The obligatory "the year in music" post, a few days late

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 Duos last 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

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Mali Monday #2: Tinariwen

Image taken by Thomas Dorn and found here.

Official site

The second installment of Mali Monday features a band I have mentioned on this blog before and whose most-recent album, Aman Iman: Water is Life, was among my selections for the best music of 2007. The YouTube video linked to below is a documentary intended to promote Aman Iman (all the music you'll hear from it and Part II, below, are from that album), but it also gives you a strong sense of the geographical, cultural and historical contexts out of which Tinariwen was born. Powerful viewing.



Part II of the documentary is here

An observation:
Once you hear this band's music, you'll sense that its emphasis is on groove, that there is most often only a lyrical difference demarcating verses and choruses. Though there is space set aside for instrumental solos, the playing during those breaks tends not to be at all flashy. Still, you'd think a rock-n-roll guitarist steeped in the blues and attuned to world musics would fit well with this sort of music. Someone like, say, Carlos Santana. You would think. I'll let you find and listen to the results for yourselves--in the YouTube section of Tinariwen's website, they've linked to two performances where they shared a stage with Santana, and I made it only half way through one of them. The awkwardness of their performance is such that you can't pass it off as being unrehearsed (all Santana was called upon to do was improvise leads). I'm no musicologist, so what follows is mostly speculation on my part: We in the West have groove-based music, too, but the groove is in the rhythm section. We tend not to associate the melody with the groove; that leaves plenty of room for a soloist to do his/her thing and not interfere with anyone. Tinariwen's music, though, is of a piece: everything counts; even the singing is part of its groove. Because there's nothing extraneous, there's no real space for a soloist. Hence that painfully awkward-sounding performance--there was really nothing, musically-speaking, for one of the world's greatest guitarists to do during his performances with Tinariwen.

None of this is a criticism of anyone, by the way. It's more an expression of surprise that it didn't work--that it didn't come close to working. It's also a useful reminder that, as similar as these musics from Mali sound to the U.S.'s tradition of blues and blues-based musics, their differences lie deep below those surfaces.

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RIAA-rant, and the Best of 2007

Tinariwen (who look like they'd be more than happy to kick some RIAA butt), on the cover of Aman Iman ("Water Is Life"), one of my picks for best album of 2007.

This morning, I was listening to a downloaded copy of Little Feat's "All that You Dream," from their incomparable live album, Waiting for Columbus, as I read this--and, in particular, the passage quoted below. The little factoid about Little Feat is important, for reasons that I'll explain on the other side.

[I]n an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

"I couldn't believe it when I read that," says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. "The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation."

As I say, I was listening to a song from Waiting for Columbus as I read this. The legally-purchased CD of that album sits in a CD rack in my living room. In fact, this is the second legally-purchased CD of that album that I've owned; I'd taken the first copy with me on so many long road trips that it had become unplayable from all the scratches. I'm certain that online there are all sorts of downloadable-for-free copies of Waiting for Columbus, but it never occurred to me to look for them. I'm not as pure as the driven snow when it comes to file-sharing, I admit, but of the 4,000-some-odd songs I presently have in my computer's iTunes, maybe 30 of them are of questionable legal provenance; all the rest are copies of CDs I actually own or have purchased or downloaded for free in mp3 format from Calabash Music and Last.fm. Moreover, off the top of my head I can recall sending to another party copies of only two songs via the Internets. The CD copies I've burned have been for my personal use.

I'm not trying to imply that I'm typical or atypical or beyond reproach in my music buying/obtaining/distributing behavior. It's just that this little story reminded me of my age: I'm old enough to remember the days when the RIAA was all exercised over the selling of blank cassette tapes, their fear being that people were taping albums and passing them around rather than springing for the actual LPs. It was a silly argument 25 years ago, and it's silly now, though for different reasons: While I have no doubts that piracy does indeed cut into Big Music's bottom line, it's equally true that there's just never been so much music available--much of it legitimately-free, at that--to so many people as there is now, and that fact also cuts into the bottom line. But no matter: in the specific case of my (twice-purchased) Little Feat album, I'd resent mightily the accusation that, "unauthorized" or not, those mp3 files somehow embody lost/stolen revenue.

Now to the "Best Of" list, below the fold:

A couple of disclaimers first. The first is that, while I bought more music than I had any business buying, it turned out, as I was pulling this list together, that most of what I bought was actually released in 2006 and I only heard of it this year. So, if we're going to be faithful to the calendar, I have to leave off some really good stuff. Future posts will probably end up pointing the curious in those directions anyway.

So, then, that leads me to the next disclaimer: I ended up buying only eight albums released in 2007. The good news, though, is that my straitened finances forced me to be fairly careful in making my purchases, such that seven of them really should be on somebody's Best Of list, somewhere. So why not mine? The odd album out, Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, just ended up underwhelming me, despite the grand "My Body Is a Cage."

The third disclaimer: Much of my listening this past year was in service to indulging my burgeoning love affair with music from Mali and western Africa; this means that I just didn't listen to much new music from the States.

Where possible, I'll provide you with links to (legally-available--pace, RIAA!) full-length cuts from these albums. Mad props to the aforementioned Last.fm for these.

Okay--enough disclaiming! Here's the list, in alphabetical order:

Bebel Gilberto, Momento. Full-length tracks available here. Not as musically adventurous as her stunning debut, Tanto tempo, but still a beautiful example of elegant music-making from Brazil. She is João Gilberto's daughter, by the way. Bossa nova and samba are alive and well and sexy as ever in this Gilberto's hands.

Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton, Knives Don't Have Your Back. Full-length tracks available here. Simple but not simplistic piano-based music, much more intimate than the music Haines makes with Broken Social Scene. At their very best, such as "Crowd-Surf Off a Cliff," these songs' spareness is heartbreaking.

Radiohead, In Rainbows. Samples available here. A bold marketing experiment, more than vindicated by the solid songs on this album. To my ear, it's reminiscent of OK Computer's sound. Not a bad place to be sonically.

Something of a ringer, since it's a sampler: The Rough Guide to World Music: Africa & Middle East. Samples available here. John Armstrong, the album's compiler, says, modestly, "From Afro-beat to Congolese Soukous, and from Tuareg music to Arabesque, this release introduces some of the key African and Middle Eastern artists and styles; popular and classical, new and traditional." And does this in 15 well-chosen tracks. Some of the artists here--Baaba Maal & Mansour Seck, King Sunny Ade, Oliver Mtukudzi, Ofra Haza--will be familiar even to those who've had cursory encounters with music from this region. Get-up-and-dance music that not only makes most of our pop and dance music seem lead-footed by comparison, it also more often than not has a social conscience to it.

Sigur Rös, Hvarf/Heim. Samples available here. The Amazon reviews are mixed; even beautiful music can be disappointing if, in the listener's opinion, it's "just" more of the same. Artists should grow, I know, but this album is something of a retrospective, after all. And anyway, personally I'm not at all tired of this band's sound. As far as I'm concerned . . . more, please.

Tinariwen, Aman Iman. Full-length tracks available here; the band's history is here. For me, 2007 was chiefly about learning more about music from Mali and, by extension, west African musics--the vast majority of my listening to and buying music reflects that journey. I am bowled over by how rich the musical traditions of that region are and how ignorant I remain of them. Tinariwen's music is that of the Touareg people of Saharan northern Mali, but its electric guitars and bass, combined with Touareg percussion, give this music an intensity and drive that will make you want to take it with you on your next road trip. It's not rock & roll musically, but it certainly is in its feel. I'm especially fond of track #4, "Matadjem Yinmixan."

Vieux Farka Touré, Vieux Farka Touré. Full-length tracks available here. Ali Farka Toure's son plays guitar and performs songs in a style strikingly reminiscent of his father here on his debut album, but whereas Ali stayed firmly rooted in his "desert blues" style, Vieux shows a willingness to introduce new sounds into that style, much as Issa Bagayogo does in his best album, Sya. This is a powerful debut that shows the son more than capable of looking his father's music straight in the eye and willing to bring something new to it. Give "Touré of Niafunké" (a father-son collaboration) and "Courage" a listen.

So there's the list, such as it is and for what it's worth. Maybe it will encourage some of you to compile your own; if it does and you do, I hope you'll link to it in comments. Thanks in advance, and Happy New Year!

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Music from Mali: A survey

Note: If you have trouble downloading from the RapidShare links, e-mail me and I'll be happy to send them to you via other means.

The cover of Putumayo Music's Mali. "Maninda," ("The Storyteller's Song") by Mouossa Diallo, is that album's first track.

"My music is about where I come from and our way of life and it is full of important messages for Africans. In the West perhaps this music is just entertainment and I don't expect people to understand. But I hope some might take the time to listen and learn."
--Ali Farka Toure, from the liner notes to Niafunké

Long-time readers know I'm a fan of music from Mali and have posted on two of its better-known artists, Ali Farka Toure and Issa Bagayogo, in the past. For some of you, then, some of the music and commentary to follow will be familiar. But not all of it. Since those posts, I've heard new music by those artists and learned about other musicians from Mali besides. For what it's worth, then, here are some links to and comments on a sampling of music and styles from a musically rich place, in hopes that you might hear and enjoy something you hadn't heard before.

Those curious but unwilling to risk purchasing an album by a single artist might consider trying either or both (there's no duplication of tracks between them) of the two sampler albums here, Mali and Think Global's West Africa Unwired. Each surveys the musics of the country in a slightly different fashion. The Putumayo selections come from both the deserts of the north and the Niger watershed of the south (which have musically-distinctive styles) but tend to be more musically familiar-sounding to Western ears. Diallo's song, linked to above, serves as a nice primer for Malian songs generally--specifically their tendency to establish a melodic riff or groove that repeats, with little variation, for the song's duration. And, as in the case of some of Ali Farka Toure's songs below, that groove permits the creation of vocal lines unrestrained by meter that snake and writhe, seeking not the final permitted syllable but the end of the idea's line (think of a typical line of Walt Whitman, for example). But, as you'll hear in each of the selections here, though the riffs are often irresistibly danceable, they aren't beat-heavy. Rather, they tend to have a light percussive feel to them that is often rhythmically complex and (to my ears, at least) never tiring to listen to, even when, it must be confessed, some of these artists can sound musically samey from track to track. Lovers of groove will not be disappointed by what they hear, though.

Habib Koité and his band Bamada are represented by two songs on Mali, one of which is "Kanawa" ("Please Don't Go"). Koité has a light voice, and his songs emphasize melody over groove, which accounts for their pleasant pop feel.

Meanwhile, West Africa Unwired's selections aren't limited to Mali; Guinea, Senegal, and Niger are also represented. Not only is the music on this album uniformly excellent, it has the added advantages of its proceeds benefiting Amnesty International and being affordably priced besides. Diénéba Seck is a former actress who became a musician by choice and not by birthright. Her selection here, "Niteke Nela," is an intriguing fusion of traditional, mostly acoustic instruments and a swinging, even jazzy feel to the song's arrangement.

Toumani Diabaté and Ballaké Sissoko are the sons of famous players of the kora, a 21-string harp-lute used throughout western Africa. "Bi Lamban" ("Today's Lamban"--a lamban was the centuries-old traditional dance performed by griots, hereditary occupational musicians) is a showcase of virtuosity on this instrument: Sissoko plays the riff over which Diabaté soars. If you like this piece, you're certain to like the entirety of the album this comes from originally, New Ancient Strings. Though tranquil and even entrancing, this is not music to doze off to.

Mah Damba's song, "Koulan Kouman," has dizzyingly-complex playing for a song that simply repeats a riff for 7 minutes. That complexity is matched by Damba's colorful, adventurous singing.

More below the fold.

THE glaring weakness of both these samplers is that neither has a selection by Ali Farka Toure. To get a sense of what that omission is like, imagine a one-disc anthology of Sun Records artists with nothing by Elvis on it. Despite his death last year, Toure remains the undisputed giant of Malian music (go here for a thorough biography), and the more one learns about him, the greater one's admiration grows for this man for whom farming and serving his people (he was once mayor of his home town of Niafunké and personally financed irrigation projects benefiting the the town) were of more value than seeking fame and fortune as a musician.

Red & Green is a packaging together of early Toure albums from the mid- and late-'80s. They are very similar musically; most songs consist solely of Toure on acoustic guitar and Hammer Sankare on calabash. "Timbindy," a song in which the singer woos a reluctant girl, is from Red; it's here also because its little guitar lick will reappear in a very different song, "Allah Uya." "Petenere," from Green, celebrates the heroes of a long-ago war of liberation. Here, Toure is joined by a griot and a n'goni (a traditional instrument that resembles a solid-body ukulele.

For my money, Niafunké (1999) is Toure's best album. He had not made an album in 5 years and rarely performed, having become more dedicated to farming and to the life of his community. Recorded in his spare time when not tending his crops, in an abandoned building with no electricity (the techies brought in a generator), almost every one of Niafunké's songs is marked by strong melodies and singing. Moreover, it has a strong intimate feel to its sound. "Allah Uya" is a song that praises God's omniscience. "Howkouna" is a call to Malians to labor to free themselves and the nation from poverty. This song features one of the more extraordinary sung lines I know of--it moves like water, seemingly obedient only to itself, not even to the song it's a part of, yet working absolutely perfectly within it.

Savane was released four months after Toure died. It has a more expansive sound than does Niafunké, owing to the larger number of musicians joining him and the acoustics of the room it was recorded in: a large reception room in a hotel with an enormous picture window overlooking the Niger. But the arrangements are also expansive, even adventurous. "Erdi"'s lurching riff and yowling harp playing, reminds me in some ways of Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks." Its lyrics are about the jealousy that can arrive among competing herdsmen. "Machengoidi" ("What Is Your Contribution?") is more traditional in both sound and theme: it argues that the nation and its people can advance only through work, of which there is plenty. Its tempo puts it squarely in the genre of Archetypal Work Song.

Issa Bagayogo seeks to merge traditional Malian song structures and instruments and dub, hip-hop, and other club styles. Of his 3 albums so fare released, I prefer Sya: its fusion, as on "Gnangran," is so successful that determining what is "Malian" and what is "Western" is well-nigh impossible to determine. The low-pitched stringed instrument you hear, by the way, is the kamele n'goni; its percussive qualities add yet another layer of rhythmic complexity to the piece and at the same time provide the song's riffing melody. It has the added advantage of daring you not to dance.

Tinariwen (Tameshek for "empty places") are members of the Tuareg people of the desert north. Western rock stars love to strike the rebellious pose; the members of this band actually formed during the 1990s as they fought against the Malian government out of anger over the Tuareg's isolation and poverty. Most Malian music is in some sense about forming and sustaining community; this band's music, though, given its geographical and political contexts, has a sense of urgency to it that not even Toure's music can match. While musically Tinariwen are most similar to Toure, his songs still have an acoustic feel, even on the electric pieces. Tinariwen's songs' bass lines, though, smooth things out underneath their mesmerizing grooves. Much is also made of Toure's music's similarities to that of John Lee Hooker, but to my ear Tinariwen's music is closer still (and, Howlin' Wolf's "Smokestack Lightning" sounds like it could have come straight from this part of the world, too). Aman Iman: Water Is Life is their most recent album. "Cler Achel" ("I Spent the Day") is a song about wandering, homesickness and longing; "Matadjem Yinmixan" ("Why All This Hate Between You?") urges the Tuareg to forget tribal differences and seek unity as a people.

Tartit is another band comprised of Tuareg people, but it's distinctive because it's led by women who perform unveiled while the men in the band are veiled. Tuareg women have more freedom, relatively speaking, than do most African women--they are permitted to choose (and divorce) their own husbands, for example. But like Tinariwen, Tartit were also formed during the Tuareg rebellion and, like them, sing songs about community, though at a more domestic level. Some of the tracks from this album, Abacabok, weren't just recorded live, they were literally recorded in the desert (in the credits, the crew's driver is thanked for using his truck's headlights as lighting for a nighttime recording session). "Eha Ehenia" is about a woman who is a disgrace to her family--she is a poor hostess, even to her in-laws. Note the taunting quality of the melody. A more instrumentally fleshed out song, "Achachore I Chachare Akale," is a meditation on mutability and transience, and is also interesting because of its abrupt shift in tempo and melody at its halfway point.

Those of you wanting to learn more should visit Mali Music. It is a treasure trove of biographical information (sometimes in French; scroll down the page for English), links to musician websites and music, and more.

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