An perfectly magical sega 7inch produced again by a mysterious singer that nobody seems to be able to portray outside of La Réunion island: if any maloya specialist can provide some sort of informations about the mysterious Moan Thermogène, his orchestra "Mento Latene", or their thrilling taste for synths and disco laser toms, he will be more than welcome.
As far as we know, one of the strangest thing recorded at Studio Issa / Saint-Denis de la Réunion.
From 1985 and still fresh as a watermelon, a discreet yet cheerful EP from the mysterious Lula on Zero records . Moreover, a good opportunity to talk a bit about this label which catalogue seemed to contain all the roots of a music tree that would later become fundamental in the field of japanese independant music. While many of the musicians who happened to release their early recordings on Zero are still active, they furthermore developped a decisive influence through the years on a younger generation, wether you consider the now classic Shonen Knife or the less highlighted Luna Park Ensemble (which member Hiro Nakazaki now belongs to Maher Shalal Hash Baz), among many others.
This label's releases, now belonging to the tough world of collectors, start to resurface from time to time on various blogs: check Stalking Duppi for the highly recommended Kumiko Suyama's haunted vocals layered on filtered noises, or Mutant Sounds for the delicately detuned works of Che Shizu:
The rich Aura Music compilation, featuring various artists from the team, also offers an interesting panorama, including incursions into more synth oddities with such a kind of electronic tune:
It's not a surprise to learn that this label happened to release the japanese edition of After dinner's Paradise of replicaand Souvenir Cassette (compilating live recordings from european and japanese tours): its whole catalogue seems to be cemented with a deep coherence, a (sub?)conscious trademark that will allow you to find connexions between many of the artists, projects and specific musical aspects they developped.
A floating tempo principle inherited from traditional sundanese music played with Calung (a bamboo tube xylophone from the west Java), blended with soft MIDI tambourine and drums, give to these tracks from indonesian superstar Darso a specific and titillating sound that makes me feel highly grateful to my wise friend Makiko who kindly brought me the original tape back from her last travel here.
Trying to dig Darso's impressive career that goes from the 70s - with more psyche-related material - to recent karaoclips that remain full of unexpected ingredients, a search on the insanely completistMadrotter blog for more will lead you to this creme de la creme synthy jewel piece of him featuring Detty Kurnia. So good and underrated that I can't resist to include an excerpt:
Algerian early rai legendary band from the 70's who gained notoriety for imposing their "Abassi" music style playing (different to the Oranese one). They're beng collaborate with early Rai legends such as Groupe El Azhar, female rai singer Chaba Fadela amongs others...
The band was fronted by Ahmed Zergui (pic below) who go on after the group disbanded, releasing many other tapes. I can't really confirm if he's the same artist who appeared under "Cheb Zeguir" on Hicham Chadly's "Proto Raï" as they are quite a lot of: "Cheb Seguir", "Mohamed Zaguir", "Sghir" etc in the whole rai scene. (Anybody to confirm ?)
First in a number of few posts dedicated to other fascinating Tamil / Kollywood score composers who did not appear on the tracklist of our "Play That Beat Mr. Raja #1" compilation...
Chandrabose, sometimes also known as "Chandra Bose", was a hugely popular Tamil composer who scored for around 300 movies and was kind of emblematic in the late 80's to early 90's..
At first comes one song as taken from "Manithan's score, a 1987 Kollywood blockbuster starring Rajinikanth. The movie being quite famous too for its ending with the violent and explosive death of the villain and some dreamy & beautiful music clips.
As for the anecdocte, back in 2008 when we thought for a Tamil score compilation (which was supposed to be a 2xLP record), that song was planned to appear...
Rougher and South Indian folklore inspired second song, from "Paati Solle Thattathey"(1990) with a pic (above) taken from its cartoonish style animated generic.
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To end properly comes one last extract from one of Chandrabose's most popular succes: "Raja Chinna Roja" (1989).
Iranian music scene is one of my favorite in the all world, it's dark as the night, refined in a very special way, quite mystic. Here I want to introduce two greats albums of the sweet singer Pari Zangeneh (Pari Zanganeh in some others traductions). The first one is called "Series of music for young adults", 1978, from arranger Varoujan. Pari sings for children a selection of persian folklorics songs with poetic arrangements and a fine and sweet 70's orchestra. A love master piece for kids.
The second one is from a composer named Fariborz Lachini.
It's an audio story book named "Boze Boze Ghandi", 1989, based on a traditional Persian story. The songs and background effects are quite wild, Pari Zangeneh give her voice to the tale and sing also with Elahe Hamidi somes cool songs like you can heard in the following extract.
It's available to buy in MP3 here, with some greats others, like "Carnival of Animals" a 1979 album.
For this radio mixtape made on demand for both french magazine Telerama radio and french blog Le Musicassette, Gangpol & Mit took the opportunity to pay tribute to music and people who were influential in the making of their new record, subjectively united here under the temporary banneer of international music exchanges, mutant folkloric reappropriations, western/eastern connexions and carefully traded exoticisms in what I imagine as an old-time open international noisy harbour.
For such a legal podcast, I allowed myself to include or quote more classically celebrated bands than usual, that maybe will sound quite obvious to you. Howere, I hope that the thread will make sense, from mambo electronics to dangdut upgrades, blended traditionnal sources, and an occasional anglo-saxon tiny spoon of lyrics.
This modern rigodon not only sounds nice, but reminds me how much I'm fond of this music even if I must admit that I know few about it: basically, a folkloric musical genre from France who spread to canada, now synonym of happy & danceable folkloric stuff in Quebec.
Another example with this track I especially love, recorded in the 30's by one of Quebec's major musical character: "La bolduc". Being the most famous popular singer of her time, influenced by folkloric music, she deserves another especially dedicated post that will follow in the near future.
I love the vocal gimmick she uses in this song ("Turluté" we call it in french, nice word isn't it ?): a specific vocal technique she used in many different tunes.
The numerous connexions between Toshi Saeki and the world of psych-folk music through LP artworks, already known from most of collectors and highlighted by the Works in music tabloid japanese edition published by Presspop in 2009, give me the opportunity to spread the word here that current Saeki Toshio's current exhibition in Paris at the Da-End gallery should be displayed a bit longer than expected, until mid-march 2011.
A worth-visiting one, even for those already familiar with his production, regarding its interesting selection of both original drawings and prints, including a few sheets detailing his instructions for setting colours.
Among the various artworks that Saeki regularly produced for the living legend Mikami Kan, here above appear the one for Hiraku Yume Nado Arujanaishi, one of his most celebrated output from 1972, and the 1991's world of Kan Mikami . However, I'd rather allow myself to focus on a release which artwork wasn't produced by Saeki, but that strangely always was the one among Mikami's release I revered the most: a scarce live recording from 1970.
From all the people gravitating around P.S.F. records, Mikami is maybe the one whose popular roots (born in a small fisher's village that he left when turning 18) irradiate the most: something you can feel in that specific form of blues that only belongs to him, on a unique edge between idiom and freedom. Something that sweats also from his strongly physical involvement live, playing with his body sometimes in a very specific purposefully humoristic way he developped through a monster career, in which also the relentless repetition of some specific chords evolved from a trademark to a purposeful and meaningful obsession.
The text by Shuji Terayama, introducing visitors to the world of Saeki for the exhibition, indirectly reminds us the connexions between all these artists in the late 60s: Mikami Kan appeared himself in one of Terayama's most famous movie Pastoral (Den-en ni shisu). Although the video extract of that specific performance recently and sadly got removed, you can still have a look at the teaser of that whole gem in itself.
---------------------------------------------------------------- Toshio Saeki - Kuro Hozuki / Galerie Da-End 17 rue Guénégaud - 75006 Paris 09/11/2010 - 12/02/2011 (might be extended to mid-march)
Most people have heard more Okinawan folk music (and drunk more Okinawa awamori) than they know: the peculiar sound of the three-stringed sanshin is almost as ominous to Western ears than that of its descendant the shamisen, and the tradition of Okinawan shima-uta (島唄, "songs of the island") has been kept alive and kicking through the very popular crossover efforts of Takashi Hirayasu and (before him) Champloose leader Shoukichi Kina, who composed the very first greatest hit song to come out of Okinawa, "Haisai Ojisan".
A frequent collaborator of Ry Cooder, Kina even had the honors of a David Byrne curated compilation as volume 2 of his Asia Classics collection on Luaka Bop (the very same series that saw the release of Vikaya Anand's anthology Listen Now! Dance Raja Dance, a very special Cartilage favorite indeed) and it's easy to understand why: mixing enka styled country music, 70s rock, punk rock energy and burbly synthesizers courtesy of Sandii & the Sunsetz co-leader and Haruomi Hosono collaborator Makoto Kubota, Kina's fusion efforts are magnetic and nothing short of irresistible - at least up to the mid 80s (things inescapably turned ugly with the advent of DX7 driven salon world music). Recorded in 1977 at the peak of his creative moment, "Tokyo Sanboka" is super energetic bliss:
Not an Okinawa native himself (he was born in the district of Minato, in Tôkyo), Hosono has incidentally entertained a long-lived fascination for Okinawan music, which is at least as prominent as that of his passion for Hoagy Carmichael’s “Hong Kong Blues” and Martin Denny’s imaginary Hawaii. From his exotica-driven pop trilogy of the 70s to his great ambient masterpieces of the 90s, his extensive recreation of shima-uta is pretty much a constant feature of his music, and an influential one for that matter: hokoten superstars The Boom had an amazing hit single with an allegedly Hosono (ugly) pakuri called “Shimauta” which sold more than 1.5 million units.
More surprisingly, his super long-time YMO sidekick Sakamoto Ryûichi himself also revived the idea of a pop version of Taketomi Island’s hymn “Asadoya Yunta" (which he had helped Hosono cover on his own Paraiso 1978 masterpiece) at the time of his great “world music Quincy Jones” years. Apart from the Youssou N’Dour annoying singing exercises, one can only relish at the tenderness of his own version, magnified by the presence of Nenes leader and great sanshin player Misako Koja:
Even sweeter is his version of traditional song “Chinsagu no Hana”, which adds burkinabé percussions and typical emotional strings to the ethereal mixture, to heart-rending effects (I kind of take it for granted you're not of the cold-blooded type of reader):
Obviously, Hosono’s nods to Okinawan music remain the more relevant and less predictable ones, especially when they power up his ventures into electronic music. Apart from the 100% Okinawa culture driven ethno-ambient soundtrack “Paradise View” (released in 1985 and annoyingly hard to find, you tell me if you find a copy), fragments of shima-uta can be heard in the least expected surroundings. They are for instance all over YMO’s “Absolute Ego Dance” (with a typical vocal performance by Hawaiian born Sandii), released on their hits collection Solid State Survivor:
Similarly, the hectic gem he composed and produced for the short-lived techno-kayôkyoku unit E.S. Island, lead by 70s idol Sanae Takahashi, screams Okinawa all over, in the weirdest, most convulsive manner:
Closer in style to his hippie-ish pop ambient project Love, Peace & Trance (formed with Wha-ha-ha singer Mishio Ogawa), Hosono recently came back to shima-uta with the heavenly nostalgic and delicate “Roochoo Divine”, which intensely echoes his own 1974 song “Roochoo Gumbo” and was released as opener of his rarities collection Archives vol. 1. Accordingly, it is the single most beautiful piece of music he recorded in recent years, which says a lot about how great a song it actually is.
Following Kina's and Hosono’s pioneering gestures, a great number of current Okinawan indie pop bands still display the obligatory nods to shima-uta, even if not in the most creative manners. I’m not sure it means the folklore is actually in full bloom or artificially kept alive, but I can’t think of any other example of folk music in Japan which have entertained such a constant dynamic of reinvention. Next time, let’s go back in time and see what Okinawan musicians of the 60s had to say about the matter, with a survey of the wonderful Ryukyu Rare Groove - Shimauta Pops in 60's-70's compilation (Yara Family, anyone?).
Hit it with all the snobbish smiles you want, I always found uncoherent how french people can celebrate hip folk or obscure french prog through british recent reissues, but will keep on picking their nose when occitan music shows up.
First in line for this late 70s thread, Jacmelina's stunning vocal folk is a typical example of these gems that are known from a few record collectors, but didn't resurface on the blogosphere yet.
Quite despairing is this obligation to recall every time the authority of figures such as Makoto Kawabata to convince people outside of the occitan circles that this production is worth listening to. Famous since years for his love of occitan music (with a special interest in Rosine de Péira), Kawabata remains surprised when the question is asked regarding why or how: his reply being more or less "why the hell not ?".
The Riga Raga LP, already posted here, was one of the entries that pushed me to dig for more, and to explore a serie of records on the Revolum label, run by Rosine de Péira, whose laboratory can be seen as one of the most interesting yet most unknown adventure in french folk.
Tòcabiòl sings about factory work and ghost villages: blues music in its lyrics, surprisingly orchestrated with Roland SH-5 and Farfisa arrangements, packed under a classy artwork.
But there's always a bitterness, almost a misunderstanding, regarding a lot of occitan music production. Like many, I might admit I have issues with the emphatic singing here. Like many, I'm the kind of guy searching for unusual stuff when the true challenge is definitely not here: Sicre was sometimes describing the Riga Raga record as the one which convinced and pleased the critics from Paris, who like references to Zappa, beg for modernity, but will predictably shoot at Rondeaux or polkas covers by, let's say... Madier in Perlinpinpin Fòlc.
This summarizes in itself the whole french tragedy: we can keep on whining listening to Brazil, Ethiopia or whatever is our fix, but here comes the Blues that France lost on its way. And understanding why and how could be our most powerful analytic tool in order to counter what appears to be the fondamental french drama: a now frightening gap that never was so huge between the elite and the people, in a land whose folklore is undead, in a zombie way that few other countries could even understand.
The patient and careful collection, exhumation and renewed performance of traditional anthems is something Perlinpinpin Fòlc became specialised into. Although it's an original composition, this tune remains rooted in blues as a circumstance song: a kind of thing you'll sing while at work in a rural context.
If sometimes those artists were political through their lyrics, at a time when militantism was meaning something close to Spain and Franco, and before the deadly 80s, their political charge could therefore also be seen in their musical landscape: truely rooted in blues.
In many ways, Batak music seems to be a very generic keyword recovering various sides of music from North Sumatra: some of them being very traditionnal, others having more to do with popular songs full of midi orchestrations.
Even on the traditionnal side, you'll find many variations in styles and band composition, as a reflect of the huge diversity among Batak people: linguistic differences, as much as specific music styles, will then allow you to locate wether they come from the North, the East ... All of them having in common the celebration of adat.
Marsada band is a Toba-Batak indigenous group of musicians blending both traditionnal elements with slightly more modern arrangements (incorporation of western acoustic guitar): it's dance music, pleasing our appetite for metronomic percussions and slightly detuned flavors of wooden instruments.
An album, Pulo Samosir, was released and still avalaible here. In many ways, it is odd how much those productions can be related to the peruvian ones, as if they developped symetrically at differents points of the globe (check theTecno San Juanitos post as an example). Besides, many other bands are worth having a look at and starting a transe:
While spending some time on the youtube looking for modern andean music I got stuck on those kind of vids coming out from Ecuador.
I was absolutely blown away with that bizarre mix of folkloric "altiplanos" music elements blended with the cheapest form of today's dance music. Sadly, it's pretty hard to get any information about it. I've been questionning some of the uploaders, and thankfully one of them sent me some music plus a little explanation...
Although it isn't by far the most popular music in Quito, "tecno sanjuanitos" (as it seems to be named) is hugely popular among ecuadorian andean people, with a consequent number of hits sung in various indigineous languages (Kishwa generally).
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The cdr's i was sent were mostly filled with anonymous "Carnaveles Megamix", but there were also a few compilations dedicated to specific artists such as "Los Conquistadores" and their "Mike Jaggeresque" leader.
He probably can be considered as the most most misunderstood french artist, hated by many for the irritating pervasiveness of his commercial works, a supeficial tree that hides the forest of a long-lasting and peculiar production. Ben Vautier is way more than a cute sentence on the workbook of a college girl, or that quaint character cheering up gallery owners who forgot who is their uncle: through more than 50 years of carrer, from his early performances to the letterings he's famous for, he declared a humoristic, radical yet paradoxal war against ego in art, often in a jubilant bad faith. He was there for Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus and later Figuration libre, started web production in 1996 through website and newsletters, in a constant production bulimia questionning fundamental topics such as identity, popular and wise cultures, or self-representation. And sex.
In summer 2008, he started pulishing various songs on his website, for a short period of time: childish outsider blues, with obsessive vocals à la Dubuffet layered on stolen instrumentals, I still wonder why he suddenly stopped such a fancy-full activity. May he know that us, pleased listeners, hope to hear more as soon as possible.
Born in 1947, Messaoud Bellemou started learning the trumpet following the encouragements of a french teacher from his village: the elder man was convinced that the young boy had serious music predispositions and could probably escape from a life of labour in the fields.
In the early 70’s, Bellemou injected a modern style in Raï, replacing the ghasba flute (a flute made of reed) by his unique sound of trumpet, with a spicy hispanic touch.
Sidi’h’bibi, one of his first reccordings, made an huge succes in Algeria. It’s a very personnal version of a beautiful melody from the Judeo Moroccan folklore that many people actually recorded, one of the most interesting version being the furious rock version recorded in 1989 by the french band Mano Negra.
In company of his friends Bouteiba Sghir & Benfissa Younés, Bellamou came to the big city of Oran in order to play music in the clubs and earn a living with their art. They made several recordings together, true classics from this era, creating a new sound which announced the next generation of Raï production, from which big star of the genre are issued.
It is often thanks to the precious existence of seriously involved stalkers that we can still get sometimes hit in such a fundamental way by the extreme purity of an outrageously sincere recording.
During the last years, french director Antoine Boutet developped deep links with the character of Jean-Marie Massou, strong rural figure who spent 30 years of his life digging a cavern in the center of France. Being the only one to know how to access this narrow tunnel, he sculpted various figures in the rock. There, surrounded by these beautifully obsessive signs, he started recording on tapes mind-blowing a capellas echoing in the natural reverberation of the place.
Product of a unique encounter between two men, Antoine Boutet's documentary Le Plein Pays allows us with a constant care to visit a rough world of thorny branches, heavy stones and forgotten dust: there, Massou lives. There, the speaker of his portable radio screams in the trails as a daily fellow. And there, he talks: begging us to stop breeding. The fouling of maternity. The fear of overcrowding. Adoption instead. Or men with men, women with women. All along the 45 minutes of a tape's side.
Similar to the silent woods suddenly inhabited by this voice, the movie setups its own immersive magic tempo. As the title says, it is a dive into a "rich land", not only a sole encounter with a man, but also with his environment, and what he makes to fill it up with grace.
Highly recommended national release of the movie is planned on November 3rd, alongside a DVD edition.
A website also exists, built by Antoine Boutet for Jean-Marie Massou, with more sounds and videos:
Years before he discovers the emboladores from brazilian Nordeste (a discovery that partly leaded to the project he's mainly well-known for: the fabulous trobadores), Claude sicre was part of a band circa 1977 whose LP (on the Revolum label) contained all the germs of the unique reflexion on folklore he built through the years.
Cleaning the folklore appelation from its dusty crusts, especially through his book Vive l'Américke, he relentlessly questionned its inner meaning: a community music, related to daily social functions and interactions (games, nursery rhymes, weddings, feasts of all kinds, strikes, ...), whose characteristics are determined by an adaptability to circumstances and an ability to englobe the whole community beyond ages or origins. And made the diagnostic that many french problems are, for historical reasons, directly related to the lack of a decent folkloric entry in the cultural building, comparing to other countries (latin american, indian or african ones especially).
This reflexion is not pure theory, but is the reason why Riga Raga sounds unique comparing to any other folk attempt from that time: with Luc Charles-Dominique, Olivier Laurent et Renat Jurié, Sicre collaborated for a unique junction between the occitan roots and an unpredictable freak, hallucinated and comic horizon. Rough and brilliant, music gets rid of almost every classic folk instrument, and is often made of simple ones on purpose (pignato, sounarel, wood pieces, self-made whistles...), with a fundamental place given to voice, never relying on virtuosity, and revisiting popular dances (Rigaudon, Goignade...) or shepherds dialogs. Moreover, consciously far away from any binarism between popular culture and a wise one, this record knows that by digging its obsessions, it ends up sounding completely challenging for adventurous music lovers . A personal way of thinking music that we have still a lot to learn from.
For french readers, a very complete interview by Jacme Gaudàs is highly recommended here. Whole album, with detailed liner notes, avalaible thanks to the amazing Continuo's blog, while few copies are still avalaible here.
The Fawazeer are specials TV shows made for waiting the end of Ramadaan's fasting in Egypt during the 70's and 80's. There were two big stars dancing and singing, in an "indian bollywood" way : Sherihan and Nelly Kalfayan. It's a magic part of the disco scene from the country of Anubis. Like bollywood made in the Pyramides, with not so much space or money but a lot of brillant ideas, spellbindings melodies, a very good sense of rythm, poetry and a lot of humour. The following extract videos are about Sherihan, I will post an other time about Nelly.
Last up-to-date branch of the indonesian popular music style identified as Dandgut, the nowadays club disco Dangdut quickly turned into a powerfull idiom, able to federate in the party places of Jakarta, therefore fullfilling its modern floklore function in the most typical way: deliver entertain on the edge between a sound immediatly recognizible and neverending personnal declinations, reinjected in the format.
Although the crazily hardcore feminist team of Cartilage Consortium selected here extremely reasonnable material, you could notice that "Beginning in 2003, dangdut became the focus of a national controversy in Indonesia over religion in public life and images of sexuality in media in response to performances by singer Inul Daratista that religious conservatives described as "pornography".
And this sonic anedote might be seen in many ways as a reflect of both indonesian society's evolution, where countless nuances on the religious questions may be observed in public opinion , and of Dangdut's evolution in itself through the years: indeed, way before the speedy digital beats, there is of course an original Dangdut that raised in the 70s, and settled the basis of the style: use of tablas and flutes, crossover incorporating indian, arabian and malay elements...
Although the theory of a clash between two generations appears way too simplist, if there maybe was at least a conflict on the question of public morality, it was made sharper by the fact that Inul Daratista actually covered tunes by Roma Irama, considered as Dangdut's godfather, who was directly responsible in the 70s of its modernisation and rescue against western music imperialism, injecting both fuzzy electric guitars and coranic respectful quotations into the old folkloric form.
So how should we in the end consider this speedfull booty-shaking disco, often soundtracking videos dedicated to girlfriends or boyfriends surrounded by doves and sparle explosions ?
Dangdut being rich of more than 40 years of recordings, as there would be no point in attempting to summarize such a production, what else can you do for a substantial view but go and ruin your nights on the Journey of Dangdut ?
Total killer archival blog, fullfilled with treasures like these ones, all directly numerized from the tapes:
