worldly disorientation

ABC's

After a layoff of several years, the superb British label RetroAfric is back in action this year, recently issuing a collection of work by Sierre Leone's Geraldo Pino—a formative influence on the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti. Earlier this year it released a killer collection of Congolese rumba by Gaby Lita Bembo and Orchestre Stukas du Zaire. Aside from earning a reputation for his outrageous showmanship and flashy duds, his band played with more aggressiveness and flash that most of his Kinshasa rivals. Stukas featured a succession of dazzling lead guitarists including Samunga Tediangaye—who’s admiration for Jimi Hendrix went as far as the old playing-guitar-with-the-teeth routine. In 1975 he jumped ship to join the mighty Orchestra Veve, but his replacement Bongo Wende was just as able. Tediangaye returned after just a few months, but he died tragically in 1977 from hepatitis. Another guitarist, named Kembo, admirably filled his shoes, even if they became work boots instead of high-heeled sneakers.

As with most Congolese bands, Bembo’s lead singing was closely shadowed by superb harmony vocals and buoyant polyrhythms, but this stuff is ultimately all about the contrapuntal lattice of effervescent guitar lines, overamped and deeply propulsive. The group soldiered off and on until 1986, but its best work was done in the 70s, and that’s what the excellent Kita Mata ABC focuses on.

Odeyo 1

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Nouvelle...bien

On paper the very notion of Nouvelle Vague is downright repulsive; bossa nova versions of new wave (and punk) classics. “Bossa nova” is Portuguese for new wave, and "nouvelle vague" is French for it—get it? French producers Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux rounded up a bunch of young chanteuses, most of whom had never heard the likes of “Guns of Brixton,” “Too Drunk to Fuck,” or “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” and thus brought the appropriate naïf sensibility to the performances. While thinking about the concept bummed me out, in reality the music worked surprisingly well. At its best the project radically transformed some songs; the version of Tuxedomoon’s “In a Manner of Speaking” was truly revelatory, revealing what a genuinely beautiful song it was, something much harder to determine from the original. I saw the band in San Francisco a few weeks ago, where Winston Tong, who wrote the song, added his vocals, which were so flat and inept it’s no wonder I couldn’t fully appreciate the original version.

Although she wasn’t on most of the American tour, the woman who sang the album version of that song is named Camille. She sings a bunch of songs on the NV album, all of them quite well with an impressive range, but it sure didn’t prepare me for the brilliance of her second solo album Le Fil. I was in Paris in March and the album had just been released, and while I was certainly taken by the stunning cover photo, I assumed she was just another pretty-faced chanson singer with nothing much to say. It was only after hearing the NV album that I wisely reconsidered and tracked the album down. Although it features standard instrumentation, the real focus of the album is Camille’s multi-tracked voice—an stunning extension of voice-as-sound generator that stretches from the Mills Brothers to the Delta Rhythm Boys to doo-wop to Fat Boys to Rhazel, although Camille clearly has her own pop sound, part chanson part who knows what. There’s a single, extended vocal tune that runs through the entire album, almost like a tambura drone. This catchy gem is a real highlight, but the album is winner all the way through.

Ta douleur

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