nou Ki La!, by Chouk Bwa Libète

Chouk Bwa Libète (Haiti)
Se Nou Ki La! (2015)
15 tracks, 59 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Voodoo gets a bad rap. In the Euro-American sphere, we mostly think of it as a shady and sinister folk belief based on the esoteric magic and the occult, with the most common symbolism being voodoo dolls and zombies. If you know even a little bit about world history, it probably won’t be too surprising that these preconceptions are not only false, but are the result of racism and colonialism in action. In fact, a lot of it was the direct result of American anti-Haitian propaganda beginning at the time of the Haitian slave revolt and eventual independence; the USA was eager to paint the victory as mysterious, evil and, above all, Satanic to deter similar actions in their own country. Just one more way white people made the world a little worse.

In reality, Vodou (as the Haitian variant is correctly called; Voodoo is from Louisiana) is a religion just like many others. It is a syncretic religion that draws mostly on West African beliefs such as the Vodun of the Fon and Ewe people and the Ifé of the Yoruba as well as drawing from aspects of the native religions of the Caribbean and adopting a veneer of Roman Catholicism (such as the equating of various spirit-gods with Catholic saints). In this way, it is very similar to other Afro-American religions, especially Santería in Cuba and Candomblé in Brazil – the religions share many deities between them.

As with most religions, Vodou has its own associated musical culture, and that’s where Chouk Bwa Libetè come in. They play the traditional form of mizik rasin - literally ‘roots music’ – that draws heavily on their religious beliefs. For this album, the group are 12 strong and their music is made solely from percussion and vocals (as well as a single horn that blasts a heralding bass call every so often). This isn’t the war drumming and chants of the early Hollywood portrayal of voodoo though; this music is intricate and complex and filled with beautiful harmonies. The songs, which sing of olicha (spirit-gods) and ache (soul and spirit), range from sad and mournful to sweet and joyous, but always in the gentlest, warmest tones and sung with a real camaraderie. Just listen to the songs ‘Olicha Legba’ and ‘Nèg Ayisyen’ – the way the voices join and entwine feels like a loving group hug for the ears.

There is an undeniable Africanness to Chouk Bwa’s music, in their overlapping rhythms, asymmetrical tapped-out timeline patterns and call-and-response vocals that are an obvious link to Haitian’s and Vodou’s shared histories, but there are also connections to many American styles. Their music bears an understandable resemblance to other Afro-American percussion-and-voice religious music such as Santería’s bembe and Candomblé’s batuque, even Rastafari’s nyabinghi, and it goes further: there are slight but definite strains of everything from calypso to gospel to blues in here. It isn’t even a question of ‘who influenced who’ – these musics all arose from common ancestry, so it makes sense that they would share characteristics.

Vodou is such a crucial element in Haitian culture and history, and its music such a window to the history of African people in the Americas. For religions and cultures as important and wide-ranging as Vodou to be misrepresented for so long as a malevolent force – so much so that the very idea of it has become a shorthand for creepiness and evil – is such an infuriating wrong. The beautiful, deeply religious sounds of Chouk Bwa Libète are a wonderful antidote to this injustice in more ways than one.

267: Night Song, by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook (Pakistan/Canada)
Night Song (1996)
8 tracks, 48 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

When I was making up my list of Good Albums at the end of last year, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook’s Night Song basically gained an automatic entry due to its position on my ’10 days, 10 all-time favourite albums’ list that inspired this bigger project. Since then, it has been granted a fancy vinyl and downloads reissue from Real World Records, which I reviewed in the current issue of Songlines magazine. That actually throws up a bit of a quandary…I’ve just written about this album, what else is there to say?

In the review, I talked about how Brook’s production of chill-out, prog, electronica and dub works in sympathy with Khan’s heavenly qawwali vocals in a subtler, less bombastic way than the pair’s previous outing, the more successful but more controversial Mustt Mustt from 1990. I also talked about how the stand-out tracks are so effective because, even with all the additional elements and styles at play, it still retains a rolling structure in the same way as a traditional qawwali piece, which Khan’s vocals take to with a natural ease.

In magazine writing, though, and especially in reviews, restricted word counts mean that only broad strokes can really make it in, and the subtleties are often missed out. There are so many details that make Night Song impressive and important that get lost in a 200-word limit.

I didn’t get to talk about how the first track on the album ‘My Heart, My Life’ starts with the kora of Kauwding Cissokho. Just imagine: by 1996, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was world-famous for his traditional South Asian qawwali and his forward-thinking collaborations in dance music and electronica; you buy his new CD, stick it in the machine and what you’re greeted with is not the harmonium and tabla of qawwali or synths and drum sequences of electronica, but the rippling strings of the Senegalese harp. For the first minute of the album, it’s just kora and Khan’s vocals, an entirely unexpected combination that is nevertheless so delicate and peaceful. I myself could listen to a whole album of just that, but alas that never happened. As it is, this introduction helps to recalibrate the ears coming into this. You know not to expect what you had in mind, but you also know that whatever is coming up is going to be beautiful, in whatever shape it becomes.

I didn’t get to talk about how the fiasco around Mustt Mustt stemmed from Brook’s remixing of Khan’s vocals. While aesthetically reasonable from a Western standpoint – it is a classic album, after all – this technique paid little heed to the meaning of the poetry being recited, leading at points to important phrases being chopped-up half-way through, or even in the middle of words, rendering them meaningless. Even more seriously, it occasionally played with deeply religious utterances in a way that was perceived by some as corrupting and undermining the spiritual message and word of God. While Khan himself had agreed to the releasing of the album in its finished state, members of the Muslim community were understandably less than pleased. When it came to working together again on Night Song, the remixing was undertaken in a much more considered way, with Khan having a more hands-on input in the production of the album, as well as respected Muslim authorities brought in to consult on the manner in which the poetry was used. Although this is not something that can necessarily be heard by those who do not speak Farsi, Urdu or Punjabi, I think this was a very important step in world fusion: of musicians working together in equal collaboration, of differing cultural sensibilities being acknowledged and accommodated as a valuable part of the music-making process, and of artists making mistakes, owning them, learning from them and putting that learning into practice. It’s a wonderful thing to see, and the album came out even stronger for that.

I didn’t get to talk about how I connect to this album on a personal, emotional and nostalgic level. I remember sitting on the stairs of my first home, listening to this music and asking what it was. I remember lying by the patio windows in the warm sun and flicking through my dad’s record collection and putting this on, and the excitement I felt in that second or two between putting in the disc and the sound emanating from the speakers in anticipation of what I was about to hear, what I knew was my favourite album. I remember listening to it from a portable CD player in a den I built in the back garden out of posts and blankets, reading a book. I remember listening to tracks from the album on my very first mp3 player (it could only hold about 40 songs) at night while on a holiday with Scouts. Are these memories real? I don’t know. I’m not even sure the timescale lines up correctly with that first one. But listening to the album brings all those memories flooding back. Even if they’re not real, their existence in my brain is inseparable from the act of hearing the music of Night Song, just like listening to any piece of music is attached to innumerable memories and emotions that are different for every single person, meaning that everyone necessarily connects to music in their own individual way.

I didn’t get to talk about these things, and I didn’t get to talk about a million other points that make this album interesting or dated or Good or not as good as it could have been or important or influential or poignant or anything else that makes music such a vital art form in the lives and emotions of so many people. Every single album, even every piece of music, could be the subject of a detailed book about its background, its history, the making-of, the musicology of it, the production, the aftermath, the cultural significance (or insignificance), how it effects people’s lives and minds and relationships, the ramifications on the artists and other music going on into the future, and and and. Music is so deep that words themselves can never realistically hope to grasp its true nature. 200 words can never be enough…but then neither is 1000.

254: Attish: the Hidden Fire, by Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali

Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali (Pakistan)
Attish: the Hidden Fire (1998)
6 tracks, 66 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali are a qawwali party from Pakistan of the Chishtiyya Sufi order. Nowadays, they’re one of the most famous exponents of the traditional qawwali style in the world, but back when this album, their debut, was released, they were emerging talents. Led by Rizwan and Muazzam Mujahid Ali Khan, their uncle was the great qawwal Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who had just died the previous year leaving an emptiness in his place that has still never been filled. Nevertheless, people were looking for the ‘next big thing’ in qawwali, and up stepped Rizwan-Muazzam, already fully-formed and raring to take on the international scene. They later went on to experiment with various international sounds just like their uncle, but with Attish: the Hidden Fire, they showed off their chops in a traditional setting with a modern attitude.

It’s qawwali, and it’s very high-quality, so I think there is little in general that I can say that I haven’t said before about the beauty of the style. Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali are perhaps a little unusual by the fact that they have two lead vocalists instead of a soloist, but that’s not unheard of by any stretch, and their recognisable voices add a novel element as the album progresses.

So this album is another one where I’m going to be focussing on one piece of music in particular. Specifically, the last track on the album and therefore, I guess, probably the one people are most likely to miss. It’s called ‘Ali Ali Khena’, a song of praise to Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law and the one through whom Chishtiyya Sufis trace their spiritual lineage. A few years ago, I was playing this album for the first time in quite a while, and this track absolutely floored me to the degree that I play it very often nowadays. The reason why has become a slight mantra for this blog, and so I hope you won’t be too annoyed when I say: BLUES! This track is as close to a blues qawwali as you’re going to get without some ill-advised cross-cultural fusions. It’s not just a slight hinting at it with one or two notes here or there either, when that refrain comes around, ‘dam dam dam Ali Ali khena madhe Ali Ali khena, it hits every single note of the blues scale, and doesn’t deviate from it either. The groove, even though it’s based on the typical qawwali rhythm, seems to roll along with a real strut, and the harmonium sounds like it’s being played by someone well-versed in Hammond organ at times, especially at the beginning.

I wonder how much of that track’s bluesiness is intentional. It is entirely possible that it’s a complete coincidence – the scale used (that corresponds with the blues scale) is very similar to the raga Puriya Dhanashri, perhaps it’s just a natural progression from there. Whatever it is, I love it. And there’s a lesson in listening: never drop that attention before the end of the album – you never know what surprises await in the humble last track.

243: Call of the Soul, by Raza Khan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

199: Music of Central Asia, Vol. 6: Spiritual Music of Azerbaijan, by Alim Qasimov and Farghana Qasimova

Alim Qasimov and Farghana Qasimova (Azerbaijan)
Music of Central Asia, Vol. 6: Spiritual Music of Azerbaijan (2007)
11 tracks, 71 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

This is another album from a phenomenal set of releases, the Aga Khan Music Initiative’s ten-album Music of Central Asia series. The AKMI is an initiative overseen by the Aga Khan, the leader of the Nizari Ismailis within Islam, and its stated aim is to promote, internationally, the music of all those from Muslim lands and to educate people about this music both in its native cultures and around the world. This CD series, which ran from its first release in 2006 to 2012, was the initiative’s first project and focuses, as its name would suggest, on the classical and folk musics of Central Asia and its historical cultural links. There are albums in the series which focus on music from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Afghanistan, as well as collaborations with Chinese, Indian and American musicians and an album by the specially-created interesting pan-regional, all-female ensemble Bardic Divas. Again, this is a record series of the highest quality, and if you want to set off on a journey into Central Asian music, it’s one of the best places you can start. I will write about another album in the series later on in the year sometime, because it’s a little different, but for now I’ve chosen to write about this one by Alim Qasimov and Farghana Qasimova, performers of mugham music from Azerbaijan.

Admittedly, choosing this album has put me in a bit of an awkward position, because I’ve basically written as much as I really feel qualified to write about mugham back when I covered the album by Gochag Askarov. But I really wanted to include this album in the list because Alim Qasimov is considered the grandmaster of the style. Listening to Spiritual Music of Azerbaijan makes it clear why: his voice and his technique are infinitely subtle, and so powerful even when the passages are quiet – it feels as though his voice is an intense dam holding back the ferocity of the true might of mugham in full swing. What else makes this album special is that it is a series of duets with his daughter, Farghana Qasimova, who is herself a young master of the style. While it is not unknown for women to perform mugham, duets of any kind are incredibly rare, and male-female duets especially. Because Farghana learnt the art at her father’s knee, their personal styles are very similar, and their aim is to sing separately, but ‘with one voice,’ each representing two halves of one whole.

On this album, they together showcase a range of mugham performance styles, beginning will a full, seven-part mugham suite and finishing up with four more modern compositions that take the classical style in a different direction, or focus on its folk-based origins. Also, the last track is called ‘Köhlen Atim’, which translates to ‘My Splendid Horse’ or, if you will, ‘My Lovely Horse’, so I like that, it’s good.

If you want to know more about this album as you listen to it, the full, in-depth liner notes are available at the AKMI website, including lyrics and discussion of every piece – and that’s the case for the whole series too, it really is a wonderful resource. Hopefully this volume can lead you on to listening to all the others in the series in time – so there’s ten Good Albums for the price of one!

190: Lyubov’ Svyataya, by Doros

Doros (Russia)
Lyubov’ Svyataya (2004)
22 tracks, 59 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

The music of the male voice chamber choir Doros is worth listening to for many reasons. A cappella music has the ability to be so powerful, touching in with our most primal brains in a way that instruments don't quite manage to. On top of that, their music is religious and represents a faith we hear relatively little about in this corner of the world: they are one of the premier groups performing sacred Russian Orthodox music today, to the point where they regularly perform in St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. Their mix of incredibly precise harmony and complex polyphony shows them as true masters of the art of the voice.

But as interesting, worthy and musically stimulating as all these points are, it's not what brings me back to listening to Doros' album. Instead it's for just one of their number: the okavist. I saw the group perform as part of an evening of sacred musics a few years ago in Berlin, and it was the first time I’d ever even heard of an oktavist, let alone heard one sing. For the uninitiated, an oktavist is a singer whose voice is an octave below a baritone. That is very, very low. So low it sounds inhuman, creating more of an otherworldly rumble than clear tones. It is absolutely mindboggling, and chest-quivering too.

When Doros sing as a full septet, they sound like a mighty church organ, with every layer of pitch accounted for. You should definitely give them a listen; you may be transported to a higher plane, you may hear angels dancing between the harmonies, or, at least, you may hear a human sound quite unlike you've ever heard before.

180: Satta Massagana, by The Abyssinians

The Abyssinians (Jamaica)
Satta Massagana (1976)
14 tracks, 47 minutes (1993 reissue)
Spotify (sort of – it’s a different version, but a lot of the tracks are the same) ∙ iTunes

I've written in the past about the 'traditional' sacred music of the Rastafari, the drums and chant of the nyabinghi, but there's another religious music of the Rastas that is much more famous: it is, of course, reggae.

Roots reggae to be exact. Reggae has its origins in many forms, from the Jamaican styles of ska, mento and nyabinghi and American imports of soul, rhythm and blues and rock. As such, reggae itself comes in many forms, from the crooning pop of lover's rock to the funkier side of things made famous by Bob Marley. Roots reggae, for me, is on another plane entirely. It's deeper in so many ways: the lyrics are invariably about Rastafari and themes of black liberation; the groove is slow and weighty, as if nothing can stop it once it's got a momentum; the melody is bluesy and it's often – like so much religious music – based around short repeating phrases.

The Abyssinians are one of the most famous roots reggae bands, and Satta Massagana, their debut from 1976, is one of the genre's most crucial albums. It's actually a little bit more on the poppy side of roots, but it doesn't suffer from that at all, and everything that makes roots special is all there and accounted for. There are so many classics on this album, including the opener 'Declaration of Rights', but the stand out has to be the title track. The band's name shows their deep affinity with the Rasta motherland of Ethiopia, and 'Satta Massagana' shows that this is more than lip service – with lyrics in Amharic, Ethiopia's most widely-spoken language, the group show their passion for the country and the people of Ethiopia in line with Marcus Garvey's teachings.

Religion is the inspiration for so many of the world's most passionate music, from qawwali and gnawa to Gregorian chant and gospel, but if you're looking for the deepest grooves alongside the equally deep religious themes, roots reggae is surely your port of call…and you could do a lot worse than Satta Massagana by the Abyssinians to fill you up with that coolest of religious fervours.

147: Music from Azerbaijan, by Gochag Askarov and Mugham Ensemble Turan

Gochag Askarov and Mugham Ensemble Turan (Azerbaijan)
Music from Azerbaijan (2010)
5 tracks, 61 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Gochag Askarov was the very first performer of Azeri mugham that I ever encountered – actually, he was the first ever musician from Azerbaijan that I’d ever heard at all. Askarov and his group were performing at a festival I was at, and I literally went to check out his performance because it was new to me. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. There was so much in there that I recognised within this music that I didn’t know at all. The instruments and their roles reminded me of Arabic classical music, but the vocals seemed to have a direct connection to the qawwali music of South Asia.

Azerbaijan’s location in the Caucasus gives it access to all these musical histories spanning across the Asian continent – Azeris are a Turkic people, linking them with the cultures of Turkey in the west and Central Asia in the east, all the way up to the Uyghurs in modern-day China, but their proximity to Iran means that there is also very heavy influence from Persian cultures and, through that connection, Arabic and South Asian cultures too. The style that Askarov performs, mugham, is very much linked to all of these cultures, as it is just one of a whole continuum of styles that include makam of Turkey, maqam in the Arabic world, the Persian dastgah, the shashmaqom of the Uzbeks and the on ikki muqam of the Uyghur, and which can even be extended to include the ragas of South Asia with the slightest of imagination. These are classical styles that draw on the folk musics of their regions.

Mugham itself is a stately and virtuosic style that shows off the skills of its performers through their delicate manipulations of the melodies and scales and the mastery of the tiny ornaments that fill the music. For singers, such as Askarov, mugham demands a huge range of both pitch and dynamics, with melody lines often maintaining a very high pitch for a sustained period, and featuring varieties of yodels between various intervals of notes.

The living master of mugham is certainly Alim Qasimov, but Askarov is seen as the leading member of the younger generation of musicians, poised for ascendency. The accompanists here, Malik Mansurov on tar and oud (lutes), Elnur Mikailov on kamancha (spike fiddle) and Shukur Aliyev on ghaval (frame drum) and nagara (barrel drum), are all top-level players from the school of the arts in Baku, and accompany many of the country’s most famous musicians (I even saw them on Eurovision once). Their work together then, as heard on several albums, is a great way to get acquainted with the music.

This album in particular is a mix of different styles of mugham, with folk songs, ballads and instrumental pieces, but the centrepiece is the first track, a half-hour performance of ‘Dastgah Bayati-Shiraz’. In the Azeri sense, a dastgah is a complete mugham suite, including composed poetry, improvisations, unmetred sections and instrumental sections, and the main themes of the mugham are developed throughout.

Wow, I’ve done a lot of going on about this one. Sorry about that. Basically: if you don’t know about Azeri mugham, maybe you know a little bit now, and Music from Azerbaijan will set you up well for future adventures. Happy listening!

126: Move Upstairs, by the Como Mamas

The Como Mamas (USA)
Move Upstairs (2017)
11 tracks, 39 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

I have become seriously obsessed with the Como Mamas over the last couple of years, and they’re just my favourite artists of the moment. So, of course, I’ve already written about them, when I had the massive honour last summer to be able to sit down with them before their first – and so far only! – concert in England – you can read that article on my other blog, and I’ll try not to repeat myself too much.

The Como Mamas are Della Daniels, Angelia Taylor and Ester Mae Wilbourn. They’re from the small town of Como, Mississippi, and they sing gospel music, and they sing it hard. All of the albums on this blog are Good, but this one is SO GOOD YOU GUYS. I mean seriously. Right from the opening of the very first track, my heart starts beating extra hard and I just want to punch the air – this music really gets me somewhere inside. The lyrics and the harmonies are gospel, but everything else is raw blues.

The Mama’s previous recordings had all been a capella – they’re really interesting too, and definitely worth checking out: that’s the album Get an Understanding from 2013 as well as a handful of songs on the 2008 compilation Como Now: The Voices of Panola Co, Mississippi – but for Move Upstairs, Daptone Records paired them with their house band of guitar, organ, bass and drums, and it takes the music to the next level. The band is actually really understated, which is how it should be. There’s no solos, and they mostly chug along in the background, and this allows the Mamas to bring their full power to the fore without leaving empty space behind them when they do so.

Each of their three voices are very different from each other in terms of timbre and range, and so they each bring something else to the sound, making it a well-balanced meal. That said, I am absolutely in love with Angelia Taylor’s voice. Hers is a low voice that comes roaring from deep in her chest. The amount of emotion she puts into the notes as she bends, growls or shouts them, simply blows me away. Every one of the songs on the album is catchy and touching, but the songs that Angelia leads – ‘Move Upstairs’ and ‘He’s Mine’ – take me to another place.

I’m not religious, but the sheer power of these songs and this music and the reaction that they create in me does make me ponder on the essence of the divine – whether that’s from a higher power or just some exactly-measured dose of brain chemicals. Whatever is happening, it feels great. The Como Mamas are really, really special. The concert that I saw was one of the best I’ve ever been to. If you get the chance to see them perform, jump on it – you owe it to your soul.

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.

091: Love Songs and Trance Music from Balochistan, by Abdulrahman Surizehi

Abdulrahman Surizehi (Balochistan/Iran)
Love Songs and Trance Music from Balochistan (2006)
13 tracks, 133 minutes (2CD)
Spotify • iTunes

One of the most exciting things about music is discovering a great new sound you’ve never heard before; a subsection of this (and one that happens rather rarely) is finding out about an interesting instrument that makes a unique sound that had previously evaded your knowledge. That’s what I had when I first heard/saw the instrument that you hear on this album.

I actually first saw it on a documentary about Afghan musicians, where it was called an ‘electric banjo,’ but it definitely didn’t look like that. It was like a lap steel guitar, but with keys instead of a slide or frets. Then I did some digging and found out its wonderful story. In the Indian subcontinent, the acoustic version of the instrument is also known as the bulbul tarang, but it’s thought to have been directly adapted from the Japanese taishogoto, which itself evolved as a German-inspired mixture between the koto zither and…a typewriter. Not only that, but the Japanese instrument also made it to East Africa where it became absorbed into the taarab ensemble. An instrument with a global history that I’d somehow never heard of – I love it!

For Abdulrahman Surizehi, the instrument is called the benju, and he uses it to play the classical and folk music of Balochistan and the Baloch people. Balochistan is a historic region that spans areas of modern-day Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran; Surizehi hails from the Iranian portion. The Balochi culture is much closer to that of Afghanistan and the subcontinent, however, and that can be clearly heard on this album.

This is a double album, so there’s lots of music to be enjoyed on here (although it’s rather impractical as part of a record collection, as you might be able to tell by the shape of the cover). Each of the discs is made up of one of the two themes, with CD1 made up of nine folk melodies and CD2 dedicated to four extended medleys of religious pieces. The lyrical themes are all implied, of course, as this is an instrumental showcase for Surizehi’s benju, backed only by tambura drone and dokhor drum. Over the course of the album, though, you can get a real sense of the range available to the instrument, from joyous to sincere. My favourite track is something a bit different again, the last one from the first CD, ‘Min Gudbrandsdal.’ It’s Surizehi’s own composition, and it means ‘My Gudbrandsdal’ in Norwegian, after his adopted home. It’s a really cheerful mix of a Scandinavian folk-style melody in the Balochi setting, and it’s dead catchy.

It’s always a thrill to hear something new. A banjo-typewriter hybrid playing folk music from a country that doesn’t exist? You know you’re in for a treat.

057: Youth, by Matisyahu

Matisyahu (USA)
Youth (2006)
13 tracks, 47 minutes
Spotify • iTunes

The first time I'd heard of Matisyahu was on Later…with Jools Holland. He was dressed in a simple white shirt and a long black coat, with a large bushy beard on his chin and a kippah on his head. And then the incongruity: he was spewing some fast and accomplished beatbox directly into the mic. Then his band kicked in with some bass-heavy reggae. It was the first time this northern-English village lad had encountered Chasidism – and I wouldn’t have expected it to sound like this.

The album he was playing from on Jools was his second from the studio, Youth. The music is reggae, but with heavy doses of rock (from the band) and hip-hop (from Matisyahu’s raps), and others besides. It’s also produced by veteran electronica/world music/everything wiz Bill Laswell, who adds a welcome bucketload of dub into the mix.

The music is good in and of itself, but it’s the lyrics that make this album particularly interesting. As it was made back when Matisyahu was Chasidic (he’s since moved to a more mainstream version of orthodox Judaism), the words and themes of Youth are very relevant to that lifestyle. There’s lots of talk of God, references to scripture and religious philosophy and Judaically-informed guidance and advice. In the end, a lot of the lyrics sound rather similar to those of roots reggae, albeit with 100% less Jah.

It’s not perfect: the occasional use of a cod-Jamaican accent is a tad embarrassing and some of the rockier bits are quite cheesy, but 2006 is just about getting long enough ago to start looking regrettable, so let’s forgive the album a couple of dated elements.

A nice little thing to note is that alongside the standard record, a limited edition dub version was released too. Excitingly entitled Youth Dub, this side-release allowed Laswell to go nuts with all his creative might, and bringing Matisyahu’s backing band, Roots Tonic, to the fore. I love a dub remix album, so it’s all good by me. I can’t find Youth Dub to listen to anywhere online, and its rarity means it’s going for mad money second-hand – if you want to listen, drop me a message.

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.

032: Keur Moussa: Sacred Chant and African Rhythms from Senegal, by the Monks of the Abbaye de Keur Moussa

The Monks of the Abbaye de Keur Moussa (Senegal)
Keur Moussa: Sacred Chant and African Rhythms from Senegal (1997)
17 tracks, 42 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Musical fusions are absolutely everywhere now – if you can think of two types of music from anywhere in the world, the chances there’s been a meeting in some studio to record a collaboration of the two. Some are better than others, but most of them have the simple goal of putting two styles together and seeing if they sound good. The fusion heard on this albums is much more organic than most.

The Abbaye de Keur Moussa is a Benedictine abbey not too far out of the Senegalese capital Dakar. When you consider that Senegal is a country where more than 90% of the population is Muslim (and most of Senegal’s neighbours have a similar or higher percentage), an entire abbey of Catholic monks is certainly a point of interest. Add in the important roles that music of very different kinds play in Senegalese and Benedictine societies, well…

When I first heard of the existence of the Keur Moussa abbey, I knew I had to find out about its music. I wasn’t disappointed. This is some of the most fascinating music out there, I would say. The monks – some of them French, most of them Senegalese – make music that reflects their two cultures in a unique way.

There actually seems to be loads of recordings out there of the monks performing their duties – from sermons to music to prayer – but this album is the one that’s gotten the most exposure. It shows a good range of the music of the abbey: there are a cappella pieces of Benedictine chant and liturgy, and there are a few instrumental-only tracks which showcase the traditional West African instruments. The most intriguing tracks in this collection for me, though, are those where the two soundworlds meet, where kora and balafon are used to accompany the chant. There’s an interesting push-and-pull at work during these moments: sometimes the melody and rhythms of the chant take on a distinctly Senegalese feel; at others, the instruments work more in a European idiom. There’s even a lovely instrumental meeting between kora and oboe in the track ‘Dédicace (Dedication),’ which comes out as quite a jolly classical piece.

It’s all recorded there in the abbey, with all the associated godly reverb you would expect. With everything all together, the effect is palpable. There’s no escaping that this music is deeply religious and meditative, and with that comes a real sense of calm that permeates through it. It’s also just refreshing to hear an international music fusion that has come about in this way, to perform a real function in a literal hybrid culture, rather than a musical objet d’art manufactured for outside ears.