worldly disorientation

Fes

Whoa! Has it really been that long? More than two months! My apologies. Last week I returned from a trip to Fes, Morocco where I took in the annual Fes Festival of Sacred Music. The city was incredible—rooted in the distant past, while struggling with the present, pervasive poverty but a fighting spirit. The medina was spectacular, tiny little stalls packed with all sorts of goods—many in plastic bags from China—but many more haphazardly hung, or in the case of many slabs of fly-speckled meat, simply sitting out on marble counters. Here’s a photo of one of my favorites stops, which sold hand-jarred olives, harisa, preserved lemons, and other such pickled treats.

The musical offerings were a mixed bag, but the music from the North Africa—as well as the Azerbaijani mugam singer and Malian superstar Salif Keita—was almost uniformly excellent. On all but the first evening of the festival, the proceedings closed with the “Sufi Nights” series, featuring a slew of traditional music groups from Morocco. I didn’t see them all, but there was no doubt that the highlight was the performance by Tariqa Aïssaouia from Fes. This is trance music at its best, with a super chill front man singing deep soul like he was absently snapping his fingers; a number of group members played the double-reed rhaitas, delivering piercing, nasal lines over a hard-hitting phalanx of hand percussion for an irresistibly funky breakdown. The local audience went nuts over them,literally kicking up dust and clapping in wonderfully complex, synopated patterns. I picked up a number of cds by the group, all of the album and song titles in Arabic; therefore I’m unable to provide any specifics for the track here, but since it seems highly unlikely that these releases are findable here in the US—although they’re all on the Belgian Fassiphone imprint, I couldn’t find any reference to them on the label’s website—it shouldn’t matter too much.

Tariqa Aïssaouia
(COPYRIGHT SUZANNA CLARKE 2006)

Funky Brasil

    There’s a nice article about Brazil’s Black Rio movement in the new issue of Wax Poetics. The article focuses on how a handful of DJs imported American soul and funk records, developed a thriving DJ culture, and by proxy, a helped foment a kind of black consciousness that spread through the country during the 70s. Before long local artists began putting their own spins on the music—Tim Maia, Hyldon, Gerson King, Cassiano—but as good as many of them were, they failed to generate something distinctly Brazilian-sounding. Don’t get me wrong—I love this stuff, especially Maia, but this complex movement took a long time before groups like Banda Black Rio found a way to make something more unique by decade's end. These DJ parties were where today’s Funk Carioca madness all began, way back in the 80s. While the story is spot-on in terms of history and social context, it doesn’t spend much time elaborating on the work of the Brazilian soul acts. It does, however, feature a fantastic spread of record covers by most of the prime movers—those named above, Erlon Chaves, Banda Uniao Black, Toni Tornado, Luiz Melodia, Paulo Diniz, and Marku, among others. On my recent trip to Brazil I picked up a killer CD by Marku Ribas found some middle ground between Maia’s pure soul and the Afro-samba fusion of Jorge Ben. The CD collects two fine albums—Underground 72 and Marku 75. Here’s the great opening track from the former.

Zamba Ben

Buy it here.

Meanwhile, back in...

    We take a break from the focus on Brazil to tap into the riches of a new reissue of killer 70s recordings by Zimbabwe superstars the Green Arrows, the first band in the nation to release a full-length album. It seems like the Chimurenga of Thomas Mapfumo gets all of the attention, but the country produced lots of other great stuff and a new German label called Analog Africa, distributed in the US by Alula, has been rectifying the situation this year with two great reissues (the other one is by the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band, with whom Mapfumo got his start). Much of the music by the Green Arrows was produced by the South African jive saxophonist West Nkosi –and, indeed, there’s an appealing South African lilt to their stuff--in rudimentary Harare studios, but the sound they got was nothing short of extraordinary. As with so much African pop, the real thrills are provided by the dancing basslines—handled primarily by Zexie Manatsa, who also was the lead singer—but the group’s three guitar players forged a magical lattice of criss-crossing lines and leads that both reinforced the bubbling grooves and added even more melodic heft. There’s some nice experimentation with wah-wah and distortion pedals, but even without such effects this stuff slays. The group disintegrated in the early 90s, but has recently started performing again.  I’m posting one of the group’s few English-language tracks, a stylistically atypical rock-driven song that tells the story of the Irwin Allen disaster yarn Towering Inferno, a big hit on the continent in the mid-70s, but all twenty tracks are stellar.

Towering Inferno

Buy it here.

The Other Brazil

Pernambuco, a state in Brazil’s northeast, is one of the country’s most potent and varied musical centers, where richly varied rhythms and song forms provide a very different sound from the usual samba and bossa nova that we get as the representatives of Brazilian music here in the U.S. This is the region that spawned manguebeat pioneers Chico Science and Nacao Zumbi, singer Alceu Valenca, and percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, but there’s so much more that’s generally hidden from non-Brazilian ears. On the more rootsy tip is a genre called embolada, a spare, improvised style that’s a not-so-distant cousin of rap, where vocalists spontaneously conjure poetic ramblings. The musical accompaniment is usually just rhythms tapped out on the pandeiro, a Brazilian tambourine. The duo of Caju e Castanha is one of the style’s most popular practitioners--they’ve made about 15 albums, and one of their latest, Embolando no Futebol, is exclusively about soccer. But if you, like me, don’t speak Portuguese the wit and verve of their back-and-forth verbal jousting is clearly lost. So here I’m posting a remix of one of their tracks, which bolsters their wordplay with some wiggy electronics courtesy of Monaural, the duo of Kassin and Berna Ceppas—one of the country’s hottest and most interesting production teams. Kassin is a member of Domenico + 2 (and Moreno + 2), and this fall will see the release of the first Kassin + 2 album. The track is taken from a collection called Mauritsstadt Dub, a 2-CD set that features one disc of more folkloric material from Pernambuco, and second disc of remixes—among the other participants are DJ Dolores, Instituto, and Apollo Nove.

Música de Cabloco Tocada No Pifano

Buy it here.

Instigating wows.

    I discovered lots of great new sounds on my recent trip to Brazil, but at this moment my favorite find is Cidadão Instigado—a group originally from Fortaleza but now based in Sao Paulo. I’ve found virtually no English-language writing on the band, but this track is taken from the group’s most recent—and, I believe, second—album. It’s difficult to describe—always a good sign—but it conflates all sorts of stuff without being schizophrenic, incoherent, or calculated. There are romantic ballads and weirdly funky jams that make room for Brazilian roots, electro, prog-rock, pop, and, I dunno, more. Since I’ve returned I’ve been alternating this with the last Tom Ze album, Estudano o Pagode—which was released last fall on Trama, and sees domestic release on Luaka Bop in April. They don’t really sound similar, but there’s a vague aesthetic that seems complementary to me. I haven’t heard CI's previous album, but I’ll certainly be tracking it down soon. I can't think of too many reasons why this album shouldn't be a big deal outside of Brazil. If I had heard it last year it almost certainly would've figured into my top 10 of 2005. But you're too smart to ignore killer music just because it doesn't have some hipster imprimatur.

Os Urubus Só Pensam Em Te Comer

Buy  it here.

Oi Sao Paulo!

A few days ago I returned from my first and long-anticipated trip to Brazil. It was hard to come back to Chicago. I didn’t do much tourism shit—didn’t sit on a Rio beach even once—but I met loads of great Brazilians, saw some terrific music, and drank crazy amounts of beer and cachaça. I also purchased loads of CDs. I knew the country’s musical traditions are every bit as rich and varied as America’s, but what I found was even deeper. I’ll certainly be tapping into my latest finds in future posts, but I wanted to get this song up first, a tune by MC Leozinho I heard quite a few times in Rio and Sao Paulo. My new friend Dani must’ve played this song three or four times on a day trip we took to Embu, a quaint little town near SP. Her car was rocking with pure distortion because she just kept pushing the volume up higher and higher. It kicks off a new comp of Funk Carioca called Bem Funk assembled by kingpin DJ Marlboro. What’s particularly interesting about this track—as well as several other numbers on this new comp—is that the stripped-down raw beat schemes of the genre are starting to get a more heavily produced, song-like treatment. This is a pop song with strumming acoustic guitars  grafted onto one of those infectious bass-heavy electro grooves. And right now it’s filling me with bittersweet nostalgia for some good times and new pals. I need to go back.

Ela Só Pensa Em Beijar

Buy it here. (With some luck I'll soon be able to provide a link to a US seller).

Something other than music

Two posts in one day!

To make up for an entire month without a peep, here's another, but as the headline sez, this one's not about music. The entire uproar over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad has been both fascinating and horrifying. Someone passed along this clip from Monday's Newshour with Jim Lehrer, featuring two Arabic scholars debating the root of the problem, one blaming Muslims in Europe for not understanding the complexity of liberalism, the other insisting the source is really a more sustained and layered system of disrespect and hypocrisy from the US and its European allies. Seems to me the truth is probably somewhere in between. You can either watch the clip or read the transcript at the Electric Intifada website.

Back (again and again)

Seems like every time Blue Note Records decides to release an album by a European act it's some god-forsaken jazz-electronica whiplash--whether the execrable St. Germain and Jazzanova or the slightly less odious Erik Truffaz. I expected more of the same when I saw that Italian trombonist Gianluca Petrella was next on the docket, a guy who's worked with producer Nicola Conte and who lists a bunch of electronic records on his website's "playlist" section. But this guy is the real deal. He's a member of Enrico Rava's band--not one of my fave's, but the trumpeter's earned his bona fides--and he's worked and/or recorded with Hamid Drake, Greg Osby, Steve Coleman, Sean Bergin, Antonello Salis, and Gianluigi Trovesi, among others.

His fantastic new album Indigo4 is definitely informed by electronic forms--there's some distinctive drum 'n' bass rhythms and corrosive electronic textures--but they're all pulled off in a wonderfully original way than never threatens to upstage the essential sense of swing and high level improvisation that's going on here. It's a quartet album--with Fabio Accardi on drums, Francesco Bearzatti on reeds, and Dalla Porta on bass--with a solid post-bop aesthetic at its core, although dynamic, adventurous arrangements totally reinvent trusty workhorses like "Mood Indigo." I could go on and on about how swell the record is, but I already did that in forthcoming review for Down Beat so I'll just prattle on about the opening track, a killer take on Monk's "Trinkle, Tinkle."  Petrella collected a bevy of Monk piano samples, and throughout the performance they're sampled in chopped-up pieces and laid in an exquisite herky-jerk style that brilliantly hints at the pianist's singular, warped sense of rhythm--jagged, stuttery, and wholly propulsive. No fixed patterns are ever established, so the sample component seems through-composed, constantly providing improv fodder for the live musicians--not that they really need it anyway. It's my favorite piece on the album, but nothing here is shabby, and it's a front-runner for jazz album of the year. For real!

Trinkle, Tinkle

Buy it here (album is released on 2/21/06).

Year End

The annual exercise in arbitrary rating is here. Top 40 albums of 2005 below:
(illustration: Mazen Kerbaj)

Bettye LaVette: I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise (Anti)
Amadou & Mariam: Dimanche a Bamako (Nonesuch)
Dave Douglas: Keystone (Greenleaf)
Deerhoof: The Runners Four (Kill Rock Stars/5RC)
Seu Jorge: Cru (Wrasse)
M.I.A.: Arular (XL)
Camille: Le Fil (Virgin)
Atomic: The Bikini Tapes (Jazzland)
Domenico Guaccero: Da Cantare (Die Schachtel)
Marcus Schmickler & John Tilbury: Variety (A-Musik)

Feist: Let it Die (Cherrytree/Interscope)
Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane: At Carnegie Hall (Blue Note)
Vijay Iyer: Reimagining (Savoy Jazz)
Misha Mengelberg: Senne Sing Song (Tzadik)
Konono No. 1: Congotronics (Crammed Discs)
Keren Ann: Nolita (Blue Note)
Thione Seck: Orientation (Stern’s)
Leela James: A Change is Gonna Come (Warner Brothers)
Chicago Luzern Exchange: Several Lights (Delmark)
Jason Moran: Same Mother (Blue Note)

Milton Nascimento: Pieta (Savoy Jazz)
In the Country: This Was the Pace of My Hearbeat (Rune Grammofon)
Free Music Ensemble: Cuts (Okka Disk)
Emilana Torrini: Fisherman’s Woman (Rough Trade)
Fiona Apple: Extraordinary Machine (Epic)
Kanye West: Late Registration (Roc-a-Fella)
Myron Walden: This Way (Fresh Sound)
Sleater-Kinney: The Woods (Sub Pop)
Spoon: Gimme Fiction (Merge)
Robbie Fulks: Georgia Hard (Yep Roc)

Jeff Parker: The Relatives (Thrill Jockey)
Various Artists: Lagos Chop Up (Honest Jon’s)
Various Artists: Zanibara 2: Golden Years of Mobasa Taarab (Buda)
Lee Ann Womack: There’s More Where That Came From (MCA)
Maria Rita: Segundo (Warner Music Latina)
Young Jeezy: Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation (Roc-a-Fella)
Tom Ze: Estudando O Pagode (Trama)
Various Artists: Love’s a Real Thing (Luaka Bop)
Sam Prekop: Who’s Your New Professor (Thrill Jockey)
Dr. Dog: Easy Beat (National Parking)

Whitey McPherson, Bad Ass

    Last night I was listening to American Primitive Vol. II, Revenant’s sublime and wonderfully freakish anthology of fiercely original and raw sounds from this country’s rural (and sometimes urban) heartlands recorded between 1897-1939. It’s packed will all kinds of startling gems such as the opening gospel piece “I Want Jesus to Talk With Me,” where one Homer Quincy Smith battled with his chintzy-sounding organ in a plea to a higher power. With this collection and the recently issued Good For What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows, 1926-37, a lavishly packaged and compiled 2-CD set from the good folks at Old Hat, I’m continually amazed at how much brilliance can keep erupting from America’s deep, forgotten past.
    While in hindsight the selections on the long o/p 4-CD set Roots N’ Blues—The Retrospective (1925-1950) that Columbia Records released back in 1992 aren’t any more out there than what’s come in their wake from the various independent reissues, I’m still floored that this stunning clearing house—much of it previously unissued--was ever released. Delta blues, Cajun, boogie woogie, western swing, gospel, shaped-note, old-timey, jug bands, bluegrass, and other mutant strains all gloriously smashed together in a woozy tangle of passion, murder, humor, and recklessness that stands as tall as anything in representing that special cauldron from whence sprang what we now regard as American music. There are familiar names—Muddy Waters, Bill Monroe, Gene Autry, Leroy Carr, Charlie Poole, and Roosevelt Sykes among them--but the less familiar names deliver the goods just as often as not. Here’s one I still remember being flabbergasted by when the set was first released—a wild take on the Jimmie Rodgers classic by a group called the Rhythm Wreckers. The record was cut in LA back in 1937, although I don’t know if that’s where the band was from. Apparently, most of the group’s repertoire consisted of old blues songs—their version of “Never No Mo’ Blues” was featured on another great and out-of-print Columbia/Legacy offering, White Country Blues, 1926-1938—and the thing that makes them special is singer Whitey McPherson, who was either 14 or 15 when this record was made. (McPherson also made some records with swing drummer Ben Pollack—but otherwise he and the band are a void, far as I can figure out). McPherson’s pre-pubescent wail is pure charisma, rubbing up against a liquid pedal steel curls with growl-laden yodels that sound like the horny entreaties of some liquored-up bull dyke—no 14 year old should sound this, um, constipated.

Blue Yodel #2 (My Lovin' Gal Lucille)