WorldBeatUK (9th Show) - Broadcast Notes (27/4/11)
Tagged with: Worldbeatuk Glyn Phillips Rhubarb Sergent Garcia Show of Hands Susana Seivane Anxo Lorenzo Ojos de Brujo Gnawledge Camarao de Rama Gypsy Groovz Owiny Sigoma Tamikrest Dub Colossus Shawn Lee Quique Neira C-Sharp Ebo Taylor Imam Baildi Bongomatik Strut
WBUK9 (27/4/11) Show Notes
1 Intro-Mat (1:47) Matchatcha Nyekesse (Melodie)
Hope you’ve all had a good Easter and enjoyed the good weather; now that it’s turned a bit colder, hopefully you’ll all be thinking “Nah, bit parky this evening, think I’ll stay in and be warmed up by the groovy choonz and tropical vibes on WorldbeatUK!” So without further ado and maybe even a little bit of adon’t, we’ll kick off with El Salsamuffinero Mayor, Bruno ‘Sergent’ Garcia, and a track from his new album (“Una y Otra Vez”) out on Cumbancha. This one is called “El Baile del Diablo” - The Dance of the Devil.
2 El Baile Del Diablo (4:00) Sergent Garcia Una Y Otra Vez (Cumbancha)
Now that last tune was all about the devil’s dance that the politicians and the world’s leaders indulge in as they continue to muck our lives around - as El Sargento says: “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”. Well this next group also wrote a song criticising those same politicians, leaders and power-hungry people - the track was called “Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed” off the album of the same name by English Folk giants Steve Knightley and Phil Beer of Show of Hands and I played that one a few weeks back.
So now another one off that same album, but this time spelling out their views (which I happen to share) about Creationism. This is called “Evolution”. With the rallying call of ‘Nail your colours to the mast’, the message is “The finger points in one direction, that’s natural selection”
3 Evolution (3:26) Show Of Hands Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed
(Hands On Music, 2009, HMCD29)
Well to show a bit of balance here’s a tune that’s related to a religious theme. It’s called “Camiño Longo” which means the ‘long route’ and is from an album (on the Do Fol Musica/Boa label from Spain) called “Cantigas de Camiño”. The album, which comes with an exquisite little hardback book, is dedicated to music based around the famous Pilgrims Route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain’s Northwestern region of Galicia. This is the beautiful singer and bagpiper Susana Seivane.
4 Camiño Longo (4:01) Susana Seivane Cantigas Do Camiño (do Fol Musica/Boa)
There’s been so much good stuff coming out of the Spanish region of Galicia that I’m including it as one of the three points of what I consider to be Spain’s Golden Triangle of Creativity (which also includes Catalunya in the North-East and Andalucia in the deep South of the peninsula).
Here’s yet another example from Galicia - the brilliant bagpiper Anxo Lorenzo and a track from his debut album “Tirán” (which also include guests appearances from Ireland’s Eoghan Neff on violin and England’s most famous exponent of the Northumbrian pipes, Kathryn Tickell). The album’s released on the Spanish Zouma Records label. This track is also called Tirán.
5 Tirán (ends at 4.10ish) (4:30) Anxo Lorenzo Tirán (Zouma)
Ok, over to the second point of my Golden Triangle: Catalunya, home to Barcelonan super-group Ojos de Brujo. They hit the scene with a bang just 10 years ago and have consistently delighted the world music fans and confounded their detractors with their very personal, idiosyncratic and uncompromising approach to music, business and life.
Word has it that they’re finally splitting up to concentrate on personal projects and so have just released what is, I suppose, their final album (which is released by Warner Brothers Spain). Some critics have accused them of laziness because it contains only two new tracks, the other 11 having all been released before on their other albums.
But the title kind of gives it away: “Corriente Vital: 10 Años” (which roughly translates as ‘the Essential Current - 10 years); it’s obviously a retrospective - but with a band of the quality of Ojos de Brujo, there’s an amazing back catalogue to choose from - so there’s definitely no fillers here!
What they’ve done is to hand all the tracks over to different producers and allow them to remix them as they want. So, yes, it is a new album - it’s like meeting up with an old friend for a last dance; they just happened to have had their hair redone and put on a new outfit - but they still move just as well as before! This track is “Todos Mortales” - originally from their 2009 “Aocaná” album - but here remixed and featuring Roldan from Orishas.
6 Todos Mortales (3:23) Ojos De Brujo Corriente Vital 10 Años (Warner Music Spain)
Staying in Spain still, we’re heading South to the final point of my Golden Triangle of Spanish Creativity, to the huge province of Andalusia on the South Coast, the jumping off point for the Moorish influx that so influenced Iberian culture.
And high up in the Sierra Nevada, the home of the amazing Moorish palace and gardens of the Alhambra you’ll find one of the most stylish, yet also most funkiest and bohemian of Spanish cities, Granada.
This is home to a brilliant band - or maybe I should call it a project - called Gnawledge. Put together by American musicologist Canyon Cody and rapper Gnotes, they fuse Andalucian flamenco with North African Gnawa music and jazzy hip-hop sensibilities and more, so much more, utilising a cast of top flight Granadan musicians including Juan Habichuela “El Nieto” on guitar, Otoman Almerabet on Laúd, Eneko Alberdi on guitar, DJ Doblegota on Scratch and loads more amazing musicians. I absolutely LOVE these guys! This is from their “Granada Doaba” album (on the Gnawledge label) and a track called “Perro Cruzado”.
7 Perro Cruzado (3:57) Gnawledge Granada Doaba (Gnawledge)
Ok, we’re going to leave Spain now, but just to show how difficult that is, this next track is a wonderful piece of maracatú-flamenco from Brazil! The band is called Banda Camarão de Rama and is based around the Miguez family: father, Gilvan, daughter, Aline and son, Daniel from Belo Horizonte, in Minas Gerais. The track is entitled “A Bala”.
8 A Bala (2:57) Banda Camarão de Rama
Complete change of pace and place now as we head back over the Atlantic to Europe and back to that Balkan Gypsy Music Festival in Guca, Serbia I mentioned a couple of weeks back. This is part of a 35 minute long jam between 75 balkan brass musicians and 10 nyabinghi drummers; the track is called “Hot Water Festival” (this is part 4) and it’s from the album Gypsy Groovz Orchestra Goes Tutti Mundi: “Night Train for Lovers and Thieves” on the German Network Medien label.
9 Festival Tople Vode Part 4 (3:10) Gypsy Groovz Orchestra Night Train for Lovers and Thieves (Network)
- - - CONTINUOUS - - -
10 Margaret Okudo (dub) (4:18) Owiny Sigoma Band Owiny Sigoma Band (Brownswood)
That last track was called “Margaret Okudo” by the Owiny Sigoma Band, and is from their forthcoming album. There’s an interesting story attached to it:
Two years ago on the eve of the inauguration of President Obama, five musician friends from London who’d know each other since school days pitched up in Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa as part of a loose, informal collaboration organised by the voluntary organisation Art of Protest to promote local Kenyan musicians and partner them with British ones to see what came out of it all.
The London lads met with the phenomenal teacher and player of the East African nyatiti - an 8 string lyre - Joseph Nyamungu, a man steeped in traditional Luo music; he in turn introduced them to drummer Charles Owoko - also steeped in Luo rhythms and the 7 piece got together to find common ground in a disused factory in downtown Nairobi - the only studio big enough to take them all - since most studios in the capital cater only for rap and RnB productions, ie a computer and one mic!
They named the band after Joseph’s grandfather, Owiny Sigoma. Next year they reconvened in Nairobi, this time as a 10-piece band and recorded the album at the Kenya National Theatre - a collection of gloriously loose afro-grooves which sway between Luo and London.
Most of the songs are written by Joseph and based on Luo folk songs. However they must have done something right, because they were picked up by Brownswood Records and championed by none other than Gilles Peterson, who’s really into the drum and bass heavy sound, and Damon Albarn of Gorillaz fame, who also pops up on a couple of the tracks on the album. The album’s also called “Owiny Sigoma Band” and is due to be released next week on the 2nd May on the Brownswood Records label.
Ok, sticking with Africa, but this time shifting over to Mali, here’s a band I’ve also played before. Part of the new generation of Tuareg Desert Rockers, this is the young band Tamikrest, from Saharan Mali, and a track from their new album released only two days ago by Glitterhouse Records. The album’s called “Toumastin” and this track is entitled “Tidit”.
11 Tidit (4:15) Tamikrest Toumastin (Glitterhouse Records)
- - - CONTINUOUS - - -
12 Wey Fikir (4:20) Dub Colossus Addis Through The Looking Glass (Real World)
Wasn’t that dreamy and beautiful! You’ve just heard the brilliant Dub Colossus, an Anglo-Ethiopian collaboration between Nick Page, aka Dubulah of Transglobal Underground and Syriana, and masses of fantastic Ethiopian musicians from the Addis Ababa scene (which includes jazz and rock and hip-hop and soul as well as traditional music).
The wonderfully delicate vocals on there were handled by Ethiopian pop star Tsedenia Gebremarkos. So much great music on that album - it really repays listening to again and again to extract all the hidden flavours! I’m absolutely loving it! That track was called “Wey Fikir” from the album “Addis Through The Looking Glass” by Dub Colossus and it too was released only two days ago on the 25th of April and is on the Real World Records label.
Well, I can only really follow that with a track by Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra - who incidentally will be appearing at Birmingham’s Mostly Jazz Festival on Friday 1st July this year - and what else but a dark, jazzy piece called “Ethio” from the album “World of Funk” on the Ubiquity label.
13 Ethio (3:42) Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra World Of Funk (Ubiquity)
- - - CONTINUOUS - - -
14 Afrodesia (2:41) The Afro Soul-Tet Afrodesia (Ubiquity)
That last track - drenched in tropical rain storms - was an old track called “Afrodesia” from the heyday of jazzy afro-psychedelia and was by the Afro Soul-Tet from their album also called “Afrodesia”. Originally a very limited pressing of between 500-1000 on the Banyon label from Los Angeles sometime between 1968-71, it’s now been reissued by Ubiquity Records.
Something different now. This is a track I’d originally planned to play last week, but my interview and live session with Brazilian percussion genius Renato Martins overran somewhat and I had to drop it. Well, now I can reinstate this lovely piece of Chilean reggae - this is from the king of South American reggae, Quique Neira - off his album “Jah Rock” (on the German label GLM) - and a track entitled: “Dar y Recibir” (To Give and To Receive):
15 Dar y Recibir (4:35) Quique Neira Jah Rock (GLM)
And from a classic reggae style to very much up-to-date Jamaican reggae-pop with a latin-cum-RnB feel; this is C-Sharp - a band I’ve played a lot this year - and probably the most clubby commercial piece I’ve heard of their’s, with at least one verse in Spanish too! They’ve got a new album coming out this year called “The Invitation”. This is called “Dancin’ Like Crazy”.
16 Dancin Like Crazy (3:14) C-Sharp
- - - CONTINUOUS - - -
17 Calypso Cha Cha (2:52) Count Lasha & His Calypsonians Soundman Shots: The Caribou & Downbeat 78's Story (Snapper Records)
Ha ha! Bet you didn’t see that one coming did you? From contemporary Reggae pop to the sound of 1950s Jamaican mento (masquerading as Calypso) mixed with Cha Cha Cha taken from some rare 78’s! Very early fusion then!
And yet people forget that there has always been quite a bit of influence between the neighbouring islands of Jamaica and Cuba. Very many Jamaicans went to work on the sugar plantations in the East of Cuba and learnt Spanish and soaked up the rich cultural soup of Santiago de Cuba and took this back to JA; similarly I met many old Cubans who had learned English either from Jamaicans or in Jamaica themselves.
That was Count Lasha and his Calypsonians from a great compilation double album on the Snapper Records label called “Sound Man Shots: the Caribou and Downbeat 78’s Story” and a track entitled, funnily enough, “Calypso Cha Cha”.
Ok, sticking with the whole half-a-century ago feel, this is from one of my favourite labels, Soundway Records, (who recently released the excellent Colombian compilation of 1960s tunes called “Cartagena!”); this time it’s still in the Caribbean but looking at the French speaking Caribbean and an album released in 2009 called “Tumbélé! Biguine, Afro & Latin Sounds from the French Caribbean, 1963-1974”, which concentrates on the French-speaking and - to this day - still French-administered islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. A fantastic retrospective of yet another hidden part of the Caribe.
However, the track I’ve chosen is actually by a band from Haiti who happened to spend a few years living and working in Martinique and who recorded several LPs there, mostly heavy ‘compas’ for the Hit Parade label. The band is called Les Loups Noirs de’Haïti (the Black Wolves of Haiti), the track was recorded in 1972 and is a manic biguine written by Gardner Lalanne and featuring some bizarre, almost psychedelic, approximations of a jet plane taking off, with crazy sax, distorted guitar and a rhythm section that is almost tripping over itself with excitement. Absolutely love it! This is called, appropriately enough, “Jet Biguine”.
18 Jet Biguine (3:26) Les Loups Noirs D'Haiti Tumbele (Soundways)
Wonderful madness! OK, in the last of my oldies (for the moment at least) this is a funktastic, groovalicious slice of Ghanian Afrobeat from someone who I’ve featured before on this show, Mr Ebo Taylor from the excellent album “Life Stories - Highlife and Afrobeat Classics 1973-1980” - a double album of Ebo’s work with different bands and all very, very enjoyable. It’s on the Strut Records label and was released a few weeks ago. The track I’ve selected has guitar maestro Ebo Taylor alongside Uhuru-Yenzu and a track called “What Is Life?”
19 What Is Life? (4:38) Ebo Taylor & Uhuru-Yenzu Life Stories -
Highlife & Afrobeat Classics 1973-1980 (Strut)
Did I say last of the oldies? Well, Yes and No. Those Greek brothers Lysandros and Orestis Falireas, better known as Imam Baildi (who incidentally take their name from a middle eastern aubergine dish which translates as “The Priest Faints”) - well, these inveterate mashers and mixers of rebetiko have worked their magic on yet another old Greek tune this time it’s the singer Meri Lida and a track called “Thlipsi”.
20 Thlipsi (Remix) (3:20) Meri Lida/Imam Baildi The Imam Baildi Cookbook (EMI Greece)
Ok, we’re slipping up to the last 20 minutes or so of the show, so let’s press on. This band I discovered only recently - and I’m so glad I did. They’re from the Netherlands, they’re called “Bongomatik” and they play the most delightful mix of latin, funk and pop.
This is off their eponymous debut album (and if you’re wondering why I’m using all those big words again - ‘eponymous’ is just another word for ‘self-titled’ - Aw, come on guys, there are thousands of words in the dictionary, it’s a crime not to try and use them all!).
It’s a great album, a whole lot of fun, highly recommended, not long released. It’s published by No Can Do Music on the Distribution label and this track is called “Donde” (if you like Cuba’s Omara Portuondo you’ll recognise it… eventually!).
21 Donde (5:11) Bongomatik Bongomatik (No Can Do / Distribution)
Continuing with the Cuba connection, this is a band that England’s Tumi Music label are pushing a lot. They’re called To’ Mezclao (which means “All Mixed Up”) and that reflects their musical standpoint - since the album covers salsa, latin pop, son-fusion, latin house, reggaeton, merengue, cumbia and bachata.
Naturally, the album is called “Hibrid” (or Hybrid), it’s on the Tumi Music label. They’ll be touring the UK this summer between mid-June and mid-July and promise to be a very exciting band live. The track I’ve chosen is a piece of latin pop called “Mango Bajito”
22 Mango Bajito (3:11) To'Mezclao Híbrid (Tumi Music)
Sticking with latin this is one of my all-time favourite salsa tracks. Of all the salsa dura - or hard salsa - tracks, this is one of the most ‘dura’. It’s by Mr Hard Hands himself, Ray Barretto. It’s from the double album compilation “Fania Records 1964-1980: the Original Sound of Latin New York” released this year by Strut Records. And the track is the MONSTER tune that is: “Indestructible”
23 Indestructible (4:14) Ray Barretto Fania Records 1964-1980:
The Original Latin Sound of New York (Strut)
Thanks to one and all etc…
I’m going to hand over to Olbi Iyah and his show “Version Galore” with reggae of all sorts and styles and periods. And to ease you into that, this is probably my favourite track of the night. This is LUSHNESS personified! Mr Sonny Bradshaw and the Sonny Bradshaw Seven from the Trojan Sixties Box Set 1, this is “Love is Blue”. Good night, see you next week for more worldly grooves!
24 Love Is Blue (3:19) Sonny Bradshaw Seven Trojan Sixties Box Set 1
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