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!

198: Première Anthologie de la Musique Malienne: Le Mali des Sables, les Songoy, by Various Artists

Various Artists (Mali)
Première Anthologie de la Musique Malienne: Le Mali des Sables, les Songoy (1970)
10 tracks, 51 minutes
Download from the Anthems for the Nation of Luobaniya blog ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

The Première Anthologie de la Musique Malienne is a legendary set of six recordings by Bärenreiter-Musicaphon from Germany. They weren’t quite the earliest studio recordings made in Mali, but as far as I recall, they were the first recordings commissioned by the Malian government. The country was only 10 years independent by the time these records were released, and they were meant to instil in Malians a pride based on the heterogeneity of their new nation. So, of the six recordings there is an album by the Instrumental Ensemble of Mali, whose members represented a broad range of Malian cultures; one by Fanta Damba, a Bamana jeli (griot) who was considered the best singer of her generation; Cords Anciennes, a famous recording – the first ever – of instrumental kora duets and trios featuring the masters Sidiki Diabaté, Djelimady Sissoko and Batourou Sekou Kouyaté among others; and then three compilations of field recordings arranged by ethnicity, one on the music of the Mandinka, one of the Fula (or Peul) and one of the Songhai. All six are exquisite records of wonderful music and I urge everyone to listen to all of them.

Buuutttt, I’ve chosen to highlight the Songhai album in particular, for no special reason other than it’s quite rare nowadays to hear the ‘traditional’ music of the Songhai, who mostly live around the Niger bend in the north of Mali, including the cities of Timbuktu and Gao. There is quite a lot of Songhai music available nowadays – guitarist Ali Farka Touré is probably the most famous exponent – but so much of that music takes a lot of cues from rock and blues. That’s not a slight either, a lot of it is absolutely brilliant, but it does mean that the older roots of the style are heard much less outside of Mali than the rocked-up versions. This album gives a glimpse into what those traditions sounded like in the 1960s.

Because the album is part of an anthology, it makes sense that this compilation traverses a number of styles from the Songhai people. Most of the pieces are songs or recitations, performed by men and women and usually with the accompaniment of the ngoni, the boat-shaped lute found throughout Mali (although I don’t know the Songhai name for the instrument, sorry). Because there’s such a variety, each piece has a different aspect to it that you should definitely check out, but there are two tracks that really electrify me.

The track ‘Takamba’ (which is actually the name of the style, rather than the piece) is simply stunning. It’s a solo ngoni piece and it’s 7000% blues. I sat down today and tried to play it on the guitar. Obviously I couldn’t do it (my guitar skills leave much to be desired), but what was clear was that all the way through, the ngoni is playing exactly what we would call the blues scale, every one of the notes lines up, all the bends are in the same places along the scale, and even the hammer-ons and pull-offs are exactly what would be expected from a delta blues player. There are even points where you could slip right into the riffs from ‘Rollin’ Stone’ and there would be no clashes in there at all.

There’s also a really fascinating track, here entitled simply ‘Moorish Guitar’. Most of the tracks have at least a small description of the song, its lyrics and its cultural meaning (although the description for ‘Takamba’ is literally just ‘Played on a three-stringed guitar’), but this one says nothing other than it was recorded at Banamba. So this is a guess, but from what my ears are telling me and the ‘title’ of the piece, this is a Songhoi musician playing the oud in a sort of half-ngoni way, including tapping the soundboard of the instrument to provide percussion, and of course with all the bluesiness along with it all.

One of the reasons Malian music has been so successful internationally is because there’s just so much of it, with such huge variety of different styles and sounds to be heard across the length and breadth of the country. If you want to have a little bit of a primer to the more traditional side of things in Malian music, the Première Anthologie de la Musique Malienne is a great place to start.

197: Midnight Marauders, by A Tribe Called Quest

A Tribe Called Quest (USA)
Midnight Marauders (1993)
15 tracks, 54 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

This is an interesting album to compare to Us3’s Hand on the Torch. That album and A Tribe Called Quest’s were both released in the same year, 1993, and they both show different ways of approaching a very similar thing. Because for all intents and purposes, A Tribe Called Quest – and Midnight Marauders – are jazz hip-hop, but their style is approached from the opposite direction: Us3 was created with the intention of using a catalogue of samples from classic jazz to create hip-hop; Tribe just set out to make great hip-hop and use jazz as a tool for that. Back when I wrote about Us3, I called their album ‘semi-successful’ but prescient of the future sound of jazz. Midnight Marauders is a much more successful album.

I think it’s because it was made with so little pretence. Us3’s sound was, almost by definition, contrived, but Tribe’s feels so much more real, organic. Their instrumentals, created in the most part by Q-Tip on production and Ali Shaheed Muhammad as DJ, are top-class and built up from really diverse samples from vintage funk, soul and, yep, jazz, as well as intelligent and subtle beats programming, but importantly, it’s all made with the raps in mind. Here, the raps are the whole point of the record, and why shouldn’t they be? Between Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, the lyrics are insightful, thoughtful and meaningful, emotional but witty, often uplifting but pointed when necessary. The flows are exquisite, and, even though they still have a touch of early hip-hop’s nursery rhymes to them, the rhythms are interesting. The end result is that the music is a perfect fit for the vocals, and the vocals are a perfect fit for the music – an acutely balanced symbiotic relationship that works for the benefit of both.

I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that an album made for hip-hop fans is a better hip-hop album than one that aims to reach a crossover audience with a specific musical concept. And of course it is. Because for all intents and purposes, A Tribe Called Quest – and Midnight Marauders – are not jazz hip-hop, they’re merely hip-hop that use jazz in its most fruitful way to create their own rightfully legendary sound.

196: LDA v the Lunatics, by Los de Abajo

Los de Abajo (Mexico)
LDA v the Lunatics (2005)
15 tracks, 65 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Before this album, Los de Abajo were seen as the kings and queen of ‘salsa punk,’ but on this album they took a bit of a change of direction. Salsa and punk are still very much in evidence, but so are ska, mariachi, cumbia, dub and mestizo music, all rolled up together. We’ve already seen that Latin music and ska are a potent mix with Ska Cubano, but Mexican music has a bit more of an edge to it, and I think that comes from their culture’s much stronger connection to their pre-Columbian heritage. It means that LDA’s music is a meeting of three different sound worlds, the Latin, the African and the Mesoamerican. They even sing in the indigenous language of Zapotec on the track ‘Tortuga Dub’.

What prompted LDA’s proliferation of styles? Probably a lot of things, I don’t know them personally. BUT I reckon a big part of the sound of this album comes from the producers, UK duo Temple of Sound. We’ve featured Temple of Sound quite a bit so far on this blog (and we’ll continue to throughout the year) although not in that name yet, I think. They are Neil Sparkes and Count Dubulah (nowadays known as Nick Page), founder members of Transglobal Underground whose music together was on the much more dubby side. The elements of their production can be heard all over LDA v the Lunatics, but they don’t steamroller it – every sound that they add is in harmony with the band’s groove, only serving to accentuate their musical message rather than turning it into something it’s not trying to be.

But enough of the deep-dive, what is it like?? Well…it’s a total party, of course. This is excellent music for no-thoughts-required hour-and-a-bit of revelry. Maybe my thoughts are influenced by the fact that I’m writing this on the evening of the hottest day of the year so far, but this is proper cider in the park music. Even when its themes are serious (‘Resistencia’, for example, features a speech by revolutionary Comandanta Esther), it doesn’t become dry, it just adds more passion to the music, and more fuel to the party fire. And then there’s just the straight up bangers like the two covers (one Spanish, one English) of Fun Boy Three’s ‘The Lunatics (Have Taken Over the Asylum)’ with guest spots from Dennis Rollins on trombone and FBT’s own Neville Staple.

I’m not sure there’s much more to say about this one without ruining it. Want a punky, dubby ska party that’s totally Mexican all the way through? Play this, loud.

195: Volume 2, by Mariam Bogayogo

Mariam Bogayogo (Mali)
Volume 2
6 tracks, 45 minutes
Awesome Tapes from Africa

This is a strange one for me. I can never really listen to more than a couple of minutes of this album at a time. Nevertheless, I think it definitely deserves its place as a Good Album due to exactly that, really, just for how jarring it is to Western ears. Malian music is huge in world music circles and even in the mainstream in the West, in part because of how closely our two musical cultures align aesthetically, but this one is way out.

I don’t know much about this tape, but the comments section on Awesome Tapes from Africa thinks the original recordings were probably from the 1960s, when the singer Mariam Bogayogo was at the height of her fame. It’s hard to find out any information on Bogayogo online, so I don’t even know what style of music this is, but I know the accompanying instrument is the balani xylophone – the name means ‘small balafon’ and is the ‘pop’ version of the balafon, a version that does not have the same strict associations with the griots. So this is more of a pop style than a deeply traditional one…but that’s all I can find out.

But let’s talk about how it sounds. The original ATFA post describes it as ‘scary’ and ‘apocalyptic,’ and I get that. To my stupid ears, it sounds as if the vocals (of Bogayogo and her backing vocalists) and the balani players are playing in entirely separate keys. It doesn’t even sound as if someone’s out-of-tune, they sound as if they’re just playing two completely different – and opposing – sets of notes. All of their timing matches up too, so it’s not even as if one part of a multitrack recording was played back at the wrong speed. It sounds amazing, to be honest; completely unpleasant to my ears, but in such an intriguing way. I wish I knew what was going on here. On top of that, you have that standard thing of a very, very short melodic section that is repeated ad infinitum on the balani for the entire length of the track over which Bogayogo stretches her brilliant voice, but when matched with that mad tuning, the insistence of the repetition becomes really creepy, helped along by the poor audio quality and echo no doubt created through decades of copies-upon-copies.

See how long you can listen to this tape for. It’s such an exciting sound and a real puzzler for me. Please tell me if you know anything about this at all, but if not, just let those otherworldly tones get deep in your brain and mess things around a bit.

194: Ave Africa: The Complete Recordings 1973-1976, by Sunburst

Sunburst (Tanzania/Zambia)
Ave Africa: The Complete Recordings 1973-1976 (2016)
29 tracks, 108 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

I enjoyed this album when I reviewed it upon release (or rather, reissue), but I don’t think I realised just how much I enjoyed it. Since then, I’ve cracked it out on the regular, as it fits so many atmospheres. I think what’s so cool about Sunburst is that the sounds reflect the African-soaked Latin styles popular all around the Central and East African region at the time (including Congolese soukous, Zambian kalindula and Kenyan benga), but there is much more influence from American styles than in any of these others. So you have all of the things that make 70s African music great – the jangly, interlocking guitars, the conga-heavy rhythms – but over the top of it there’s just layers of funk, soul and surprisingly heavy rock too.

This collection is everything the band ever recorded – just 29 cuts, including their only album, Ave Africa, a few radio sessions and some otherwise unreleased recordings. Not that much, then, and in fact, really, all you really need here is the first disc, which holds the entirety of the proper album; the second disc of miscellanea is interesting, but their album is the real fire. It’s so infectious, so dancy and so cool, complex enough to find new, exciting elements with every repeat listen, but simple enough for its execution to feel completely free and natural.

When you consider how accomplished their only release is, it’s kind of amazing that their entire life as a band only lasted four years. It’s sad that they only made one official release in this time, but they certainly made the most of it. If you’re only going to release one album in your career, why not make it a perfect one? Sunburst did, and now we get to enjoy it for the ages. Dance!

193: O3, by Son of Dave

Son of Dave (Canada)
O3 (2008)
11 tracks, 36 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

I’ve written about unstoppable harmonica-wielder Son of Dave before, when I talked about his second album, O2. His third album is, yes, O3, and it provides an interesting flip-side to the previous one. O2 was a raw, almost completely solo affair, and the sounds of his loop-pedal-enhanced harp-beatbox-rattle-voice combo are exactly what you’d hear at a Son of Dave live show; on O3, he breaks open the instruments cupboard, invites some friends over and has a proper party.

On this album, that core sound is joined by guitars, piano, organ, drums, backing vocals and many more production elements, and the music itself shows a bit of a move away from blues and more of an integration of hip-hop, R’n’B and soul. But for all these additions and changes of tack, there’s absolutely no mistaking the energy, eccentricity and electricity of Son of Dave. Because all the tracks are still based on the one-man-band set up, they all still have that live feel, and it all rollicks along with the same sense of anarchic musical adventure.

This album and its predecessor are the only ones in Mr of Dave’s discography to follow such a naming pattern, and I think the pairing of the two is really obvious. His other, later albums develop onwards in different and interesting directions, but these two really feel like two halves of the same extended record in terms of atmosphere and inspiration. Basically, if you checked out O2 last time I wrote about it, get stuck in to this one – you’ll love it just as much.

P.S. I notice none of you heeded my advice to buy Son of Dave’s book, We Need You Lazzaro, You Lazy, Greasy Bastard. Come on you wimps. It’s less than a fiver and it’s brilliant, just get it and enjoy it in all its bizarreness.

192: The Shed Sessions (1982-1986), by The Bhundu Boys

The Bhundu Boys (Zimbabwe)
The Shed Sessions (1982-1986) (2001)
29 tracks, 146 minutes (2 CDs)
Full album stream on YouTube

The Shed Sessions is a compilation of the early music of the Zimbabwean jit band The Bhundu Boys. Taking its name from Shed Studios, the recording studio responsible for these recordings, the album brings together the tracks from the group’s first two LPs, Shabini and Tsvimbodzemoto, as well as a bunch of other tracks that were released here and there, or not at all. This is probably the best collection of the Bhundu Boy’s work; after these early years, they attained relatively huge success around the world, especially in the UK, as one of world music’s first megastars – they even supported Madonna at Wembley Stadium. After this success, their music became closer and closer to the UK pop music at the time, getting cheesier (and, yes, worse) in the process. But in their recordings for Shed Studios, they were still full of life, energy and fresh sounds, with their mixing of traditional Zimbabwean mbira (thumb piano) music, Congolese rumba and American rock’n’roll and country making an irresistibly dancey, sunshine-happy music.

Out of the nearly-30 tracks on this compilation, though, there has always been one track that stands out to me. While most of The Shed Sessions have that light, airy tone that makes jit such a feel-good music, the track ‘Manhenga’ is different. To start with, it’s actually a lot closer to mbira music than their usual fare, and to the angrier, more acidic musical form of chimurenga, especially with its very strong 6/8 rhythm (compare it to the track ‘Ndave Kuena’ by Thomas Mapfumo from 1987, which clearly has its roots in, or from the same source as, ‘Manhenga’). But there’s something else. There’s a darkness to it. When I was younger this track legit creeped me out; it’s spooky in a way that is hard to describe…but I’ll try. I think it may have something to do with the fact that it is musically quite close to their other stuff with the lighter vibes, the high-pitched guitars, the interweaving lines, the close harmonies, but the big difference is that it’s in a minor key as opposed to the otherwise consistent major of the rest of their oeuvre. And that slight change of scale turns it all on its head. The guitars that usually sound jangly instead feel paper-thin and fragile, the endless repeating of phrases and riffs that usually sounds so jubilant instead feels claustrophobic. Even Biggie’s shrill whistling adds a creepiness rather than jollity. It’s unlike any other track on this album, and in The Bhundu Boy’s recording career, as far as I’ve heard. It doesn’t freak me out as much as it did, but it makes me feel things that I don’t expect to feel from their music, and that’s surely a sign of a very special piece.

191: One Night at Momo’s Kemia Bar, by Various Artists

Various Artists
One Night at Momo’s Kemia Bar (2006)
21 tracks, 129 minutes (2 CDs)
(incomplete) Spotify playlist

Momo’s is a Moroccan restaurant in London, just off Regent Street. Despite the London-Morocco connection, as far as I can tell there is no relation to the MoMo that we covered a couple of weeks ago (doesn’t seem like a coincidence though, does it? Hmm). The food is good, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’ve got a load of money that you don’t want for some reason: it’s pricey. But for a long time it was also one of the hottest venues for live music in the city.

It was made more exciting by the lack of signage. You walk into this posh restaurant but turn immediately left, through an archway and down some stairs, then along a long-ish corridor and through a heavy, unmarked door…and you’re in the Kemia Bar! And it’s gorgeous: low, vaulted ceiling; dim, warm lighting in reds and golds and through patterned shades; decorated like a Bedouin’s tent. Already an amazing location, but then you add in the amazing music. The Kemia Bar played host to the best roots-based musicians from across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere, all in this cosy, intimate environment. They even provided the UK debuts for artists such as Amadou & Mariam, Mahmoud Ahmed, Tinariwen, Mariza and Seu Jorge among others.

Unfortunately, as all things seem to, the Kemia Bar concerts stopped in 2013. But before that happened, they released a handful of compilation albums that aimed to get across the atmosphere of the Kemia Bar, so that you could enjoy it in your own space. One Night at Momo’s Kemia Bar is the best of them. Across two discs, there’s a remarkable range of styles going on, but they all contribute to a whole that is fresh and exciting, upbeat but chilled and rather sophisticated too. Just listening to this mix makes the air slightly perfumed. There is a bit of a Spanish tinge to the first disc (my favourite of the two), with lovely pieces from Radio Tarifa, Ojos de Brujo and Trüby Trio featuring Buika, but then there’s also intense spoken word from Ursula Rucker, UK hip-hop from Ty featuring Roots Manuva, and a remix of Ethiopian singer Gigi. The second disc goes in a more electronica direction, perhaps more suitable for later-night dancing than the lounge atmosphere of the first CD, but with just as much variety; the highlight here is a smart remix of Césaria Évora’s ‘Angola’ by Carl Craig.

The Kemia Bar is much missed on the London scene, and its absence turns Momo’s from a haven for top-class international music to just another overpriced bougie restaurant. If anyone knows of any similarly cool venues around the city now, please do let me know – until then, I’ll just have to make do with a tagine, some incense and One Night at Momo’s Kemia Bar.

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.

189: Approximate Hellhound vs the Monkey Demon, by the Reid Paley Trio

Reid Paley Trio (USA)
Approximate Hellhound vs the Monkey Demon (2007)
10 tracks, 31 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Reid Paley is a man who laughs in the face of life's unrelenting ugliness. He sings about deep, complicated emotions but he makes it sound like a laugh, or at least a great excuse to rock around and smash things. Because for those complicated emotions he has an uncomplicated sound. For this album, his band is just a lo-fi trio of electric guitar, bass (both double and guitar) and a small drum kit, and they play together loosely. Together with the album's production, it feels so intimate and intense, giving the real feel of being in a small, dingey and smoke-filled bar.

Paley's is a style that is a bit harder to describe. The elements are easy to hear – blues, rock'n'roll, grunge, country, a slight Tom Waits jazz to it, an occasional Bob Dylan-esque turn-of-phrase – but just listing them doesn't really give an indication of the end result. There's some alchemy going on in the process that turns all of these iconic styles into one that it all his own. A lot of it is down to his personality, and the personality of his voice, which is gravelly and gruff. It's obviously a perfect fit for the louder, angrier and bluesier pieces ('Everything is Going Wrong (and That's Alright)', 'Yr Polish Uncle'), but it also provides a really nice, even intriguing, juxtaposition during the softer, more thoughtful songs ('Roses Red and Violets Black and Blue', 'The Dark Sky'). And then of course you get double the fun when he mixes up the both on tracks like 'Stay Awhile' and 'See You Again'.

At first I was a bit disappointed at the length of the album, but I've come to realise the genius of that. There's no dearth of songs on here, it's just that in true punk fashion, none of them stick around for very long – most don't reach the three-minute mark. But at the end of the album, it still feels like a full meal; you've gone on an interesting musical journey, and back in time for tea.

Approximate Hellhound is an album I got when it first came out and that I keep coming back to, and I'm sure I will for a long time. It's a shame Paley’s never made it over to the UK since I've been able to get into 18+ venues. In fact, this was his last solo album to date; he made one more in a duo with Pixies' Frank Black in 2011, but after that, seems to have drifted away from music. I really hope he finds his way back there eventually, so that we may hear more of his simple, complicated, heavy, soft and kinda crazy songs.

188: Buena Vista Social Club, by Buena Vista Social Club

Buena Vista Social Club (Cuba)
Buena Vista Social Club (1997)
14 tracks, 60 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

If there is ever a case for naming a single legendary album of the world music era, surely Buena Vista Social Club must be it, or at least high in the running. Years ago, when Songlines magazine printed a world music chart based purely on record sales, this album was in the top ten every single month. That's impressive enough as it is before you take into account that this was more than 10 years after the record was first released, such was its awesome and enduring popularity.

So what is it? Quite a simple premise, actually: get a whole roomful of Cuba's greatest musicians and singers from yesteryear (many of whom had fallen into obscurity or given up music entirely) and get them to record one more album. Add some star-power in the form of American roots revivalist Ry Cooder that's, apparently, a recipe for success. As much as it is impossible to overstate Buena Vista Social Club's success, it's also hard to argue that it's not entirely deserved. A lot of the world's hugest (and especially the most unexpected) successes are somewhat dubious musically – and quite naturally, having to appeal, as they do, to the lowest common denominator across many different cultures internationally. This album defies that, and gloriously.

The music here is in the style of 1950s son (which would come to be known as salsa after its move to the US), but also including old-style boleros, trovas and cha-cha-chás. Perhaps reflecting the musicians' long and varied careers, there's also a lot of jazz influence in the sound, especially from Reubén González' piano. Every one of the songs on Buena Vista Social Club have become standard repertoire in Cuban music, and even in Spanish-language music around the world regardless of style. This can even be to a somewhat harmful degree: I've never been, but apparently it's quite impossible to traverse the streets of Havana without hearing enough versions of 'Chan Chan' as to never want to hear it again.

Buena Vista Social Club did amazing things for Cuban music on the international scene. As well as making huge – and very, very rich – stars of its musicians such as Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Reubén González, Omara Portuondo, Orlando 'Cachaíto' Lopez and Eliades Ochoa, it gave the world a real taste for Cuban music in both this old style and the new, which it continues to feel today. And with an album as perfect as this, that's not really too much of a surprise.

187: American Idiot, by Green Day

Green Day (USA)
American Idiot (2004)
13 tracks, 57 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Much like yesterday's album, this is one that I came to as a teenager that didn't make me as cool as I thought it did. Unlike yesterday's, I can't really remember where I came across this one. Maybe I saw them on telly, Later…with Jools Holland or something, or maybe one of my friends put me on to them, I'm not sure. Whichever way, this wasn't music I usually listened to. I'd had some exposure to 70s British punk as part of standard cultural consciousness, but Green Day were the first band of the American punk lineage that I really got to grips with.

I think American Idiot is a real teenage album, and considering it came out when I was 13, it got me at exactly the right time. This music felt so raw, energetic and exciting, and even quite subversive. Maybe this was my chance to be a rebel properly for once! Or at least it was until I mentioned it to my parents and my dad said 'oh yeah, Green Day, they're good them, your brother used to play them a lot about 10 years ago.' GOD, dad you’re so lame.

Anyway, I still loved it. A lot of the songs, especially the most famous in 'American Idiot' and 'Holiday', are angry-political in an uncomplicated and non-nuanced way that is very appealing for kids who are just about becoming politically aware: they seem to have a deeper purpose than the impotent anger of classic punk ('Anarchy in the UK', 'Boredom', 'Pretty Vacant' etc) but without the need to be anything more than vaguely aware of world politics as it was happening. And then there are a bunch of tracks that are basically Teen Angst: The Soundtrack and I am completely okay with that – teen angst is a very important seam to mine.

What is really excellent is that – to my ears at least – this album hasn't aged a jot, musically. Yes, lyrically it's a bit childish, but the album is just as listenable from an entertainment standpoint as it ever was. There are tracks that are straight-up loud, fast and chaotic punk; there are slower, more weighty tunes; there are long medleys that ride a range of emotions and musical styles united by a common theme; there's even a piece based on a sample of tabla and tambura that is nowhere near as cringy as that sounds.

Much like I came into hip-hop just as my peers decided it wasn't cool any more, the same thing happened with Green Day: here's a band that has been part of the zeitgeist in their particular field for a long time, they release an album that I really connect with musically and emotionally and…well, fans of the band tend to agree that American Idiot was the turning point of Green Day, the album where they sold out for a more mainstream audience. Ho hum. That's up to them. As for me, I'll keep letting my inner teenager rock out to 'Holiday' more frequently than is perhaps dignified, but for a long time to come.

186: Boomerang, by Daara J

Daara J (Senegal)
Boomerang (2003)
13 tracks, 56 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

I can't quite remember how I first came across Daara J. I have a vague memory of buying their album in an HMV, possibly on spec from having heard their name somewhere, but I also know I saw them on my 13th birthday at WOMAD as part of a strange 30-minutes-each double bill on the main stage with The Drummers of Burundi. I'm not sure which came first, but the end result was me listening to Boomerang and loving it.

I was thrilled to work out that this was hip-hop, and that I actually 'got' it. Hip-hop was always something other people liked that I never really understood, but this one hit me in the right places, even if I couldn't understand any of the Wolof and only a tiny fraction of the French. And – because that's how these things go – it opened my ears up to a whole world of hip-hop that I'm still loving and learning to this day.

It's not just hip-hop on offer on Boomerang, but those are the most successful bits of the album. The rest is more musically inclined towards pop and R'n'B that sounded dated enough when it came out, let alone now. Basically, you want to stick to the first five tracks of this one for the cream of the album, which goes noticeably downhill after that. But those five tracks are excellent. The highlight is the title track and opener. It's a rumination on the idea that hip-hop 'boomeranged' from Africa to America and now back. The raps in Wolof are at a blistering pace but every syllable is clear; the rhythms are exciting and the hooks from the then-young Malian singer Rokia Traore (who also appears on the track 'Le Cycle') are really beautiful.

Where Daara J are at their best – as they are on this album – is when they are uncompromising in their Senegalese identity. Their music may be born from hip-hop and doused in anything from soul to reggae to salsa, but there's also inescapable influences from mbalax, the sabar and tama drumming from the Wolof people and any number of other audibly Senegalese styles.

Of course, by the time I tried to impress the cooler kids at school with the fact I'd finally got into hip-hop (albeit in a slightly unusual way), they'd moved onto something else and hip-hop was deemed uncool now, and so remained I. But the joke's on them. I got to dig this great album that included African hip-hop at its best, and build a whole new taste in music from that point. They didn't. So nerr.

185: I Was Real, by 75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill (USA)
I Was Real (2019)
9 tracks, 69 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

If you describe it out loud, 75 Dollar Bill's music sounds as if it would not work, or that it will at the very least sound completely contrived: blues of the electric Delta sort (think RL Burnside, T-Model Ford, Junior Kimbrough) as if it was put through a filter of Steve Reich and Philip Glass-esque minimalism to turn it into extended, instrumental compositions. Sound rubbish, right? But it totally works! When you think about it, both of those individual styles are based on repeating riffs, small changes and discrepancies and endless drones. The biggest difference is the scales they use and the cultures they inhabit. And there's another musical world that fits that description too…

This is the New York duo's second album for the Glitterbeat imprint tak:til, and they've gone in a slightly different direction with this one*. In I Was Real, they bring in quite a lot of the sounds of north-west Africa, whose music is also based on the same riffs and drones as blues and minimalism; as such, it's a perfect fit. This album is permeated with the scales, rhythms and (most importantly) grooves of the Tuareg, Songhai, Hassaniyya and Gnawa peoples. It only adds too, none of the blues or minimalism is taken away.

I find 75 Dollar Bill's use of instruments and timbre interesting, too. Che Chen and Rick Brown play guitars and drums respectively, ably assisted by lots of multitracking. In the true spirit of minimalism, they deal in waves of sound, so when they introduce other instruments such as saxophones, fiddles or even the Moroccan guimbri, they're not immediately obvious. Instead they slot in, adding their unique sounds to the overall sonic morass and making sure its timbre and atmosphere are exactly perfect. Then, when it's all cooking together nicely, those instruments will step out from the pack to take their moment in the spotlight.

This music is meditative, quite slow but always growing. I actually find listening to it really exciting. You get accustomed to a certain groove, letting the loping and repeating rhythms get deep into your soul, but then there always comes something different. It could be so tiny, like the introduction of a new, short and wickedly-bent note on guitar that goes as soon as it comes, but it gets you like an electric shock. And then that will come around again and be built into that same groove, just waiting for the next tiny firework to come along. It's such an intelligent method that makes an equally intelligent – but not impenetrable – music. I absolutely love it.


* Although I do heartily recommend their first album on tak:til, Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock, which was going to be on this blog instead until this album came out last Friday.