349: I’m Not Here to Hunt Rabbits, by Various Artists

Various Artist (Botswana)
I’m Not Here to Hunt Rabbits (2018)
11 tracks, 43 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

I only actually have two albums of Botswanan music in my music library and they both made it into this blog, which tells me I really should be finding more of it to listen to!

Chances are, if you love music (and I know you do) and you have access to the internet (I’m not sure how you’re reading this otherwise), you’ll have come across this video sometime in the last 10 years:

That’s Ronnie Moipolai, playing a guitar with four strings in an unusual overhand manner, complete with little party tricks, and just absolutely bossing it. That video went viral on the musically-interested side of social media when it came out, and it became the impetus for this album: here’s one brilliant guitarist from Botswana making beautiful music, how many more are there?

Well, certainly more than enough. Inspired by the Youtube videos of Bokete7, David Aglow came to Botswana, tracked down a bunch of the musicians captured in the Youtube series – including Ronnie – and got them into a recording studio in the capital Gabarone. The results are wonderful. All 11 tracks are solo performances of singer-musicians, and this lends a real clarity of style on each one. Their acoustic and electric guitars pick out crystal clear patterns around simple chord sequences, and their voices sing joyous sounding melodies around topics of every shade, making melodies that sometimes sound South African, sometime Zimbabwean and sometimes all their own.

The intricate guitars are the focus, but that’s not all that’s on display here. There’s Annafiki Ditau singing with a Casio keyboard backed by one of those preset drum patterns, and there’s also interesting sounds of traditional fiddle instruments: Oteng Piet plays the segaba, a giant and ancient one-stringed instrument played with a bow in a circular pattern, which creates all sorts of crazy harmonics, and Babsi Barolong plays a homemade fenjoro, a three-stringed violin with a plastic tub as a resonator. No matter what instrument, the songs sound just as sweet.

In a time when it feels like at least half of albums of African music released into Europe are reissues or compilations of music made between the 1960s and 1990s, it’s really refreshing to hear an album like this: still a compilation of sorts, giving an overview of an overlooked musical culture, but with musicians that create the music now and recording them especially for this project. The record supports the music as it is being made, rather than looking back into a ‘glorious past’ and, I would hope, remunerating the musicians in real-time rather than relying on luck to find the makers of long-forgotten recordings. And, most importantly, I’m Not Here to Hunt Rabbits is just full of really good music from somewhere that doesn’t usually get the attention it deserves.

348: Savane, by Ali Farka Touré

Ali Farka Touré (Mali)
Savane (2006)
13 tracks, 59 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

In 1961, a compilation of 16 Robert Johnson tracks returned him to the popular consciousness and inspired a whole load of white kids to become rock musicians. 23 years after his death, that album enshrined Robert Johnson as The King of the Delta Blues Singers. Released just four months after his own death, the cover of Savane proclaims Ali Farka Touré as the ‘King of the Desert Blues Singers.’ It’s an ultimate superlative and, as with Johnson’s title, it’s hard to argue that it is undeserved.

For most music fans, Ali Farka Touré was the first time they’d encountered the concept of the ‘African blues.’ When his albums of his voice-and-guitar renditions of the traditional Songhoi style were re-released in the UK in 1986, it was an absolute revelation. Music fans, journalists and DJs fell off their chairs at this wonderful, hither-to unknown (to them) music that sounded (to them) so reminiscent of the blues, especially John Lee Hooker’s drone-based delta style but with the high-pitched, slightly Arab-influenced vocal melodies of the Sahara desert. In fact, for most of the time, Ali claimed never to have heard blues music until he came to Europe in the late 1980s…that doesn’t appear to be exactly true, but then Ali was known for often speaking in deep metaphors and near-impenetrable riddles. It’s quite possible that he didn’t consider blues to be a style of music at all; for him it was just a subgenre of his own.

By the time it had come to his last album, though, there was no doubt that Ali had taken blues as a vital component into his sound. For me, Savane is Ali Farka Touré’s masterpiece, and he thought so too. He was dying as he made it, and he knew it; there was no point in leaving any of the stops un-pulled. But instead of filling it with American or European guests such as those he’d worked with in the past, this one was all about him. There are still big names on the disc – Bassekou Kouyaté on ngoni, Afel Bocoum on backing vocals, Pee Wee Ellis on tenor sax and Little George Sueref on harmonica – but they are all working for Ali, prostrating themselves musically at his giant’s feet.

The whole album is gloriously cool. Ali’s voice has a lower pitch than he had 20 years earlier, but it means he can get to a menacing growl when he wants to. His guitarwork is sublime, whether he uses acoustic or electric, and his bandleadership is beyond reproach – there is not one solo or one lick that is out of place. Whether the tracks are in a stripped-back and traditional mode with just guitar, ngoni and calabash behind him, or a full-on rolling desert blues explosion like the opening track ‘Erdi’, which sees the one-string njarka fiddle trading lines with the blues harp, all of it is fit to explode your expectations.

When you know that a work is going to be your last, it’s got to be a good one. Ali Farka Touré didn’t want to leave his fans wanting, and so he recorded a blockbuster. He never lived to see it released, but he did get to give the final approval weeks before he left. After decades of creating music that made jaws drop around the world, what an awesome way to close it with a bang. Whether of Songhoi music, a nebulous ‘desert blues’ or just his own wonderful style, Ali Farka Touré was, without a doubt, the King.

347: Whirl-y-Waves, Volume 3: Sounds Imported, by Various Artists

Various Artists
Whirl-y-Waves, Volume 3: Sounds Imported (2005)
24 tracks, 155 minutes (2 CDs)
Stream and download via the Whirl-y-Gig website

The Whirl-y-Gig is a wonderful world of alternative dance music. A parallel dimension of love, light and epic bangers. Well, it is once a month. The Whirl-y-Gig is actually London’s longest running club night, and has been transforming spaces all over the city into pools of peace since 1981. Once upon a time, Whirl-y-Gig was a common fixture at festivals, including WOMAD, and now they have their own – the Whirl-y-Fayre, hosted in August every year in the Vale of Avalon. The décor is a beautiful mix of psychedelic fabrics, colours, flowers, trippy lights, lasers, UV, East African and South Asian patterns and abstract shapes. The smell is a mix of incense and euphoria (and a little weed). Everyone is welcome, and its wide-ranging audience reflects that. Elderly hippies dance with first-time clubbers and everyone feels the love. Until licensing laws got the better of it, it was even an all-ages affair, and the kids were made as welcome as anyone else. An hour before the end (at 6 or 7am), a huge parachute drops from the ceiling, the music turns chill-out and everyone comes down gently into the morning on a gently undulating flow of bliss. What a place.

And behind the decks, every time, for (at least) eight hours a go, is the legendary DJ Monkey Pilot. His sets are as eclectic as the people that attend: there’s techno, trance, drum’n’bass, dubstep, house… but for me, one of the most important roles of the Whirl-y-Gig was as a vibrant centre of the world dubtronica scene at its height in the 90s and early 2000s. So many of that scene came through the Whirl-y-Gig doors, whether as artists or as partygoers (usually both), and the club duly responded by becoming the place to hear the newest and the best in internationally-focused, dubwise electronica. The list is jaw-dropping. Transglobal Underground, Loop Guru, Dreadzone, the State of Bengal, Kamel Nitrate, the Kumba Mela Experiment, Banco de Gaia, MoMo, Zion Train, System 7…I could go on and on. Two of the albums we’ve already covered on this blog even have tracks named after the club – Dr Didg’s Serotonality and Afro Celt Sound System’s Volume 1: Sound Magic – such is its influence.

Which brings us to this album. It’s the last of three compilations in the Whirl-y-Waves series, and it’s basically just a little bit of Whirl-y-Gig that you can make in your very own home. It’s two CD-length mixes by Monkey Pilot himself built up of all solid Whirl-y-classics. The first CD is full-on dancing hard at midnight music; the second takes a more chill-out approach, still with beats, but appropriate for those early morning still-awake peace-outs. Parachute music, in other words. Each of the three Whirl-y-Waves mixes are essential in my opinion, but I went for this third volume purely because of those first four tracks: ‘King of the Sound and Blues’ by Zion Train, ‘Yellow and Black Taxi Cab’ by Transglobal Underground, ‘Tandoori Shakeaway’ by Kamel Nitrate and ‘Ararim (Friends, Family and Lovers Remix)’ by Oojami. To start an album that way is simply obscene – that’s over 20 minutes of just some of the best world dubtronica imaginable. And after that, the vibe just continues.

The Whirl-y-Gig is some proper utopian shit, and if the world were more like it is inside those walls, it would be a happier, and certainly dancier, place. But life can’t be a Whirl-y-Gig all the time, so for the rest of it, this album can help. Light that incense, flick those lights and sail across those Whirl-y-Waves into a better place…

346: Bags & Trane, by Milt Jackson & John Coltrane

Milt Jackson & John Coltrane (USA)
Bags & Trane (1961)
8 tracks, 56 minutes (1988 CD version)
Spotify ∙ iTunes

When you read the hard info about this album, the auspices are good. It’s a double-header from vibes player Milt ‘Bags’ Jackson and saxophonist John Coltrane, whose statuses as the all-time greats of their instruments can hardly be in question; the rhythm section is an impeccable trio of Paul Chambers on bass, Hank Jones on piano and Connie Kay on drums; it was even recorded in that magical year of 1959, although it didn’t see light for another couple of years. Stats like that would lead to some pretty high expectations. And you know what? It lives up to every one of them.

How much more can you say about Bags & Trane than that it’s…Bags, and Trane? It was the only time the two masters met in the studio, and of course it’s fantastic. It was before Coltrane’s big musical/spiritual/cerebral revolution that tore the fabric of jazz and opened up a portal to another universe forever, but still when he was at the top of his game as a hard-bop player, and Bags subtle playing is nevertheless slightly less restrained than when he’s in full-on third stream mode. Both musicians pull the other into their own sphere a little bit, to the detriment of neither and the benefit of the album as a whole. Neither do they suffer from the clash of egos that is a common side-effect of such meetings: both players are as gracious as they are virtuosic, clearly revelling in each other’s skills and allowing room for the magic to take place in its own time.

The two tracks that allow each musician to shine so much are the succinctly named pair of ‘Bags & Trane’ and ‘Bebop’. They both have very different feels. The first is a cool, slinking blues at 120 beats per minute; the second a heavy bop, originally by Dizzie Gillespie, at a stonking 150 beats per minute, but with most of the playing itself in double time. In both settings, each musician’s solos (including turns from Jones and Chambers) could only be their own, unmistakably, but they hit the groove of each track exactly right, even down to their positioning in the solo order. Perhaps most importantly, neither overshadows the other.

It says two things to me. It’s mad that Bags and Coltrane only recorded with each other just this once, as their chemistry feels as if they’ve known and explored each other’s playing from a hands-on basis for years. And then that it just shows what immaculate geniuses the two were; to be able to slip so comfortably into such a close collaboration as if it were no thing, as a mere diversion from their own respective musical journeys, and then to go on just as easily in their separate directions is surely a sign of what other level they were on, able to connect with each other on some telepathic level through the medium of jazz. We’re so lucky that they did decide to come together this one time, to create this record that still makes me as excited to listen to it as I’m sure the jazz fans of 60 years ago were when they first heard this meeting of masters.

345: White Elephants & Golden Ducks: Enchanting Musical Treasures from Burma, by Various Artists

Various Artists (Burma)
White Elephants & Golden Ducks: Enchanting Musical Treasures from Burma (1997)
16 tracks, 72 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

To be honest, the album that I was actually intending to write about today was Birmanie: Musique d’Art released on Ocora in 1981, but I couldn’t find anywhere for you to listen to it or download it on the internet, so I thought I’d give you this one instead. Maybe Ocora will rerelease that compilation at some point as they have been doing with a lot of their recordings, but either way, if you get a chance to listen to it, it’s a really nice set of all different classical music traditions from Burma, so definitely give that a go. But for now, this is something (ever so slightly) different…

Where the Ocora release deals with only the strictest definitions of Burmese classical music, played on all traditional instruments and in traditional ensembles such as the hsaing waing orchestra, White Elephants & Golden Ducks presents a much more contemporary view of that art music culture. The traditional instruments are still there to be enjoyed in all their glory: the pat waing tuned drums are always a scintillating sound, and the kyey (metallophones similar to an Indonesian gamelan), saung harp, pattala xylophone, hne shawm and palwei flute all play important roles on this album. That’s not all, though – there’s also a variety of western instruments showcased throughout the album, all lent interesting twists in the context of the Burmese classical style.

Although there is violin here, played by U Tin Yi, with its similarities to the traditional Burmese fiddles, it is perhaps surprising that it is not the instrument that lends itself to the styles on show in the most natural way. That would instead be the acoustic slide guitar, played here by U Ohn Lwin. The instrument’s guttural tones put it in the same aural region as the saung, and it is used in a similar way, but its ability to slide, vibrato and bend notes lend the slide guitar its very own place within the style, and it feels completely at home. The instrument that is a real wildcard here, though, is the piano of U Yee Nwe. The way he plays accentuates its status as a percussion instrument, using it in much the same way as the pattala and the pat waing, with all the same sorts of ornaments. However, it has a really uncanny ring to it. Unlike the violin or slide guitar, the piano is locked into playing in western-style tuning of equal temperament, which is at odds with the Burmese way of tuning. In playing the pieces to the closest approximation of the Burmese notes, though, it introduces all sorts of unusual lopsided melodies and harmonies, often with lots of clashing, close together notes played at the same time. The effect is not unpleasant, but it’s played in such a singular way that whether you’re coming at it with western ears or even off the back of listening to lots of Burmese music, it is a really odd sound. Give yourself a moment to adjust and it will all become clear.

The use of instruments in this way is fun, but what I really love about Burmese classical music is that it is so unique. Different elements of the pieces can bring to mind art music from surrounding cultures – Indian sometimes, Chinese others, Thai and even Indonesian resonate in there too – but the way they are pieced together is heard nowhere else. It’s the same thing that I’ve talked about in regards to music all around the world: the way Burmese music is constructed could only ever have occurred in Burma, reflecting perfectly its cultural geography in relation to its neighbours. And obviously it’s true of all of those neighbouring cultures as well, which would not sound the same if it weren’t for Burmese music through the ages. With enough research, I’m sure you could build up a whole global map of music in this way, tracing lines of compounding influence from one group of people to the next to create magical chains thousands of miles long, and steeped in just as many years of history.

If you have never listened to Burmese classical music before (aside from the solo saung of Hlaing Win Maung, which you obviously listened to and loved back in May when I wrote about it here), both White Elephants & Golden Ducks and, if you can find it, Birmanie: Musique d’Art are perfect entry points. There’s lots to recognise in there, but you won’t have heard anything like it before.

344: Sinsemilla, by Black Uhuru

Black Uhuru (Jamaica)
Sinsemilla (1980)
8 tracks, 36 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Sinsemilla is a classic album of roots reggae, from when the genre itself was achieving more and more mainstream attention around the world. That leaves this album, Black Uhuru’s international debut, with a really interesting edge to it. It’s undeniably roots: the music itself is dark and dubby, its lyrics a mix of hard-hitting politics, social issues, Rasta chants and good old cannabis songs (the ultra-catchy title track is a great example). It’s not extravagant, there’s no horn section, and the musical tone is for the most part rather serious. But on the other hand, there is something a bit pop about it too. Most obvious to my own ears is that most of the tracks are really rather fast. It’s not music for sitting back and letting the cavity-vibrating bass and infinitely recurring snare drum hits wash over you, this is get-up-and-dance music. There’s even some very of-its-time synth drums in there, which slot into the sound perfectly. It’s basically a great record to introduce the wider world to roots reggae: obviously on a different plane to the happy sunshine music of Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’ or ‘One Love’, but it can lead on from that very nicely.

Even without that context, it’s a hell of an album. Written and fronted by Michael Rose, with the legendary rhythm and production section of Sly and Robbie on drums and bass respectively, as well as Ansell Collins on piano and keys and all of it recorded at Channel One Studios, could it ever have really gone wrong? With so much reggae genius and history going into these eight tracks, it’s little wonder they’re permeated with vibe. There’s even some lovely blues harp here and there from Jimmy Becker, which helps to bring out roots reggaes inherent bluesiness (always a win in my book).

Black Uhuru helped to bring the intense, Jah-filled not-quite-dub of roots reggae to a world that had been primed by fun, soulful Caribbean lilts, and Sinsemilla was their way of opening the door. And even 40 years later, it is just an excellent listen.

343: Warato’o, by Narasirato

Narasirato (Solomon Islands)
Warato’o (2012)
14 tracks, 58 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

This album is what happens when you give a bunch of lads from the Solomon Islands a truckload of bamboo and tell them to get going.

Narasirato are a band of 'Are'are people from the island of Malaita. The 'Are'are know their way around bamboo, and their traditional music is comprised of all sorts of instruments made out of the stuff. With 16 musicians in their band, Narasirato make a huge sound of all different sorts of textures and timbres, just using this crazy grass. They build up layers of melodies using thin stalks as panpipes, create bass patterns by blowing into thick tubes like a horn or slapping their open ends with repurposed flip-flop soles, and beat out rhythms on the biggest logs, which are stretched over with plastic skin to make drums.

Because each pipe can only play one fixed pitch, all the different elements of sound are created by interlocking between different members of the group. There’s so much teamwork at play in this music, and it’s a testament to just how solid Narasirato are as a group. If just one musician was missing or – god forbid – got their part wrong, the whole thing would collapse. But, of course, they don’t, so it ends up as a wonderfully-timed, beautifully-pitched mass of tightly-bound breaths, thumps and thuds.

From what I’ve said, you may think that Narasirato play music that goes way back into the 'Are'are tradition, but that’s only partly true. Their music is evidently part of a long line of bamboo music, but these musicians haven’t been sealed off from the wider world; this isn’t a dry field recording*. In and among the Solomon Islander sounds are glimpses of gospel harmony, reggae rhythms, even country in some weird way (although that may just be my ears playing tricks on me), and when the lead singer gets going, he can slip into full-on soul singer mode when he wants to.

With Warato’o, Narasirato showcase a thoroughly modern take on the music that goes back through many generations of 'Are'are musicians. It also just shows how much sound you can get out of that glorious plant, bamboo – if there ever is an elemental sound of the earth and the wind, this is it.


* Brilliant field recordings of traditional 'Are'are do exist, many of them made by ethnomusicologist Hugo Zemp, including three volumes of the series Flutes De Pan Mélanésiennes 'Are'are on Disques Vogue from 1972. There’s also this cool little film, I think also by Zemp, in which a few styles of bamboo music are presented – I really love the first guy:

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.

341: Buzzin’ About, by the Apples

The Apples (Israel)
Buzzin’ About (2008)
12 tracks, 53 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

The Apples are the funkiest band I’ve ever seen, and they don’t take the usual route to it, either.

They are nine, but of that number, not one of them sings or plays guitars or keys. No bass guitar, either. They have a drum kit, double bass, trumpet, trombone, tenor and soprano sax and baritone sax. Where they make it special is their two turntablists and their producer, who curate a wide-ranging set of samples, press them onto vinyl and perform them live with all the appropriate cutting and scratching for that extra spice.

As a group, the Apples’ performances are immaculate. They are all so perfectly tight. The horns are raw and soulful, able to move as one creature or split off into incredibly intricate threads of countermelodies. Shai Ran could be an acoustic Bootsy Collins, turning the double bass into a funk machine with the slightest jazz inflection. The turntablists populate the soundspace with layers of vintage and downright interesting samples, from gospel voices, spoken word, mysterious guitar noodlings, traditional Hebrew song and sounds chopped up so much to be unrecognisable, deployed with the utmost sensitivity, precision and chemistry with the rest of the group. It’s all held together by bandleader and drummer Yonadev Halevi, whose playing is snappy and expressive while remaining understated.

I think Buzzin’ About is the Apples’ album that most closely represents how they sound live. Of course, it doesn’t capture the electric atmosphere of a sweaty club of moving bodies, but it comes closer than you’d think. The music is so fun! It feels as if the band are dancing along with you as they play. The solos from the horns and the decks are great, and when they finish, they leave a trail of energy in their wake that you can feel palpably in the rest of the music. What an excellent mash-up of mostly-acoustic funk, New Orleans jazz and brass and a pinch of hip-hop in there for fun. Plus, there’s a bonus cover of Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name of’ to finish up the album which is just fab.

Really, while the Apples’ music is stunning in its arrangement and groovability, words do a disservice to the feelings that it conjures. It’s just some ever-loving primordial funk-juice that bubbles from below whenever the Apples get their thing going. It’s not difficult to experience. Just stick this record on from the beginning and you’ll know what I mean within the first four notes of that bari sax. Tasty.

340: Vengo, by Ana Tijoux

Ana Tijoux (Chile)
Vengo (2014)
17 tracks, 54 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

In rap, languages are all-important. If you’re not using language, you’re not rapping, you’re scatting. But there’s lots of languages, and they each have their own unique rhythms, melodies, structures and patterns inherent in them, meaning that some languages lend themselves to the technique of rap easier than others. I think this is probably a ‘your mileage may vary’ sort of thing based on your own personal aesthetic preferences and your ability to understand the actual lyrics being rapped. For example, I find German and Russian rap really unfulfilling in their flows, the syllables not really hitting my ear right. On the other hand, raps in Spanish and Arabic are delightful!

Which is one of the reasons why I love Ana Tijoux’s song ‘Somos Sur’ from her album Vengo so much. Tijoux is a Chilean rapper, born and raised in France before moving to Santiago de Chile as a teenager, where she learnt her chops on the mic. The Spanish language really suits her fairly staccato rap style, and then after a few verses, a treat: up steps Shadia Mansour, British-Palestinian singer and rapper giving a blistering verse in Arabic, filled with righteous anger and international solidarity among Tijoux’s anti-imperialist anthem. The two languages have very different aural profiles, but they sit together so well juxtaposed as raps on this absolute banger of a song.

The instrumental element of ‘Somos Sur’ is also top-notch, with reedy Latin saxophones and folkloric violins providing the main base alongside a driving beat, bass and squelchy, distorted synths, and with an elegant verse from Tijoux backed by a classical string quartet. The music across the whole album is similarly lush with diverse influences. You can tell it’s not going to be your standard hip-hop album when the very first track is opened by Andean quena flutes played in a traditional manner, over which the track’s groove is based around – it’s obvious that Tijoux set out to make a hip-hop album that could only have come from Chile.

Another thing that is genuinely impressive about Vengo is that it doesn’t contain any samples. All the sounds on this album were recorded specifically for it. The producers here aren’t constructing the music from various beds and layers taken from other tracks, they all act as arrangers, working with the musicians and piecing together each of the parts in a gloriously hands-on way.

The past 40 years have really made it clear that hip-hop – in all its elements of MCing, DJing, B-boying and graffiti – is a global language, but every language has its accents. With the mix of live sounds, Latin, indigenous and international influences, the amazing Arabic guest slot from Shadia Mansour and her own Spanish flows, Ana Tijoux’s hip-hop accent on Vengo is one of the most compelling around.

339: King Hokum, by C.W. Stoneking

C.W. Stoneking (Australia)
King Hokum (2006)
11 tracks, 37 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Between covering C.W. Stoneking’s Jungle Blues on this blog and writing a review of his latest, Gon’ Boogaloo, for fRoots Magazine, with today’s entry I’ll have ended up writing about all his (official) releases in one form or another. I even wrote an article for fRoots that now serves as the biography on Stoneking’s own website, which I’m particularly proud of. All of which is to say, I obviously can’t stop going on about him. For good reason, too.

Seriously, I would struggle to think of an artist with a more perfect discography. Across those three albums, there is barely a song that is anything short of fantastic. He doesn’t stay in the same place, either. Today’s album, King Hokum, was released first and has a very pre-war country blues feel; Jungle Blues is more of a vaudevillian set with a few calypsos thrown in, and then Gon’ Boogaloo changes it up even more, switching the acoustic guitar and banjo for an entirely electric guitar-based album of gospel, jump blues and rock’n’roll of the rootsiest flavours.

Like I said in my entry on Jungle Blues back in June, I feel like I could write at length about every song that man’s made, and King Hokum is no exception. Well, I’m not going to write at length. But here’s a run-down of each, because god knows I have other work to be doing today and I will not miss this opportunity to procrastinate in the name of productivity:

C.W. Stoneking’s King Hokum Track-by-Track Commentary by Your Host, Jim Hickson

• ‘Way Out In the World’ – A great opener with a chunky-sounding National Resonator guitar plonking out a moan that feels like it could be 100 years old. Recommended.
  
  
• ‘Don't Go Dancin' Down the Darktown Strutter's Ball’ – One of my favourites from Stoneking. Brilliantly simple tenor banjo work and some of the most beautifully subtle blue note bends in his old man’s voice make my neck-hair stand on end. Slightly menacing but sadly imparted words of advice. Recommended.
  
  
• ‘She's a Bread Baker’ – An upbeat one! The first of the album, and a typical jelly-roll blues with all of the word play, metaphor and witty couplets that you’d expect. Recommended.
  
  
• ‘Dodo Blues’ – Probably the most well-known song on the album. Actually quite a touching song of heartbreak, wrapped up in a sketch about a ‘singing’ dodo at a market – the last one in existence. In that context, the lyrics are even given an additional layer of poignancy, ridiculous as it sounds. Fair play. Recommended.
  
  
• ‘On a Christmas Day’ – A guest appearance from Kirsty Fraser, who joins Stoneking for some over-the-top festive horniness. Filled with groansome innuendo (in the best way) and brazen smut. ‘I’m so glad, I’ve waited ‘round the clock / I’ve been wantin’ all year for a suck of that – yeah!’ indeed. Recommended.
  
  
• ‘Charley Bostock’s Blues’ – A really moving piece. Based on the true story of the death of Stoneking’s old bandmate. Really emotional, and really well-written. Watching him perform it live is always a special, heartfelt moment. Recommended.
  
  
• ‘Goin' the Country’ – In which the artist embodies two separate personalities in one song. A great and light-hearted take on the romantic rail-hopping story archetype. Recommended.
  
  
• ‘Bad Luck Everywhere You Go’ – A real chugging-along blues that sounds like it’s been curdled at the bottom of a swamp and slowly risen to the surface like a sluggish bubble. Recommended.
  
  
• ‘Rich Man's Blues’ – A Tory’s anthem. Tongue firmly in cheek. Recommended.
  
  
• ‘You Took My Thing and Put It In Your Place’ – Fraser’s back for another round of innuendo blatant enough to make a herpetologist blush. Recommended.
  
  
• ‘Handyman Blues’ – Another great song, and with a wonderful performance from the horn section too. More sly innuendo, but in a darker musical tone this time. Stoneking’s delivery of the word ‘handyman’ in the chorus is spine-tingling and even more so when joined by the horns in harmony when it’s performed live. That little innovation was added after the album recording though. Still, it’s recommended all the same.

Well there you have it. 11 brilliant tracks from a brilliant musician. I think that’s probably enough procrastination for me to be getting on with for now. And for you to be getting on with: listen to everything of C.W. Stoneking’s work you can get your hands on. And whenever he gets around to releasing his next album, you can be sure that I’ll be writing about it in some form, somewhere or other. I can’t wait!

338: Targ, by Bargou 08

Bargou 08 (Tunisia)
Targ (2017)
9 tracks, 43 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

The past few years have been a really exciting time for new directions in Tunisian music. I’ve already covered the ecstatic religious Afro-Tunisian industrial noise group Ifriqiyya Électrique and the pan-Maghreb bass music from Tunisian producer AMMAR 808, and today’s album is another one that is preserving one of the country’s little-known traditions by engaging it in a new way.

Bargou 08 was put together by Nidhal Yahyaoui, who grew up in Tunisia’s Bargou valley in the mountains of the country’s north-west. The people of the valley had created their own unique musical culture that had never gotten out into the rest of Tunisia, let alone abroad, but was starting to become lost. So, in the great tradition of the song collector, Yahyaoui began learning and recording the music from the valley, the music of all walks of life, to make sure a record of these traditions persisted. Then he decided to take it to the world, and for that, he brought in the help of Sofyann Ben Youssef – also known as the aforementioned AMMAR 808.

Together, they worked on arrangements of the folk pieces, bringing in musicians from the valley with those from outside it, they created a sound that is intensely of its place but cosmopolitan too. Ben Youssef’s synths and the drum kit of Benjamin Chaval put Targ undeniably within the 21st century and turn the tracks into banging floor-fillers, but they’re also somehow subtle; the architecture of these instruments working in complete complement with the traditional instruments of Bargou. The rasping gasbah flute and the astringent sound of the zokra shawm are paired with grinding sawtooth synths and the booming, distorted resonances of the bendir frame drum is enhanced with the pounding beats and cymbals of the drum kit and the fluid synth bass. The arrangements, too, make the best of both worlds, with the melodies and accompaniment entirely based on traditional songs, but still ramping up and occasionally dropping out in anticipation of a hearty bass drop, conducted by Yahyaoui’s passionate and subtle vocals, wrenching these beautiful songs from deep in his soul, gifted from his ancestors, while picking out lines on the wtar lute.

As far as I know, Bargou 08, as a project and a band, is on indefinite hiatus, but even if one album is all we get, Targ is an incredible achievement. It’s a shining example of how to keep traditional and endangered music alive without preserving it like a museum piece or patronising its musicians by keeping it chained to the past. Bargou 08 treat the music of the Bargou valley with the utmost respect while understanding its potential within the worlds of electronic and dance music, bringing these elements to the songs without taking any of the meaning or sound or energy away from their traditional forms. Nothing is destroyed, only built upon, and it’s magnificent. It’s a great album of cross-cultural collaboration done exactly right, and yet another brilliant, exciting and refreshing sound to come out of Tunisia in just the past handful of years. That country has so much to offer this world of music, and I can’t wait to hear what’s coming next.

337: Port, by Forabandit

Forabandit (Turkey/France/Iran)
Port (2014)
10 tracks, 38 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

The world of musical fusions is a weird one. There are projects out there that fuse music between almost any styles or cultures that you can name, yet the successfulness of the combinations is always hard to tell just by the elevator pitch. Yes, some cultures share enough in common to make such fusions easier to facilitate from a musical point of view – Mande music and the blues, hip-hop and reggae, Hindustani and Persian classical music – but there are no combinations that are necessarily destined to work even from these. So much comes down to the individual artists taking part, their flexibility, their ability to bend their own music to another’s, and just their overall skills as a musician. And because there are so many variables, it also means that unlikely or unusual musical combinations sometimes have just as good a chance at success as the obvious ones. And so we come to Forabandit…

Forabandit’s music brings together the folk styles of Occitania and Anatolia. The band’s project is based on the idea of a shared Mediterranean culture, emphasising the connections between the people from all across the sea’s coasts who have exchanged goods, language and art through trade for millennia. Those cultures are represented in the band by Ulaş Özdemir from Turkey and Samuel Karpienia from Occitania in the south of France; the trio is shored up by Iranian percussion master Bijan Chemirani.

And – and you already knew this, because this is a blog about Good Albums – the fusion works so well that you could be convinced that the three musicians all came from the same culture, rather than those separated by thousands of kilometres of land and sea. The sounds of the instruments at play go together perfectly. Özdemir plays the Turkish bağlama in the traditional manner of the Alevi-Bektashi aşik, or wandering bards. The instrument is a long-necked lute with double-coursed strings and frets that allow for all sorts of intriguing quartertone scales. Karpienia, on the other hand, plays the mandocello, which is basically a baritone version of the mandolin, about the size of a guitar. When both of these instruments are playing together, the sound is remarkable. They are similar in many ways – steel strings, double courses – but their slight differences in tone mean that when they play together, it sounds like a weaving: a jangling, shimmering mix of high and low tones through which strands of bağlama or mandocello sometimes reach out to create an elegant thread, maybe entwining briefly with the other before settling back into the fabric. The zarb and daf drums of Chemirani hold it together with a mix of rhythms that take in patterns from Occitan, Turkish and his own Persian styles.

The album is all about these connections, in terms of its sound and its lyrics. It’s named Port, which gives you an idea – all around the Mediterranean, it is the ports that served as sites of cultural exchange and linkage. Port cities are some of the most important cultural centres around the sea for that very reason. There’s Marseille and Istanbul, which are crucial here, but it’s the same across the region: Barcelona, Naples, Oran, Beirut, Thessaloniki… That’s one of the great things about musical fusions, and something this album does so well. It highlights connections between people where otherwise they would have been unclear. In that way, ports help to create great music, but music itself can also be a port of a kind, a place where people from many different regions and backgrounds can come together and discover similarities and interesting differences, and work together to create something new in a way that benefits all involved.

336: Abraxas, by Santana

Santana (Mexico/USA)
Abraxas (1970)
9 tracks, 38 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

I’ve talked before about the incredible fertility of rock music in the short period of the late-60s and early-70s, but I think Abraxas by Santana is a perfect example of this.

Abraxas is a classic rock album. It was huge at the time of release, and has been regarded as an important work ever since, frequently included in lists of best rock albums ever. But it’s so much more than ‘classic rock’ and all the images and associations that term conjures. That element is definitely there, yes, and seedlings of what would be ‘heavy rock’ can be heard occasionally throughout, but it’s far from the most noticeable aspect of the album. In fact, a defining feature of Abraxas is that it’s difficult to even fit it easily into the category of ‘rock’ at all.

It begins with ‘Singing Winds, Crying Beasts’, a moody and atmospheric instrumental piece with mysterious jazzy chords, a Latin rhythm and only a few glimpses of Carlos Santana’s wailing guitar among the waves of vibrating cymbals. That opening piece lasts for nearly five minutes and it’s a proper statement for what’s to come: whatever it will be, it’s not going to be what you’d expect. That piece segues into a cool version of Fleetwood Mac’s blues ‘Black Magic Woman’ and then into the Eastern European-influenced ‘Gypsy Queen’…and then it’s straight into a rocked-up but faithful version of Tito Puente’s cha-cha ‘Oye Como Va’. The next one, ‘Incident of Neshabur’ is a driving jazz-rock that sounds even Bitches Brew-like at times. And all that in just the first side! What a rollercoaster. The rest of the album also features the smooth jazz of ‘Samba Pa Ti’, the heavy metal premonition of ‘Hope You’re Feeling Better’ and ends up with the percussion-and-voice rumba of ‘El Nicoya’.

Holding it all together is, it almost goes without saying, a core of amazing musicians. The group themselves are so tight together that they can switch things up so often and know that everyone else on the band is going to be on the same page. Gregg Rolie’s keys are solid all the way through and his turns on the Hammond organ and electric piano really kick up the funk; the Latin percussion from José ‘Chepito’ Areas, Michael Carabello and Rico Reyes ground the whole album in a rhythmic basis that hadn’t – and still hasn’t, really – been explored in a rock realm but that fits it so well; and, of course, Carlos Santana’s lead guitar work that flits through the album’s many genres with ease, and really lets him stretch his muscles as an exciting and forward-thinking soloist.

You never know where you stand with Abraxas. Every track is different in its own way, but it all fits together in terms of the energy and atmosphere created and curated throughout the whole listening experience. That’s so rare; it’s an album that has the ability to surprise at every turn without making the whole endeavour feel like an exercise in wilful quirkiness. ‘Rock’ may be the wrong word and ‘Latin-blues-rock-prog-jazz’ is just stupid…but ‘classic’ is definitely the right word.

335: Harpin’ on a Riff: The Best of Charlie Musselwhite, by Charlie Musselwhite

Charlie Musselwhite (USA)
Harpin’ on a Riff: The Best of Charlie Musselwhite (1999)
20 tracks, 78 minutes
Spotify playlist

Being well into blues music during my teens, I naturally listened to a lot of harmonica players, whether they were solo performers or sidemen. Little Walter, James Cotton, Sonny Terry, Junior Wells, the Sonny Boys Williamson…but it was Charlie Musselwhite that really captured my imagination and led me to pick up the harmonica for myself. Specifically, it was this album, a cheap’n’cheerful compilation that shows off some of his wildest cuts from the 1970s to the 1990s.

In presenting such a wide time-frame of Musselwhite’s music, it also shows how wide his output has been too. There are the straight-ahead blues pieces (‘Finger Lickin’ Good’, ‘Hear Me Talkin’’, ‘Taylor’s, Arkansas’, the acoustic ‘Fast Life Blues’), swaggering balls-out blues-rocks (‘It’s Getting Warm in Here’, ‘Crazy for My Baby’, ‘Harpin’ on a Riff’) and laid-back, cheesily jazzy soul (‘Revelation’, ‘Yesterdays’); there are even hints at his interest in Latin music with the track ‘Azul Para Amparo’, which he eventually explored further with a collaboration with Buena Vista Social Club’s tres player Eliades Ochoa.

While it is interesting to hear the directions that Musselwhite takes the harmonica and how he adapts his playing to the different scenarios, I actually do prefer it when he’s sticking with the most on-message blues styles. It’s in these that he gets to stretch his legs and really show off the acrobatics that he’s capable of. His playing feels so much more natural and free on those tracks – ‘Finger Lickin’ Good’ is a great example because it’s just a simple repeating 12-bar groove that he spends four minutes improvising over and holds the ear rapt with the playfulness and lyricism of his phrases.

This compilation may not be as cohesive as his albums proper – especially the two that he released on Real World Records, Sanctuary (2004) and Delta Hardware (2006), which I love – and maybe that’s why I feel that some of the pieces here are a little weak in comparison to others. Nevertheless, I include this album primarily because it shows just how well Musselwhite has expanded the range of the harmonica into previously inaccessible territories while always remaining a figurehead for the blues style of which he is a master. And, y’know, for helping me to develop a handy, pocket-sized skill that I can annoy people at parties with, too.


Tenuously-related footnote

I mention this here because I wouldn’t have an appropriate place to do so otherwise. I basically just wanted an excuse to post this video and rave about it. It’s a clip from the film Blues Brothers 2000. As a whole, that is one dire piece of cinema from start to finish, a rubbish sequel to a classic film that didn’t seem to understand where any of the original’s charm came from and instead ramping everything up to stupidly bombastic degrees that flop harder than a beer-bellied Brexiter when presented with a swimming pool at a Spanish all-inclusive resort. All except for this one five-minute scene, where that bombast comes up trumps. The set-up is that the Blues Brothers Band is taking part in a battle of the bands, and their unknown competitors, the Louisiana Gator Boys, go first. This is what happens:

The first time I watched that, my jaw was on the floor. In fact, every time I watch that, my reaction is exactly the same. That is quite probably the best blues supergroup ever to have existed. Every few bars, the camera cuts to another blues legend doing their bit. So much so that every time I watch it, I’m amazed that I forgot that so-and-so was in it. I mean, just check that line-up: B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Bo Diddley, Charlie Musselwhite (see, there was a connection!), Koko Taylor, Jack DeJohnette, Stevie Winwood, Billy Preston. Dr John popping in right at the end! Jimmy Vaughan and Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter just chilling out in the groove; Isaac Hayes as a backing vocalist! The face-melting four-way horn solo by Grover Washington Jr, Clarence Clemons, Joshua Redmond and Jon Faddis, which ends in them all improvising wildly over the top of each other in a noise from heaven itself. My word. That audience is real, by the way. A few hundred people actually got to witness that crazy performance live. If I were there, I don’t think I’d ever be able to talk about anything else.

And that’s literally it, that’s all I wanted to show you. Bloody good though innit? Now you don’t have to see the rest of the film, you’re welcome.