Yoruba Street Percussion
Original Music OMCD016
This is a winner from beginning to end. If you find it anywhere, grab it. John Storm Roberts compiled a CD made up of a stack of 45s of popular Yoruba street bands. These include all the current dance patterns of popular Yoruba music, Waka, Apala, Aguidigbo and Fuji. Every one of these cuts is powerful, exciting and well-performed. It is the kind of music that gave rise to what we know today to be Cuban Salsa and in addition is based on the solid funky beat that we associate with what are the West African roots underlying African American music in the US. It seems to be currently out of print, but John Storm Roberts says he is going to try to get it out again. I have rarely come upon a recording that was so enjoyable and so valuable cut for cut.
With John's permission, here are a couple of short cuts from the CD.
Romica Puceanu
Not something new, but some of the most gorgeous music ever recorded. The great Romanian singer, Romica Puceanu died a few years ago in a tragic automobile accident in Bucuresti. She was a great friend and I regretted that she was never given the honor and fame she deserved, largely because of the Romanian government policy that was closed and restrictive to Rom (Gypsies) and their culture. I have decided to make my collection of her recordings available in MP3 form for all to enjoy. There are here at http://aris.ss.uci.edu/rgarfias/kiosk/romica.html. They can be listened to or downloaded. I will add more as I can get to them
Maroc
Bnèt
Houariyat
Voix des femmes de Marrakech
Al Sur/Media7 ALCD 207/M7 853
I held out including this CD until I could get permission to include a RealAudio sample with it, but could get no response from the company. The music on this CD, however, is excellent. After hearing for years, short snippets of Moroccan women's singing groups, I thought I knew what this stuff was all about. Here however are complete performances of a few pieces and the result of hearing each of them build up to a climax is stunning. On each song they begin with relatively long phrases treated in a call and response texture. Gradually the length of the phrases gets shorter and the performance is tighter and more intense, so much so that by the end of each song one feels breathless. I am very happy that they have released this one. So far, the best of the Al Sur recordings but I will wait for more.
Music of the Gambuh Theater
Performed by Seka
Gambuh Pura Desa Adat Batuan, Bali
Recorded by Wayne Vitale
Vital Records 501
A gorgeous entire CD of the music of the gambuh theater of Bali, recorded by Wayne Vitale. It is a real joy to be able to hear an entire chunk of this music. The ensemble consists of five players on the meter long, suling, the special end blown flute used for gambuh, along with rebab and a number of drums, single gongs and other percussion. The music is powerful and dramatic with fluttering percussion pulsing under long slow melodies. Hearing it brings to mind Colin McPhee's description of a Balinese audience enjoying Gambuh, sitting for hours and even though they cannot fully understand the text sung in the archaic language, they drift in and out of sleep, hypnotized by the magic of ancient words evoking place names and historical events from their memory.
A short MP3 clip from Gambuh Sekar Gadung
Anthology of
Indian Classical
Music
A Tribute to Alain
Danielou
AUVIDIS
UNESCO
Here is a CD release of the old French Ducretet-Thompson 3 LP set of the Music of India that Danielou produced for UNESCO in the mid 1950s. It is an exact copy of the old set but now with additional words from Noriko Aikawa of UNESCO, Jacques Brunet, Jacques Cloarec and Danielou himself.
What is intriguing about this re-release coming after all these years is that it gives us an opportunity to re asses our perception of Indian music as it was back then. I can still remember the excitement of hearing the first release and I still have it and treasure it. Going through the re-release however, pointed out that Danielou really had a good grasp of what was going on in the 50s. We must remember that this was just before Ali Akbar Khan made his first appearance in the US and therefore also before Ravi Shankar's first solo performances in the late 50s. Danielou included solos by Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar and even a jugalbandi (duet) between them at a time when only a few 78s of this kind of performance by them were available in India.
There are excellent shahnai and nagaswaram examples here, not by the acclaimed Bismillah Khan, but by wonderfully vivid playing temple musicians. Here also are some recordings by Balasarawati and her group. So we here the young Viswanathan and his brother Ranganathan as well as Bala her self singing with her mother, Jaymal. Wonderful again to here the dancemaster, Ganeshan singing again. It brings back those days for me spent with that family, years really, here and there, in India, Japan and finally in the US. The set included mostly exceptionally good performances. It was a real pleasure to rehear them in CD form.
Alicia Svigals.
FIDL.
Klezmer Violin.
Crossroads CD 4286
Alicia Svigals in a wonderful player who gets into the spirit of Klezmer.
It is straight clean playing with great musical sensitivity. The CD has
a great variety of styles in it and is worth owning, in my opinion. Alicia
has carefully studied the old Klezmer recordings as well as the folk styles
of the region. Her fiddling has great richness, variety and remains sweet
throughout. The result is a real joy. Excellent and informative notes
by Walter Feldman.
RealAudio Example: Baym Rebns Sude
-
Available from Traditional
Crossroads
P.O. Box 20320 Greeley Sq. Sta.
New York, NY 10001-9992
Bougarabou: Solo Drumming of Casamance
Village Pulse VPU-1005
http://www.rootsworld.com/rw/villagepulse/
It's difficult to choose from among the many excellent Village Pulse recordings. They all are excellent and show the great depth and variety of the music of Guinea, Senegal and The Gambia. Adam Novick has spent years documenting this music and several CDs are the happy result. This one is fascinating in that it consists of a type of playing not often found in Africa, one player performing on several differently tuned drums.
RealAudio Example: Yeye (dance medley)
Music from Madagascar
Shanachie 65910
So much amazing music from Madagascar. There are already a number of excellent CDs currently available, ranging from historic recordings of the old stuff recorded in Paris in the 1930s (The Music of Madagascar - Yazoo 7003) to modern groups like Tarika and old masters like Sylvestre Randifison and even Charles Duvelles important field recordings from the 60s are still around on OCORA. But here, Shanachie has done something really wonderful and different. Manage Sana is a 70 year old, at least, woman musician who is completely rooted in the traditional music of Madagascar. This CD offers a glimpse into the spirit of a single astonishing performer. Her playing is powerful and clear and in her songs and her words she portrays an amazing spirit. Hats off to Shanachie for devoting an entire CD to a remarkable and magnetic player. The recording allows us to enter more deeply into the world of a particular player of Malagasy music and to understand and appreciate more of the scope and variety of this tradition. We can hear Mama Sana. Now can we find a way to bring back all those lemurs?
RealAudio Example:
Rahahivelo,
a rich man who has lost his herd of zebu.
RealAudio Example: Somodrara,
a woman who was so particular and demanding that she ended up alone and
worthless.
Corason CORA 121
If you ever wondered about the African roots of music in the Americas, here's another marvelous link. Changui is an old ensemble type found in Eastern Cuba. Its characteristics are the use of a larger than usual pair of bongos, guitar, guiro and maracas, and the marimbula. The last is an amazing instrument used to play the bass lines. It is a large African mbira, actually very similar if not identical to the Nigerian agidigbo, a large wooden box with plucked metal keys fixed onto it.
We have this year gone from rags to riches on this one. From having only a few tantalizing pictures of the marimbula in Cuba and having recordings of old Cuban salsa bands playing what they called changui on standard Cuban instruments, and after hearing the tantalizing changui group that played in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the Mall in Washington a few years ago, this year we have three recordings of authentic changui ensembles, The Smithsonian Folkways Records, Cuba in Washington CD (SF CD 40461), actual performances of the Cubans who played in the festival, this Corason/Rounder CD, and a very interesting one from Northern Colombia on OCORA (C 560126), Colombie:El Sexteto tabula. This last is an amazing find, a group of musicians from the first self-proclaimed liberated African community in the Americas, playing this music that they learned from Eastern Cubans who went there in the 1920s to set up a sugar cane mill.
The Corason CD is the best one to give a flavor of the authentic changui sound that many argue is the true root of the Cuban son. Three different bands are represented on this CD. Great music, like almost everything on Corason. Thanks to Rounder for taking up the distribution of this Mexico based company that has been consistently producing gems of lesser known Mexican and Cuban music. It's now easily available here too.
RealAudio Example: Mi Son Tiene Candela, played by the Grupo Changui de Guantanamo.
Sones Jarochos with the Trio Silva
Corason COCD 109
Here is some marvelous playing of the Mexican harp tradition from the coastal region of Veracruz. These are classic and powerful performances of traditional compositions in the Son Jarocho genre. There aren't enough good recordings of Jarocho music around and none, until now, that I have felt, had the power and clarity of those old Mexican RCA Camden Lps of Lino Chavez. La Negra Graciana is a welcome release, bringing that wonderful and fiery music back where we can enjoy it again.
The Veracruz Jarocho style is a sizable repertoire of sones, including the now very famous, La Bamba, also included on this CD. The music can be performed in any combination of voices, harp, requinto, or jarana. Hearing it with just voices and jarana makes the music sound very sweet. Here the harp and singing of Graciana Silva dominates the recordings and they a very welcome addition to the wonderful set already out on Corason. She is joined on several cuts by her brother who plays jarana and another harpist, Elena Huerta. Great stuff.
RealAudio Example: La Guacamaya, La Negra Graciana playing and singing the famous traditional son Jarocho about the blue and yellow macaw.
Group Leader Alhaji Ibrahim Abdulai
Recorded by John Miller Chernoff
Rounder CD 5016
This is one of two CDs produced by Rounder based on the recordings made by John Miller Chernoff in Northern Ghana in the tradition of the Muslim Dagbon people. Both CDs are excellent and are a great introduction to the music of the Northern Savannah region of Ghana. Each of the two CDs has about 20 short selections, all using the hourglass, pressure drums that allow pitch changes by pressure on the lacings by the player's arm and elbow. This easily permits the drums to talk by replicating the tonal pattern of Dagbamba speech. But the impression of the much is certainly not of series of examples of drums talking, but of rich, lively and complex patterns. Every cut is a crisp, precise and intoxicating. I am really happy that Rounder released this and actually did two CDs of this marvelous music.
RealAudio Example: Gbada, played by Master Drummers of Dagbon. This one is music used to make the horses dance. I'm sure it works.
Music Of Indonesia
(Smithsonian Folkways Series)
Philip Yampolsky, Editor/collector
There are some 18 CDs in this series of recordings, all new field recordings done by Philip Yampolsky over a period of several years.Each of these is a valuable document and at last fills in the gap that has existed for far too long in the Music of Indonesia. The music of the high cultures of Java, Bali and Sunda have been covered exhaustively and yet until now the music of the thousands of other islands in this musically rich nation has been virtually unavailable.
The 18 recordings are uniformly excellent and all contain interesting and surprising material. It is impossible to pick out favorites among them but perhaps I found those from Sumatra, Riau, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi most interesting. Each and every one is a treasure however.
Yiddish American Klezmer Music 1925-1956
Yazoo 7001
Dave Tarras was one of the bridging pioneers of Klezmer in America. He lived long enough to teach a number of the younger musicians and helped to start the Klezmer revival.This Yazoo Cd is sampling of what we have of Tarras output from the golden days of Klezmer in the US, mostly the 20s and 30s. Hot interesting arrangements and a good dose of humor.
RealAudio Example: Yiddisher March(1928) played by the Joseph Cerniavsky's Yiddish American Jazz Band.
Gypsy Brass band from Moldavia.
Buda Records CD 92655-2
Here is a recording by the Romanian ethnomusicologist, Speranta Radulescu, made in the neighboring Republic of Moldavia. The entire recording is of one group of musicians. The playing of brass instruments is common in both Romanian Moldavia and in the neighboring Republic of Moldavia. Usually however, one hears small ensembles with the addition one or two trumpets. Here is an entire brass band playing the fast tempoed dances of Moldavia with incredible dexterity and precision. Clear clean recordings and great performances.
RealAudio Example:
Batata de
Zece Prajini
-
Available from Buda
Musique
188, bd. Voltaire,.
75011 Paris, France
New Bharat Brass Band de Bangalore
Buda Records CD 92590-2
Another brass band recording? Yep. I'll admit to a terrible partiality towards brass bands. It may have been my youthful days in marching bands, but I do love them, even when the horns are dented and they are out of tune. I do note, however, that in hearing brass bands from different cultures, the different characteristics of the music make the bands sound more interesting. This one, from Bangalore is glorious! The band plays clean and polished, in Indian style, almost entirely unison and a repertoire of Indian Film songs really transports you to India. From the beautiful city of Bangalore in the central south of India is this New Bharat Brass band. I have been looking for a good recording of an Indian brass band for years and this is it.
RealAudio Example:
A film
song(1928) played by the New Bharat Brass Band.
-
Available from Buda
Musique
188, bd. Voltaire,.
75011 Paris, France
I have just put up the entire contents of this old LP, a long time favorite of mine featuring the Venezuelan music of Juan Vicente Torrealba played on two harps. It appear to me to be completely unavailable anywhere so here it is again.
Robert Garfias
UCI
rgarfias@uci.edu
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Last updated 9.27.05