UPDATE: Some added information re Maker's biography, and a discography at the bottom of the post.
[Note: We all have our lists of artists we think deserve more recognition than they appear to have. Here begins my list. It'll appear on occasion, as mood and opportunity strike.]
Willem Maker. Website here; (free downloadable) Daytrotter session here.
I briefly mentioned Willem Maker (born Wes Doggett) in my Best of 2010 Music list, but I didn't speak to my sense of his being Overlooked--and I should have. Consider this post a belated remedying of that oversight.
Actually, Maker may not remain Overlooked for much longer. In the course of looking around for links for this post, I learned that Maker received brief mention in this past Sunday's New York Times, in belated acknowledgement of Maker's album Agapao, released back in April. Ben Ratliff describes Maker's music as "sophisticated southern-rock trance music, composed with open-tuned guitar and boot heel, adjoining blues and country and heterophonic gospel music," and that is hard to improve upon.
But, this being the Internet, I'll elaborate anyway.
Maker's biography is a powerful one that gives added weight to his work. His career, in fact, very nearly came to an end just as it was beginning. As described in this article in No Depression, Maker and his brother's band had just recorded a single with alt-country star Jay Farrar (co-founder of Uncle Tupelo and, later, Son Volt) in the mid-'90s when Maker began exhibiting bipolar-like mood swings. Extensive testing revealed that he and the rest of his family had toxic levels of lead and mercury in their bodies: it turned out that their rent house in Georgia had been built on (and parts of it with) slag from the local copper refinery. The family then moved just over the state line to the somehow-apt Turkey Heaven Mountain in Ranburne, Alabama, where Maker still lives.
You don't have to know all that, though, to sense Maker's music's power. And it is powerful: This man is no whiner. At its heart is that trance-like quality Ratliff mentions. It owes something of its quality to the droning, proto-boogie style of north-Mississippi blues practiced by R. L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough (both also very much worth knowing, if you don't already), but its tempos are slower, giving Maker's songs a more expansive, starker quality. Think of the opening riff of Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks"--not just its rhythm but its overall mood--and that's something like the feel of Maker's songs.
But these songs wouldn't work if Maker had a crooner's voice, and fortunately, he doesn't. Imagine a rougher-voiced Bob Seger who isn't so much singing as declaiming rhythmically, and you'd have Maker's voice.
I said "declaiming." Maker's songs are more like visions (often foreboding) than stories. In some of them, lovers done each other wrong, but more often than not the speaker's concerns transcend the particulars of his world to include all of us. Maker sees, he doesn't like what he sees, but he's unafraid of what he sees. This isn't exactly lounge-by-the-pool, Southern good-timey music, but it's heady, heady stuff.
As an example of his work, click to play "Red as a Rose," from Maker's first album, the one-man-show Stars Fell On. This link is a freebie via Maker's record label, so download with impunity, if you're so inclined. Lyrics below:
Black road's busy Toll's overflowin Payin for a promise It'll take care and save Away from the danger Away from the threat Wolves for shepherds Chains for charms
They say It's all gonna be alright But I don't believe em And if they say Its all gonna be alright Don't you believe em Don't you believe em
I came here for joy I came here for love I came here to open the darkest door I say I'm a lover That knows how to fight For the precious, the dear and the quiet that cries
No more to be so civilized With teeth like fangs, eyes flashin knives A hunger’s shift from led to lied I pass the sheep for the shepherd’s hide Gold’s illumination to hide the beast inside
I see a road And it's red as a rose I see a road And it's red as a rose Red as a rose Red as a rose Red as a rose
This woman, named Panthea, a rare African-American contestant appearing in the second season (1974) of The Price Is Right, had earlier won a sailboat and has just been shown a prize she's expected to bid on to win. What was that prize, you may ask? And what prize had she not bid on but passed to her fellow competitor? The answers below the fold. Images found here.
Here are some things that have caught my eye/ear in the recent past . . .
** Over at Musings from the Hinterland, my lawyer friend Randall finds himself on the horns of a moral dilemma. (Just look at that: "lawyer" and "moral dilemma" sitting there in the same sentence like matter and antimatter, but not blowing up. An amazing thing, language.) The theological dimensions of charity are more complicated than one might think, as I was reminded while I tried to respond to his post: In the past, I have found myself in similar circumstances, torn toward wanting to do right by someone and, on the other, feeling trapped by that very desire. To what extent does a given charitable act obligate one to perform future acts? Also, of course, we should examine the motivation behind the charitable act. It seems odd to think of charity as contingent, especially when Jesus says, "When you give to the poor, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" (Matt. 6:3). Paul's famous meditation on love in I Corinthians 13, meanwhile, is not quite about that love celebrated at weddings but, rather, a meditation on charity--that love which, when given, asks for or expects nothing in return. Not a whole lot of contingency there, which, I'd argue, makes it an odd passage to read at weddings . . . but THAT'S a whole other debate. Similarly, though from the opposite direction, in Walden Thoreau has things to say about charity (his term is "philanthropy") that at first seem quite caustic (he says that most "good deeds" are in fact "goodness tainted" because they are motivated by felt obligation and/or expectation of reward rather than true love of people (the etymology of philanthropy, after all)) but, on further inspection, are not really out of line with the Gospels. Compare Matthew 6:3 with this, for example, paying close attention to the phrase "conscious design": "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." But while it's pretty clear to me that what the Bible (and Thoreau) are addressing here is one's attitude--that one should have what some more conservative denominations call "a servant's heart"--it's considerably less clear on the matter of whether (and the extent to which) a given act of charity creates a further obligation toward the recipient of that act. Or maybe I'm missing/forgetting something?
** Speaking of religion, one of the stickier dilemmas created by Christian doctrine is the implications of the claim that Jesus is fully human as well as fully divine. To fully embrace Jesus' humanity subjects Jesus' ministry to history and the tools by which we examine history; it also doesn't allow us quite so easily to use Jesus' divinity as an excuse for being less than, um, vigilant in our own conduct . . . and it makes us uncomfortable to consider that Jesus was subject to the same temptations as all of us are. Anyway, perhaps the most prominent explorer of the historical Jesus is John Dominic Crossman, and CNN.com has up a (to my mind) fair-minded profile of Crossan that is well worth your time if you're so inclined. And, in case you're wondering: I think that the more one knows about and takes seriously the idea of Jesus the human being, the more extraordinary he becomes, independent of his divinity.
Along these lines: I highly recommend The Complete Gospels, which is a compendium of the four canonical gospels along with 16 other known texts about the life of Jesus written during the early years of Christianity. Attentive reading will make the familiar unfamiliar--in a good way. For example: It was after reading the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which Joseph plays a prominent role, that I realized how, after the story of Jesus as a boy in the temple (Luke 2:39-52), Joseph never reappears in the canonical gospels. Given the urgency with which is treated the story of Joseph's going through with his marriage to Mary after she becomes pregnant, his early disappearance from the gospels opens up a space of wonder about him: what he was like as a man; the inevitable whispers about Jesus' actual parentage and the wide gap in age between him and Mary; and, of course, what it must have been like to raise Jesus, to guide him in, well, how to behave. Who knows, really, whether any of the events in the Infancy Gospel actually occurred? But no matter, really: the stories will still ring true. If Jesus was fully human, that means that he was a little kid. And all little kids need instruction in how to behave--even one who is also fully divine.
** I've not exactly built a shrine to Bob Dylan here at home, but I don't deny his greatness or his importance to American music. He is a genius. And he knows it, and he's known it since before he even arrived in Greenwich Village to meet Woody Guthrie. And, though I've read only a couple of anecdotes about his life, what I've read there would seem to qualify Dylan for a title that I conferred on Faulkner a while back: "sophist bastard." But in many (most?) of his greatest songs, Dylan plays the same role: Wise man who sees more than the rest of us mere mortals; indifferent lover who's already self-seduced, so why doesn't the woman, like, lay across his big brass bed already? I think all this is why my favorite Dylan song is "Tangled up in Blue." For once, he is more in awe of his sometime-lover than he is of himself and even faithful in his own Odysseus-like way as he meets and becomes separated from his lover and wanders over America, never forgetting her, then reuniting with her and separating again but, again, with the promise to meet again. For once, the story Dylan tells in this song is bigger than he is.
** The '70s. If you're nostalgic for them, you either weren't a fully-sentient being or you were still hungover from the Sixties. Really, now: what were our mass-cultural betters thinking? James Lileks makes a strong argument in his site-under-construction The 70s (hat-tip to Andrew Sullivan) that the decade in which Yours Truly came of age is unmatched "for sheer idiocy, ugliness, meretricious music, televised banality and general malaise." I suspect Lileks is engaged in an indirect attempt to head off here the inclination to do for the '70s what Mad Men is doing for the early '60s. So far, I'd say, Mission Accomplished.
Even though the site is under construction, there's already lots to look at. So, to give you a sense of what you'll find, here is where I found Panthea: on a page of Lileks' "Faces of the Price is Right." (Lileks' rendering, by the way) This page neatly encapsulates what is best about Lileks' project: really good snark combined with, as you'll see in his discussion of Panthea's appearance on a the show, some pretty good commentary on the implicit assumptions of mass culture.
And now to show you Panthea's prize . . .
Yes. A certificate for riding lessons.
And below is the first prize she had been offered and had passed on to her competitor:
Yes again: A trip to Scandinavia. Lileks summarizes succinctly:
I’m not trying to make a big deal of race and culture here, but it does illustrate the assumptions the show made. You can’t get any WASPier than sailing, horseback lessons and a trip to Norway.
UPDATE: Today is this humble blog's 7th birthday. I don't really know what to say about this turning of the calendar (which I very nearly forgot to check on), beyond the obvious: It's been fun and it remains so, and I find myself wishing I've had more time of late to post more frequently and write things of more substance. But aside from that and the general wish that I were a better writer, I have no regrets about keeping this thing going. To those of you who have found your way here, kept returning and reading, commented, occasionally linked, and sent others my way, Thank you. I have gotten to know some of you quite well, I feel, and have even had the pleasure of meeting a couple of you in real life--people I almost certainly would never have met if not for this blog, people who have enriched my life, making me think, and laugh, and think some more. I've never made a dime off this thing, but my life is richer because of it.
I've written about Arvo Pärt before, but something about hearing his music this morning made me want to do a bit of reading, which made me want to write a little. What follows is also posted over at my Last.fm journal.
This morning, hearing the extraordinary title track from Tabula Rasa made me want to revisit the CD's accompanying liner notes (written by Wolfgang Sander), which I hadn't looked at in a very long time. Here's part of what I found--a quote from Arvo Pärt himself:
"In the Soviet Union once, I spoke with a monk and asked him how, as a composer, one can improve oneself. He answered me by saying that he knew of no solution. I told him that I also wrote prayers, and set prayers and the texts of psalms to music, and that perhaps this would be of help to me as a composer. To this he said, 'No, you are wrong. All the prayers have already been written. You don't need to write any more. Everything has been prepared. Now you have to prepare yourself.' I believe there is a truth to that. We must count on the fact that our music will come to an end one day. Perhaps there will come a moment, even for the greatest artist, when he will no longer want to or have to make art. And perhaps at that very moment we will value his creation even more--because in this instant he will have transcended his work."
The temptation is strong to read this passage within the context of Tabula Rasa (the album as well as the piece itself) and meditate on that phrase's meaning and think, "This is Pärt's signal that he is prepared; he is ready not to produce or respond, but to receive." Sander himself certainly says as much in his commentary on the piece itself, and to which I can add nothing:
What kind of music is this? Whoever wrote it must have left himself behind at one point to dig the piano notes out of the earth and gather the artificial harmonics of the violins from heaven. The tonality of this music has no mechanical purpose. It is there to transport us toward something that has never been heard before.
[UPDATE (January 1, 2011): One last addition to the list; scroll to the bottom to see it.]
The cover art for Asleep at the Wheel's 2006 album, Santa Loves to Boogie. Image (and a link to Amazon's free mp3 link to the title track) found here.
The Mrs. and I are back from visiting my mother for Christmas. While my mother and I are very different in many, many ways, one thing we do share is a love of what used to be called "western music." So when she asked me if I like Asleep at the Wheel (which I do, very much) and if I'd like a copy of Santa Loves to Boogie (somehow, she'd ended up with two), I enthusiastically said Yes. Now, granted: like the vast majority of Christmas albums by country performers, this one is chiefly intended to milk a few dollars from already-adoring fans rather than serve to bring new converts into the fold. But lovers of the Wheel's mission to bear the torch of Western Swing on into the 21st century will enjoy this, and there are some surprise appearances by Dale Watson (think of music in the style of Dave Dudley's truck-driving anthem, "Six Days on the Road" and the Buck Owens-to-Dwight Yoakam continuum of country music) and Willie Nelson, singing a pretty version of his own "Pretty Paper" with the Wheel's Ray Benson. At just over 34 minutes, this disc is over before it gets on your nerves; but if you're driving to Grandma's during the holidays across an open landscape, this would serve as a pretty good soundtrack for that drive.
Anyway. The Wheel's Christmas album is a new-to-me album for 2010. It certainly doesn't make my Best Of list, though; it just serves for this post as a handy entree to that list. As for that list, there are fewer albums that I actually bought--times being what they are, I didn't have a whole lot of money around for that particular luxury. But due to the largess of friends and to the wonders of the Internet's abundance of free (and legal!) online music, I've gotten to hear a lot of good recent music in a variety of genres. So, what follows will actually be two lists: first, albums; next, artists I've learned about this past year who are worth seeking out.
As has been the case with me for three and a half years now, the music social-media site Last.fm is an absolutely indispensable resource for learning about music of any sort and meeting other music-lovers who share your tastes and interests. Many bands have a presence on Last.fm, and many of them post links to free music (more about a few of them later). Two other sites I've mentioned before that deserve mention again are The Silent Ballet, which focuses mostly on instrumental rock-oriented music, and Daytrotter, which provides free recordings of short in-studio sessions with a broad cross-section of, mostly, indie and alt-country and alt-folk artists.
Enough prattling. Below the fold, you'll find the lists, in alphabetical order, with some links. Happy listening!
Albums:
Bettye LaVette, Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook. The samples at Amazon should be enough to persuade you that you want this; if not, then watch this, her performance of the Who's great song, "Love Reign O'er Me":
LaVette can even find soul in Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here." 'Nuff said.
Loscil, Endless Falls. Loscil (Vancouver native Scott Morgan) makes sonically-luscious ambient music; Endless Falls, its 2010 release, has a depth and sonority that's rare even in a genre known for precisely those attributes. This is slow-moving but always-engaging music. Via Amazon, you can pick up two free tracks from this album, "Dub for Cascadia" and "Lake Orchard." If you'd like to hear more for free, you can download all of Loscil's 2006 album, Stases.
Ana Moura, Para Além Da Saudade. I have had this album for well over a year, but I somehow overlooked it for inclusion in last year's Best-Of list. Moura served as my introduction to fado, a genre of music from Portugal whose traditional subject is longing for or loss of a distant loved one. Accompanied, as is traditional with this music, only by a single acoustic guitar, Moura's voice is perfectly suited for such a genre: it's a husky alto with an achy quality. It's so well-suited, in fact, that even though I know very little Portuguese, it feels as though I understand everything she's singing.
Old Californio, Westering Again. Imagine a cross between the early-'70s band America ("Ventura Highway," "Horse with No Name") and the Midwest's proto-alt-country band The Jayhawks, and that's Old Californio, at least to my ears. Like both those bands, this one isn't going to be the sort of band that Changed the Face of Popular Music; it "just" does what it does very well. The band is trying to raise money to finish producing its upcoming album--click the video to hear some samples.
Gretchen Parlato, In a Dream. Way back in January, I heard the title track from this album on Wichita's NPR station's weeknight jazz program; after it was over, the host said simply, "Gretchen Parlato. Remember the name." Yes indeed. In a Dream ranges far and wide in terms of both material and styles: there are a couple of pop songs here; the Brazilian standard "Doralice," which she sings in Portuguese; songs by Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Duke Ellington; and a couple of originals by Parlato herself. As for her singing, well, Diana Krall she's not. Parlato's style is such that, even as she's singing the lyrics, her voice becomes like another instrument. Additional point in her favor: She's also collaborated with Esperanza Spalding (about whom more later) on the latter's Chamber Music Society.
The Picturesque Episodes, Constellations. Darius Gerulis is a Lithuanian who makes music he describes as "cosmic-rock/ambient/neo-classical." In other words, "post-rock." What's striking about this music, though, is that each album has its own sound, but taken as a whole the Episodes' music really does range all over that sonic map. For that reason, it's hard to choose one album to single out over the others, but Constellations, with its Pink Floyd vibe, is the one I keep coming back to. Gerulis also makes all his music available for free.
Max Richter, Infra. Richter is a German neo-classical composer whose music reminds me of Arvo Pärt filtered through a pop sensibility--which is to say, it feels melodically-accessible to a mainstream audience, but it's not Muzak. Infra is the score for a ballet, but its brief pieces hold their own well apart from the dances they accompany.
Esperanza Spalding, Junjo (samples). This is Spalding's first album; recently, Amazon had it on sale for $5 as a download and I jumped on it. Despite her youth (she's still in her 20s), Spalding is already regarded as one of jazz's very best artists. All I know is that when I listen to her sing or play (she plays bass), it feels like I'm hearing jazz for the first time, and like she herself has just discovered it. This is very accessible music, but it's not at all staid or stale. Those who love jazz but think of it as having become glorified lounge music or ossified into that theme/solos/theme pattern need to hear Spalding and the aforementioned Parlato. They will restore your faith in jazz's future vitality.
Sun Kil Moon, April.. I've known of Sun Kil Moon (chiefly, Mark Kozelek, formerly of Red House Painters) for some time now, but it was my long-time online friend Kári of Delights for the Ingenious who sent me a recommendation via Last.fm for "Heron Blue" on this 2008 release. In that as in so many other musical instances, Kári was right. Other favorites are "Moorestown," "Unlit Hallway" and "Tonight in Bilbao." One wishes that Kozelek would be a little more articulate, but if one loves beautiful, melodic mumbling, you'll like April very much.
Steve Tibbetts, Natural Causes(samples here). How to describe Tibbetts' music? In his electric pieces, he sounds like a much jazzier, improvising Hendrix; the acoustic pieces tend to be folkier-sounding, but with strong non-Western influences. Tibbetts follows a muse that I don't believe sings to anyone else--at least, not in the way that it sings to him.
Artists:
(In addition to the links to their websites, where you can find some freebies, all except The Hush Now have been recorded by Daytrotter.)
Bonnie "Prince" Billy. If there was a trend in my listening preferences this year, it was in the direction of artists that I'd call "alt-folk": performers who have in common voices that aren't conventionally pretty, literate lyrics, and who are more deeply informed by American folk music than most seem to be, but not staid traditionalists. Indeed, of the artists listed here, only Drive-By Truckers and The Hush Now would not fit that category. Bonnie "Prince" Billy (Will Oldham) is a scratchy-voiced singer whose songs I find deeply moving.
Alela Diane. Hailing from California but sounding like a reincarnation of Maybelle Carter, Diane's songs' starkness reminds me of early Neil Young (I have in mind songs like "I Am a Child" and "Old Man").
Drive-By Truckers. I am a white Southern male who came of musical age in the late '60s and early '70s; ergo, I am genetically and culturally predisposed to like bands that either are named Lynyrd Skynyrd or carry on in that band's spirit without pandering to the Stars-and-Bars-waving element who think that that's what that band was about (the flag-waving, that is). Drive-By Truckers is clearly in the latter category. Guitar-based but writing tighter songs than Skynyrd did, the Truckers unblinkingly explore the darker sides of contemporary rural and working-class Southern life. Lead singer Patterson Hood's vocals take some getting used to (he often (and unpleasantly) sounds like he's well out of his vocal range), but they write such smart songs that, well, here I am recommending them to you.
The Hush Now. Boston-area makers of smart, accessible pop that manages to sound distinctive without getting labeled as "quirky." Lead guitarist Adam Quane is a friend of mine via the Mark Z. Danielewski forum. They're a fairly new group; they will be at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin this March, so listen now and when they become the Next Big Thing, you can say you knew them when.
Willem Maker. Daytrotter session here. Maker hails from the mountains of northeastern Alabama. Though definitely in the alt-folk category, his particular vision seems more all-encompassing than do the others listed here--have a look, for example, at the cover art for Maker's most recent CD, New Moon Hand.
J. Tillman. Go and listen. The man can write songs, and he's also the best singer in this list.
Laura Veirs. I was introduced to Veirs' music this summer, when I was looking for versions of "John Henry" and Veirs' "John Henry Lives" popped up. It's not a cover of one of the older, variant versions of "John Henry" but something much more intriguing: a musical and lyrical updating of Mississippi John Hurt's "Spikedriver's Blues," which itself is something of a commentary on what some even in the '30s took to be one of the messages of the "John Henry" songs: that their hero had killed himself by working too hard. But whereas Hurt's speaker leaves the work crew before he suffers John Henry's fate, Veirs' re-writing turns our attention back to those who stayed on, their labor "all painted in red." Needless to say, I was hooked, and I went off in search of more by this remarkable writer. You might be hooked, too.
UPDATE (January 1, 2011): Zoe Keating. I completely overlooked Keating the other day; she is someone very much worth knowing about. Keating is a classically-trained cellist who creates compositions by playing and then, via a looping device, playing them back and playing new lines with/against those looped lines. The effect is, at its best, quite beautiful--and knowing how these pieces are made doesn't make them any less wonderful.
Just listening to iTunes in "Shuffle" mode and drinking coffee this morning, when this popped up:
This is the title track from In the Name of Love: Africa Celebrates U2, which works both as a tribute album and as a nice introduction to contemporary African performers, most of whom aren't well known in this country. I've had this for a while in my collection via the largess of a friend on Last.fm; I'll be honest: it's a hit-and-miss album, as these sorts of things are: everyone performs well, but the goal here is to sell records to a Western audience and, as a result, the arrangements are pretty safe. For many of these singers, English isn't even their second language; so, in the case of Vieux Farka Touré's version of "Bullet the Blue Sky," he sings the verses in one of Mali's several languages (Vieux Farka Touré is the son of the late, great Ali Farka Touré, about whom I recently wrote) and only the title phrase in English. Still, there are more hits than misses here, and having this excellent a capella gospel choir singing a glorious, no-muss-no-fuss arrangement of U2's greatest song may make the album worth hunting down for some of you.
Don't you hate it when someone says something that it feels like you've been trying to say, off and on, for the better part of your adult life and says it much better than you?
The opening paragraph of a review of Chris Abrahams' album, Play Scar:
You know how when “Strawberry Fields” on Magical Mystery Tour fades out, another song comes passing through, only to disappear moments later? It makes one cock an eyebrow and wonder, “What was that song?” It’s like a brush with an alternate universe in which different Beatles songs exist, and the imagination concludes that an infinite amount of untapped music exists on the other side of the veil. This is why people will always create music, because it seems to exist without us or not. It’s a limitless realm. That one moment where a subliminal song passes our ears is how Play Scar begins, as if the opening chord on a shimmering organ is that moment, but this time we snag the tail of the comet and are led somewhere other.
Romantic neo-Platonism lives! But it is also thus with many things in Real Life, no?
(By the way: lovers of (and those curious about) contemporary instrumental music should make The Silent Ballet a frequent place to visit: skilled and knowledgeable reviewers write about a dizzying range of music, from experimental to classical to movie soundtracks. Even better: the reviewers describe very well what you'll hear. I've rarely felt led astray.)
I haven't posted on music on this blog in some time. However, I recently wrote a review for this album over at Amazon, and I thought I'd share it with my reader(s) here.
Let's be honest: Records that give pleasure to the listener are, relatively speaking, a dime a dozen. We hear them on the oldies stations; our collections are filled with such music. Far rarer is music for which the listener feels genuine, profound gratitude to its maker for having made it and for his/her own great, good fortune for having heard of it before s/he died. Niafunké is most definitely on my list of such music.
I don't believe I had even heard of Ali Farka Touré before a friend played Niafunké for me almost ten years ago. A couple of songs in, and I actually felt something like shame that I had not known about this man and his music long before: it was--and is--that good, that gripping and compelling.
The first four songs give the listener an idea of this album's musical range: "Ali's Here," a rave-up that prepared me, without knowing it, for Tinariwen; "Allah Uya," a song whose melody and rhythm, despite its religious subject matter, can't help but evoke slow movement across the desert and which, I'd learn much later, borrows a little guitar lick from Red & Green's "Timbindy"; "Mali Dje," a slow-tempo plea to Touré's nation's peoples to work together for their common survival (and thus an indirect introduction to Mali's history of inter-ethnic (and sometimes intra-ethnic) violence); and "Saukare," my introduction to the njarka, the Malian violin--a screechy-sounding instrument that is, admittedly, an acquired taste (it has grown on me, but I admit it took a while). These songs also serve as a partial introduction to Malian music more generally; all that's missing is southern Mali's Nigerian- and Senegalese-influenced music (as embodied by Habib Koité and Oumou Sangare), a kora piece (the kora is the Malian harp) by Toumani Diabaté, and something from Sya, Issa Babayogo's masterful melding of traditional instruments and musical forms with Western techno.
But for me the real revelation on Niafunké is "Howkouna," a song whose melody feels, to this Western listener anyway, as though it's beginning in the middle of a line (Savane's "Erdi Yer Bounda" has that same quality); then the njarka's repeated riff kicks in; and then that extraordinary second part of the song where the sung melody line just goes and goes past the point that it feels like it "should" stop, slowly down the scale, occasionally turning back up the scale before heading back down again, like water seeking out a downhill route. You know it's structured because the chorus knows the words and will sing them back, call-response style, but it feels, if not improvised, then certainly organic. Even today, after many subsequent listens, that second part still catches me anticipating its end and being surprised when it keeps going.
There are also the circumstances of this record's being made that enhance its aura for me: Touré had not recorded in five years and was disappointed in his more recent records; he rarely performed; he had devoted himself to improving the lives of his fellow citizens of Niafunké by becoming its mayor and purchasing irrigation equipment for its farmers. The basic tracks were recorded in an abandoned mud building on the outskirts of town, after Touré was done tending his fields for the day. It's clear that Touré wanted to make this record; it's equally clear, though, that there were other things to do while he made it, more pressing than guitar-playing . . . and who would argue that? And yet: Look at what resulted--a record whose subjects are those other, more pressing things, along with the urgency of embracing them. This is political and spiritual music in the most essential senses of those terms--which is to say, it is communal.
Of course, when I first listened to Niafunké, I was just as ignorant of the Malian artists named above; it is because of Niafunké that I know what I do of them, and that is the other reason I am so grateful for this record. I wanted to hear more, so I looked for samplers; the same friend who introduced me to Niafunké also played me Issa Bagayogo's Sya; one thing led to another, as these things do, and now I have some inkling of Mali's (and by extension, western Africa's) musical richness. Before hearing Niafunké, that richness was one of those examples of things that we don't know that we don't know (which, of course, we can recognize only in retrospect); after hearing Niafunké, I had to remind myself that ignorance is not a sin (except when it's willful) but, as I noted above, I couldn't help feeling a bit ashamed for not having head it before.
Can you tell I like this album? I like lots of music, and lots of different kinds of music; there are few records, though, that I will recommend without reservation to anyone with a varied musical palette, or willing to cultivate one . . . or even to the not-so-willing. You've often heard it said that Kind of Blue is that album you recommend to someone who says he hates jazz. For me, Niafunké is the Kind of Blue of Malian music.
Greetings to my new students who may have found your way over here. I encourage you to have a look around. For a selection of older posts that I'm not too embarrassed about, scroll down and look in the right gutter for the section called "Assemblages."
Someone in one of my classes asked me what kind of music I like. I think I said something like "Everything." But I'll go ahead and stick my neck out this early in the semester and post an example of something I think is especially good that I've just come across. Give a listen to this new-to-me jazz singer, Gretchen Parlato, and her live cover of the SWV song, "Weak." Apologies for the tinny sound, but the piano playing, the rhythm section's groove, and the way that Parlato's voice, perfectly intelligible, becomes more like another instrument in the band, are head-noddingly good:
Oh--and speaking of head nodding . . . I shared with my classes that this had gotten stuck in my head last weekend and, as of Thursday morning, was still in there:
You press the "Play" icon at your peril. The Biggie Smalls bits are not safe for work; the Miley Cyrus bits are not safe, period.
The cover art for Magnolia Electric Co.'s 2005 album, What Comes After the Blues. Image (and links to full-length tracks via the "Media" link) found here.
As I begin this post, I am listening to Tinariwen's 2009 album, Imidiwan ("Companions"), about which more later. I have posted about this Touareg band from the deserts of northern Mali before: real, genuine revolutionaries (they formed in the refugee camps of people displaced after the wars for independence against the Malian government in the '80s), still fighting on behalf of their people and culture--through music, now--that has melded electric guitars, traditional melodies influenced by John Lee Hooker-style blues, and lyrics so steeped in Touareg culture and politics that they read simultaneously like that people's open secrets and poetry to the rest of us. AND: White people can dance to it. No wonder this band, on its Summer 2009 tour of the U.S., won such acclaim from those who saw them perform.
How to convey my sense that Tinariwen are making music as vital as anyone I'm aware of and that anyone with any appreciation for hypnotic groove will find immediate entree into (and wait till you read the lyrics), and yet at the same time avoid romanticizing them into Noble Savages-with-Gibsons out of Western culture's constant craving for something authentic which we suspect our own culture has long ago lost? Even the accompanying booklet, with its interposed "Magic Desert Moments," I'm afraid to say, perhaps tilts this album's apparatus too far into romanticization. But what can the good people of World Village/Harmonia Mundi do? Tinariwen really do still live in/with the desert, with all that that entails: to know that they know, when they hear jackals at night, that "[t]hey're talking about us" is as much what Tinariwen signify as their music. Perhaps more--for without knowing something about that world that they remain immersed in, listening to their music becomes a lowest-common-denominator kind of experience: White folks willing to shell out $19 retail can dance to this. Cool!
Before this morning, I hadn't planned to yammer at such length about the dilemma Tinariwen pose for someone like me. But that was before I read David Hajdu's thought-provoking article at The New Republic, ""Pretending." It's ostensibly a review of the video games Guitar Hero and The Beatles: Rock Band but, in the tradition of Roland Barthes' essays in his book Mythologies ("Popular Culture" studies before such a thing existed) becomes something deeper:
It is tempting to interpret the phenomenal success of music-oriented games--especially the wildly hyped Beatles edition of Rock Band, introduced in September of this year--as evidence of music’s return to the center of young life, or as validation of the aesthetic values of classic rock. The reality is more complicated and less flattering to boomerdom. For one thing, these games have fairly little to do with music. After all, they are games--like poker, the Olympics, or pro football; and like those and other games, they are, to varying degrees, largely about the pursuit of status and glory, wealth and sex. Guitar Hero and Rock Band involve musicianship in the same sense that chess involves military service. Rocking, like rooking, is the thematic action; but the content is the form, the rules.
For another thing--and this is the main failing of music games, and it is a significant one--they have the insidious effect of glorifying classic rock, a music with an already bloated reputation that is founded on its very bloatedness. In the games’ absorption with technical prowess, speed, flash, grandiose show, and fakery, they not only affirm the enduring allure of classic rock to kids and young adults, especially males; they also advance its tyranny. People like me who have kids of video-game-playing age no doubt get many things wrong about these games, and chief among the errors of our age group, I think, is inflated generational pride in the 1970s-style arena rock that Guitar Hero and Rock Band promote to our descendants--kids who might otherwise, and perhaps more appropriately, use their after-school hours to nurture interests in music of their own. The games reassure us that our aftercomers are our heirs. They are male-oriented tools of cultural primogeniture, applications of twenty-first-century technology with a very ancient mission.
Later on, Hajdu will read Giles Martin's involvement with The Beatles: Rock Band as an Oedipal narrative (Giles' father is producer George Martin, the real "5th Beatle" if there ever was one): The Beatles of course started out as a band, but their legacy rests not on live performance but on what they did in the studio under the elder Martin's guidance; for the son to claim the Lads were "just the four guys in a room making noise, and that noise comes from them and from nothing else" is, to Hadju, "a strange betrayal not only of the Beatles, but of the person most responsible for facilitating their transmutation of pop into a studio art: his father. So much for pop primogeniture."
So, this is the mass-cultural world in which we find ourselves: one that craves and seeks "authenticity" in cultural expression because our own, we suspect, is so co-opted by commercial considerations as to be reduced to the state of the surface's being its essence; and yet, when we have within our own culture examples that seem authentic, there's the strong impulse to deny them something that informs that authenticity--not just, for example, the reductive reading of the Beatles as "just the four guys in a room making noise" but also things like the "No Fear Shakespeare" books. I think the thing to do with a band like Tinariwen is to keep on telling my reader(s) that they are a band worth knowing and, as faithfully to them as I can, convey why that is, and at the same time fervently hope that their music doesn't end up in Guitar Hero 2.0.
And now, on with the list. As with last year's round-up, what follows is more a new-to-me list of the best music I ran across, though some 2009 releases appear here. Because of my yammering on (and on) above, the comments below will be brief but, I hope, reflective and not reductive of what you'll hear.
Balmorhea, All Is Wild, All Is Silent (2009). Named for a small town in West Texas known for its enormous spring-fed swimming pool (now a state park), Austin-based Balmorhea is yet another post-rock band in that city. This group's sound has a chamber music feel to it, with its acoustic guitars, piano, violin and cello serving as foundations and some electric instruments as ornamentation. This album's music (and its title) are inspired by the letters of one of the very earliest American settlers in Texas--he was there even before the arrival of the famous-for-Texas Moses and Stephen F. Austin-led settlers to the land between the Brazos and Colorado rivers. It works even if you don't know all that, but (I think--and I may be writing about this album later) it becomes a richer listening experience if you do. Good driving-across-the-prairie music, at any rate. Here is a link to a live performance of "Coahuila," a song from the album.
More selections below the fold. Boards of Canada, Twoism (1995; 2002). Electronica, I suppose you'd call it, but with a "live" rhythmic feel to it that so much of that music lacks. As I listened to this for the first time, I kept being reminded of the sort of thing you hear on the radio program Hearts of Space, but more overtly shaped by rhythm than much of that music is. If someone were to ask me what "chill" is, I'd point him/her in this direction.
Magnolia Electric Co., What Comes After the Blues (2005). This band and its previous incarnation, Songs: Ohia, were one of last year's big revelations for me. Jason Molina, the singer and principle songwriter, is a Neil Young soundalike whose music captures much of Young's brooding mysteriousness from those early-'70s albums; Molina's music mixes that with an alt-country vibe (think Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt, the Jayhawks). The website has lots of samples from this and the other albums, plus scores of full-length live performances. Good stuff.
Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile (2008). Meyer (bass) and Thile (mandolin) work the space between bluegrass, jazz, and classical music. It's a tribute to just how intertwined the instruments are when I say that at times, it's difficult to know which of them is the one I "should" be listening to. Virtuosic, indeed, but often moving and, more than occasionally, witty and even humorous.
Luciana Souza, Duos II (2005). Souza is yet another in Brazil's apparently-endless line of smoky-voiced altos. I posted about Souza's album Brazilian Duoslast year; this album also offers up older and contemporary sambas and bossa novas, but the playing and singing on this album has a jazzier feel. This is instantly likable and yet holds up to repeated listening as you become more aware of the wonderful musicianship on display here.
Tinariwen, Imidiwan (2009). The cover art for this album pretty much conveys what is important about this group: in particular, the desire to make music out of whatever is at hand. But by way of concluding this post I'll quote the (translated) lyrics of "Tamodjerazt Assis" ("Regret Is Like a Worm") and hope that some of the music you heard last year speaks this earnestly, this nakedly:
Regret is like a worm, anxiety is like war For my youth which I wasted I touched incandescence, I burned everything whole I set fire to myself, I became like cinders I wasted so much time with futile things Getting mixed up with lies, with schemes, and with treachery When I was a child, I was determined When I was a child, I was already disconnected I lived beyond the news of the world, I wasted everything
The cover (no pun) of Paul Anka's Rock Swings. Image found here.
Some of you know that I find myself drawn to odd cover versions of songs; indeed, one of you publicly expressed concern for my state of mental health when I posted a link to the Leningrad Cowboys' version of "Delilah" (which, yes, you really shouldhave the pleasure of seeing). Of late, I find myself indulging in this pleasure more overtly; earlier this week over at an author forum I frequent, I've started a thread of some odd pairings of singer (or arrangement) and song.
Sure: it's part lark, this interest of mine. But I've also this week given some thought to the whole idea of cover versions of songs--specifically, what works and what doesn't, and why. To choose to sing someone else's song is at some level, after all, an artistic choice. So, then, what to do?
The first (and, frankly, least interesting) option is the straight cover. There's an undeniable initial weirdness in seeing Garth Brooks with KISS performing "Hard Luck Woman," but that wears off pretty quickly. In its place comes the realization that neither is interested in re-imagining this song. In fact, for me the most striking thing about this performance is the realization that Brooks could easily have written this himself: that stylistically, "Hard Luck Woman" fits comfortably into what is passing for mainstream country music these days. Straight covers are respectful and respectable versions of the original: not a bad thing, especially when the song is a good one, but, well, not terribly interesting for the listener.
The second is the cover that makes the listener reconsider his/her thinking about the original. It's analogous to a skilled critic's re-interpretation of a literary text or a skilled actor's performance of a familiar role or, as often happens with Shakespeare these days, a re-setting of the play in an unexpected place or genre (think of Macbeth done in the motifs of a story about the Mob, for example): it reveals a dimension to the work that makes the original look strange--in a good way--to the listener.
Here are two examples of what I mean.
Paul Anka, "Smells Like Teen Spirit":
I very much like the Nirvana original--one of the most visceral pieces of grunge you'll ever hear--and so I was prepared to guffaw my way through Anka's performance. Swing, after all, is surely diametrically opposed to grunge. But. In my opinion, it really, really works well. The song becomes sexy assertiveness, as embodied in the big finish, rather than the original's teenage existential angst.
Dolly Parton, "Stairway to Heaven":
Where others hear a stoner anthem, Parton hears a spiritual and, moreover, pushes the Zep original's folky beginning to a U.S. version of its logical conclusion. But neither the song nor bluegrass-as-genre get mocked here--and the same is true of Anka's performance. Both are treated with respect despite their surface incompatibility, like a good marriage. And that, in a nutshell, seems to me to be the key to a successful, artistically-valuable cover as well.
[Note: This is part of a draft of a post from last year, the 25th anniversary of the release of Thriller. It never got finished, and I never came back to it. Edited somewhat to make it more apropos for today.]
Here is a moment filled with considerable pathos for me, Michael Jackson's performance of "Billie Jean" at Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever. Remember this, those of you Of A Certain Age?
It's a risky thing to convey accurately in this space the effect that seeing this performance had on me in the spring of 1983--"risky" because the language I'd have to use would seem either absurdly hyperbolic or downright weird. So I'll settle for something the guitarist Johnny Lang said in an interview: he said that seeing this performance was the most memorable performance he'd ever seen, and that when his father told him, "He's not really singing, you know," Lang replied, "I don't care."
That about sums it up for me, too. Before that moment, I frankly didn't like Michael Jackson very much--he had basically broken up with his brothers to pursue a solo career and so what the hell was wrong with him, wanting to sing one of the "new songs" right after his Jackson 5 medley with his brothers; after he had finished, I was asking what the hell was wrong with me for thinking that. The New York Times said, "There's Michael Jackson, and there's everyone else," and I just nodded, dumbfounded.
There are some memories you don't want tainted by subsequent events: you want them clear and pure and unfiltered and undimmed. For me, the year of Thriller's release is a memory like that. In 1983, I don't know how deep the cave would have had to have been for someone not to have heard or seen something about this album; yet for me, I felt as though I'd been made privy to some great secret.
If you're Shearwater, you can make a little ditty called "The Snow Leopard":
This is the magnificent penultimate song on their 2008 album Rook, on which my friend Ariel recently smiled his approval and for which I have vowed to forgo a few groceries, come next payday, in order to acquire.
Over at Last.fm, someone tagged Shearwater with this: "maybe this will make getting older easier and somehow blunt the pain, of the soundtrack of my life." Frankly, I don't see how hearing this could make anyone's life any worse.
Lyrics below the fold. "the way is to climb the way is to lie still and let the moon do its work on your body
and then to rise through forests and oceans of lives and through the way of the black rocks, splitting, wide, and flow ten thousand miles."
well, i've had enough, wasting my body, my life i'll come away, come away from the shallows
but can this sullen child, as bound as the ox that i ride, climb to the heart of the white wind, singing, high, and blow through my frozen eyes?
Top: The 150-foot tall Zilker Park Christmas tree, Austin, Texas; below: Yours Truly and his two daughters (G. is on the left; C. in the middle) demonstrate what any self-respecting, physically-able Austinite must do, round and round, at high speed, underneath said tree. Both pictures taken by my brother, whom I'd not seen since his return from Iraq this past spring.
Ten days and over 2,000 miles later, I'm back home--briefly (New Year's Day/The Mrs.'s birthday celebration up in Topeka (where those who know, go), dontcha know). Scruffy is relieved to be home as well: he likes other dogs well enough, but he prefers them smaller and in smaller doses than the ways in which he was around them. As soon as we got home yesterday and he had a quick look around the apartment, he collapsed on the living room floor and slept the sleep of the relieved.
Anyway, this is one of those end-of-year grab-bag kinds of posts, partly self-indulgent, of things that popped up while I was out and about. To spare both the casual visitor and those who'd just rather move on to something more substantive, the rest of the post is below the fold . . . though those who choose to persevere will find a practical driving tip at the very end. Just before I left, Nick (who also goes by "Doc") of Will Not Be Televised very kindly e-mailed me to ask me if I would send him a link to a post of mine that, in my estimation, was the best of what I had posted last year. He was making the same request of all the bloggers he links to: an idea he freely admits he had stolen from online-satirist extraordinaire Jon Swift. Of all the ideas out there that one could steal, by the way, this one is especially worthy of being stolen. Anyway, I sent him a link to a post and, while I was away, he sent me the link to his "The Best of You" post. Thanks again for asking to include me, Nick. In case anyne is curious/cares, I sent him "Cycling in the Rain; or, Defying the cultural logic of late capitalism", in which a Saturday-morning rainstorm leads to some musing about how serious bike-riding reshapes how we think about those things we call "neighborhoods." For those not inclined to read every last one of the posts Nick links to, here's my selection of the best of The Best: "Caught Between the Devil and a Hard Rain" (a Bass-o-Matic of the Kansas City blogosphere, Robocop, drug-running, Lutheranism, and f-word-speaking Beatrix Potter characters (really!)); "Lucky Wok" (in which KC-area restaurant-reviewer DLC advises readers not to run to the buffet at your local Chinese-buffet place but to "try the Chinese (menu)"); and this vignette from An Oddment of Sandwiches recounting the strange confluence of the paranormal and Final Jeopardy! that reads a little like one of those stories from Zen Buddhism.
Those less than satisfied with my own best-of-new (to me) music post might find greater satisfaction with this list of lists over at NPR. Like NPR itself, the lists in the aggregate are like NPR itself: an eclectic mix of the mainstream and the less-known, the domestic and the international, selections by noted critics and regular listeners' own choices. I literally only have time right now just to link to it, but next week I look forward to delving into them. Also via NPR's All Things Considered from yesterday: this utterly charming Robert Siegel interview with Caitlin Sanchez, the new voice for Dora the Explorer. Siegel treats her like a child, in the very best sense of that phrase; Sanchez, meanwhile, is a precocious 12-year-old (she likes Thelonious Monk) who clearly has spent a lot of time talking to adults but doesn't come across--except in one funny instance--as one of those kids who's forgotten that she's just a kid. If you have 7 minutes to spare, you'll want to listen--their exchange about Thelonious Monk is a great little entree into thinking about his music.
And speaking of music: Santa was exceedingly generous to me in that department this Christmas. I received The Neville Brothers' Gold, a 5-decade survey of their music and the perfect introduction for those whose knowledge of the Nevilles begins and ends with Aaron--Aaron is here, but so also are generous selections from the Brothers' other permutations as the Hawkettes, the Meters, and the Wild Tchoupitoulas--all told, a great survey of New Orleans-style R&B and funk; Steely Dan's Can't Buy a Thrill, still my favorite album by them; and Vols. 1 and 2 of Home Grown! The Beginner's Guide to Understanding the Roots (rap, from an actual band, no less, that doesn't lapse into the caricature of thuggin' and druggin' and celebrations of excesses but, instead, continues in the tradition of Public Enemy and NWA: hard-edged and angry but not despairing. Good stuff.)
It was good to spend some time with my daughters, now 14 and almost 11, at my Mom's house. In addition to the Austin-y thing pictured above, we visited the LBJ Library and Museum, did a little book-shopping (both remain avid readers), bought some bicycle accessories for younger daughter C.'s newish grape-purple bicycle, and went shopping at Central Market, which is something like your local foodie hangout on steroids--all healthy and good-for-you steroids, though, of course. G. was looking for--and found--some sodas from France that her French teacher had shared with the class; C. was in search of chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, and each met with success. I didn't find the Twinings chamomile tea flavored with honey and vanilla that the Mrs. and I had one day while in Mexico City, but C. reminded me that there's this thing called the Internet and I might try looking there. Ah so. They are beginning to recover from their Jonas Brothers fixation--G. was proud to share with me her wonder at the music she had been introduced to via Pandora: "music no one has heard of," she said. C. and I spent about an hour one day just batting a tennis ball back and forth on the floor--not talking much, just passing the time together. At one point, she got the giggles and then the hiccups, which caused me to laugh. "It's (hic!) not funny!" she admonished. "Yeah, it kinda is," I told her.
It is now about eight and a half years since I moved away from them, and so I know well not to take a great deal of the credit for how they have so far become the girls--young women, really--they have become. (Whatever differences their mother and I had as a couple, there's no denying that she has been a wonderful mother to them.) I could not be prouder of them, but it is the sort of pride resulting from, mostly, whatever I have may have contributed to the Nature side of the Nature/Nurture ledger. It is natural, though, for parents to look for traces of themselves in their children, and so my particular version of that search is an odd one: physical resemblances aside, what of me is in them, after not having been a daily part of their lives for so long? It is a hard thing to say. All I know is, I do clearly see both those ways that they are like their mother and those ways they are not. They are like that merging of people that their mother and I never figured out how to do, but they are also more and other than that merging, too. They are already different from this past June, when I spent almost a month with them; no doubt, they'll be different people again this summer, when I hope to have them here in Wichita for a week or so. Anyway: it was an all-too-short three days with them, but it was time well spent.
Enough of that. I do want to make sure, though, that those of you who have read this far leave with some practical advice (via my father-in-law): If you happen to run over a mattress with your car on the highway, Don't. Keep. Driving. (Click to enlarge the images.)
Ojos de Brujo. No es el flamenco de tu papá. Image found here.
Beginning this afternoon, I will basically be away from "here" until after the New Year, so I thought I would post some links to things I ran into during the year that some of you might like.
Times being what they are, I didn't buy very much music this year. Instead, I perused the 'Nets whenever I'd run across something musical that interested me. For those who don't yet know about it, Last.fm is an extraordinary resource in that regard: it's the very rare artist for whom it does not have at least a snippet of his/her work. So, with the exception of Esperanza Spalding's album, Esperanza, I don't think I bought anything that was first released in this calendar year. The trade-off, though, was that I grew in appreciation of what the Internet can offer those who don't mind doing a bit of link-chasing. It's distressing that the larger labels in general are very stingy with free music, as are labels specializing in jazz and world music. I'm happy to report, though, that Nonesuch, a label that doesn't seem to know how to put out a bad record, is now offering some few free mp3s (though let's just say they don't make it easy to find them); the other day, I found them for Sam Phillips, Kronos Quartet, Bill Frisell, and the East Asia: Koto Classics album from their Nonesuch Explorer Series of indigenous and folk musics from around the world. But counterintuitively, it's the smaller labels that are more generous with free full-length mp3s. But not so counterintuitively, perhaps: as my wish list for new music has grown, the sources of growth have been those smaller labels.
The selections below are all over the geographical and musical map: music from 5 continents; jazz, "world" (whatever that means these days), blues, guitar-pop, ambient and post-rock. I hope you might hear something you like.
Merry Christmas, all. Best wishes for a happy and safe holiday, and thanks as always for reading.
(A note on links to pieces: At the Last.fm links you've find the player at the upper-right-hand corner of the page. The Rapidshare links permit 10 downloads and then become inoperable. If you're number 11 and/but you'd like to hear the piece anyway, email me at "blogmeridian AT sbcglobal DOT com" and I'll be happy to send it on to you.)
Esperanza Spalding. I first heard of Spalding on an NPR story back in the summer: A 24-year-old female jazz acoustic bass player and singer. Equally adept in singing in Spanish and Portuguese as well as English. At age 20, became the youngest instructor in the history of Berklee College of Music. All pretty unusual--even more so is the fact that, musically, she is much more sophisticated than you'd think she'd be at her age. Give a listen to the straight jazz of "The Peacocks" from Junjo. Her current album, the one I actually have, is Esperanza. What's extraordinary about this music is that it's clearly jazz and very much the sort of music one thinks of generically when one hears that term, but she sounds freed by its tradition rather than treed by it. It's like she's just discovered jazz and it's the coolest music ever.
More below the fold. Ojos de Brujo. A Spanish group whose name means "Wizard's Eyes." They fuse flamenco, gypsy and hip-hop(!) into a style that shouldn't work but does. Flashy and precise and, after a while, as bewitching as their name implies. "Sultanas de merkaillo" (from Techari), is a good representation of their sound.
Hukwe Zawose: A Tanzanian singer and multi-instrumentalist who died in 2003. Deeply rooted in the traditional musics of the region, his music nevertheless sounds like it could have been composed by a minimalist. This is hauntingly-beautiful music. In "Chilumi", the combination of tight harmonies and the bowed instrument at first sounds discordant but soon acquires a haunting musique concrète quality that, if you're into someone like Steve Reich, will knock your aural socks off. Meanwhile, at 10 minutes in length, "Mateso" will require some time of you. Less frenzied than "Chilumi," but with considerable space for both singers and those incantatory percussive and bowed instruments. Absolutely gorgeous music.
The Sundays, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. I suspect all of us have bands or singers we like not because they're all that essential to anyone's understanding of the musical cosmos but because they just sound so damn good. The Sundays are one of those bands for me: their guitar-based dreamy pop sound and Harriet Wheeler's expressive, slightly-moody voice go down easily like the best frothy pop, but with their ever-so-slightly-unexpected key changes and at times edgy lyrics, they're more substantial than that. Reading . . . is the Sundays' first album of their three albums, but I bought my copy of it only this year. It's been interesting to listen to within the context of having known well their other two albums for some time now: in their debut they're more surprising musically, more willing to do things like suddenly, thrillingly shift into a minor key in the middle of a song, such as they do in the bridge of "A Certain Someone". "I Kicked a Boy," meanwhile, is one of the odder love songs I've heard this year. The later albums, Blind and Static & Silence, each have fine songs on them, but they're a little more monochromatic in their sound. True, it is a beautiful sound . . .
Luciana Souza, Brazilian Duos. I have liked Brazilian music for a very long time now; some day I hope to post some recommendations because it seems to me that we are suddenly awash in great music, both traditional and variations on the traditional, that some of you might like to know a little more about. And besides, 'fess up: Is there a sexier genre of music--not just some songs, the entire genre--than the bossa nova?
Ahem.
I just recently learned about Souza, a woman equally at home with traditional Brazilian music, jazz, art-song settings of poems by Pablo Neruda and Elizabeth Bishop, and classical pieces. In Brazilian Duos, Souza, accompanied only by a single acoustic guitar, sings a selection of traditional and more recent songs by Brazilian composers. Both the playing (by three different guitarists, one of whom is Souza's father) and Souza's singing are exquisite, approaching jazz at times but, just as often, adhering pretty closely to straight readings of the songs. Here are a couple of selections: A fast piece called "Baião Medley," and the very sad and pretty "Pra Dizer Adeus" ("To Say Goodbye").
The Silent Ballet. The 'Nets are awash in free music, much of it legally-so via artists' and record labels' websites, and some of it actually good even if you haven't heard of most of these people before. The Silent Ballet is a site that is one of the more extreme examples of this free music stuff. Focusing on reviewing and promoting the music of groups that sit at the musical intersection of post-rock, ambient, psychedelia, noise and "experimental," The Silent Ballet regularly makes available for free download compilations of songs that groups have sent in to the site's editors. At present there are nine compilations and two live recordings. All are generous: each has well over an hour of music, with many of the pieces stretching to seven or eight minutes or more. Alas, there's no way to preview individual tracks, but--especially if you like this sort of music--it does these collections no disservice to say that, for the most part, they all sound pretty much alike. Besides: it's free. I've not listened through all of them, but I will go ahead and recommend Volume IV because of its inclusion of two Austin-based groups, Balmorhea and Signal Hill.
R. L. Burnside (1926-2005). A bluesman very much in the style of John Lee Hooker. Have a look at the Wikipedia article, then give a listen to "Bad Luck and Trouble,""Georgia Women," and "Snake Drive." You'll know what to do--or, if you don't know, your feet and hips will.
UPDATE: I completely forgot to mention Jorge Drexler's Eco. Drexler is a Uruguayan singer whose song "Al otro lado del río" was used in the film The Motorcycle Diaries. Drexler's music is musically a sophisticated pop, I suppose, but is lyrically straight out of the art-song tradition. Elegant: that's the word I'm looking for.
Willem Maker. Website here; (free downloadable) Daytrotter session here.
