What you have been missing in RootsWorld

 

If you are not reading RootsWorld online, you have been missing a lot of news, reviews, interviews and music.

Here's just a few recent articles:

Traditional and yet unprecedented, Hazmat Modine blows its harmonica and brass in the face of today's music-industrial complex. A multi-generational, diverse collective of artists from across genres, they come together to celebrate their uncategorizable music. Here's a band that features harmonica, tuba and the occasional forgotten instrument; whose leader has a career outside of music as a painter and college professor, but has kept the band viable since 1998. With Extra-Deluxe-Supreme, the band synthesizes different strains of American roots music, particularly blues and gospel. Marty Lipp talks with band leader Wade Schuman about the band's new recording.

Anian is the third release from Welsh artists 9Bach, and the most interesting to date from the ensemble. While Wales has been producing musical innovators for some time now, the image of miners' choirs hasn't faded. (I had to mention them again!) Welsh-language folk and pop rock also suffers from an image problem, compared to say Ireland, that of not being known -- and when known, thought to be somewhat derivative of either Irish 'Celtic' music or UK pop. The innovators haven't often made their voice heard outside of Wales. With 9Bach, and Anian in particular, it becomes more and more difficult for the listening public to write off Welsh language music as parochial and predictable. On the contrary, this record manages to stay rooted in Bethesda, North Wales, while breaking into new global territory. Read David Cox' full review, and listen to some songs from the album. 

"I've heard that Miles Davis would only be upset with his musicians when they played it safe and didn't try something new—something you don't often hear while working within traditional Japanese music! For this album, I wanted the sound of the music to be Japanese, but the rhythms and compositional structures and heavy use of improvisation to come from a very non-Japanese place." Kaoru Watanabe talks with RootsWorld's Tyran Grillo about his latest work, Néo.

 It may be true that traditional Malian music, or at the very least, music played by Malians on traditional instruments, is alive and well. However, ask Paul Chandler, an American record producer now living in Bamako, about the state of traditional music in Mali and he'll argue that traditional context is being lost. And it's this state of endangerment that helped him make the decision to start recording rural musicians in their environments, ideally capturing the ritual of their performances as much as he could… So like many folklorists, musicians, and musicologists, from Hugh Tracey to Samuel Charters in the mid-20th century, to Michael Baird and Chandler in the 21st, documenting tradition music in its element is and has been an act of preservation… Whatever might be happening to threaten this music in its environment, the recordings on Every Song Has its End: Sonic Dispatches from Traditional Mali are astounding. Bruce Miller delves into a CD and DVD set that hopes to preserve the tradition and perhaps help it continue.


From the opening notes of Already Home, the second CD by the Rheingans Sisters, it is quite apparent that we are listening to highly skilled, sensitive and worldly musical talents… During their teen years, both Anna and Rowan spent years in Sweden, studying traditional fiddle music. This Scandinavian influence is clearly reflected in their music today. Anna now lives full time in France, where she studied traditional music at the Conservatoire in Toulouse, and now plays for dances and teaches fiddle. This strong French musical influence accompanies the Scandinavian and English strains in their music. Our newest contributor, David Smith from Massachusetts, shares the history and music of these rising twin-stars of English folk music.


Read RootsWorld online now and don't miss another song.

 

Deep in depression-era Arkansas, a woman named Mancy Massengill observed the Saturday action at a photo booth. She also noted the camera brand as well as the business opportunity making photos for weekend revelers might provide for a mother of three in a place in time where work and money were scarce. She sold hens and sent the cash away for a lens, and from that point on, she and her husband pulled a trailer-turned-photo-studio around rural Arkansas on weekends and made pictures for anyone who was interested. This story is told twice in the book 'Making Pictures: Three for a Dime' and the companion CD 'Arkansas At 78 RPM: Corn Dodgers & Hoss Hair Pullers.' Bruce Miller explores a wonderful visual and musical history.


Read more and listen

Further Definitions of the Days of Awe are explored by the Afro-Semitic Experience

"Never before have I heard this lyrically powerful a fusion of Jewish and jazz souls on fire.” So says Nat Hentoff and I can’t agree more.

For most of the past decade the Afro-Semitic Experience has played the midnight Selichot service with Cantor Jack Mendelson at his synagogue in White Plains, NY. Theey have, in the process, created a new way to accompany cantorial music and they document it in this rousing recording of three concerts in August, 2010 just before the High Holy Days, one in New York City, one in New Haven, Connecticut, and one in Greenfield, Massachusetts. It features the band with special guests Cantor Jack Mendelson, Cantor Lisa Arbisser, Cantor Erik Contzius, cantorial soloist Danny Mendelson, and trumpeter Frank London.

Find the CD at cdRoots

The Global Radio Workshop

We are working on a new on-going series of hour long programs called The Global Radio Workshop, produced by Cliff Furnald and RootsWorld in cooperation with WPKN Radio in Bridgeport, CT.

You can hear some of the programs in archive at the new GRW web site.

This week, we heard from Canadian improvisation trio Three Metre Day

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RootsWorld gets deep into the music of Norwegian artist Annbjørg Lien

"There is a old tradition in Norway to sing and play at the same time, like talking together." - Annbjørg Lien

Norwegian musician Annbjørg Lien is more than just a great Hardangar fiddler. RootsWorld's Greg Harness chats with the artist and reviews some of her recent recordings. Read more and listen.

Stories From a Delta Bridal Room: southern songwriting and Eudora Welty

 

The "bridal room" at Savannah's historic Trinity Methodist Church offers a glimpse into the clichéd world of the Southern belle. Overstuffed sofas, heavy drapery, straight-backed chairs, and an ornate full-length mirror with golden trim dominate the main room, while shelves loaded with hairspray, lotions, gels, pins, nets, and formulas used to tame the wild manes of brides and debutantes clutter two adjoining rooms. This old-world spell was shattered when three of folk music's most well-regarded steel magnolias breezed into the stuffy room oozing confidence, quiet determination, and good humor. In this literary atmosphere, songwriters Caroline Herring, Claire Holley, and Kate Campbell sat down with Georgianne Nienaber to talk about the writer's life, their musical tribute to the author and photographer Eudora Welty and tell Stories From a Delta Bridal Room.

A Voice for the People: 70 years of Topic Records

Three Score & Ten - A Voice to the People recounts the story of 70 Years of the Oldest Independent Record Label in Great Britain, and the origins of Topic Records are particularly fascinating. Initially, the organization from which Topic would take root was the Workers' Music Association (WMA), founded in 1936 as "an educational offshoot of the British Marxist Party." The Workers' Music Association was created to aid in the struggle against the fascism and totalitarianism that had arisen in the 1930s, and also to provide an outlet for workers to express themselves through music. From the beginning, intellectuals and artists joined together in this effort, under the organizing influence of the composer Alan Bush. In 1939, the first record released by the Workers' Music Association was a 10" 78rpm disc entitled "The Man Who Watered The Worker's Beer" attributed to Paddy Ryan, backed by a performance of "The Internationale." This record was issued under the Topic imprint as TRC1, indicating the 'Topic Record Club,' a subscription method of distribution for the music to be issued by the WMA. The message is clear: from the beginning, what would become Topic Records was a label committed to social justice, and to the sounds of indigenous folk forms...
Read more and listen

Folk Danmark, 2010 - radio with Morten Alfred Høirup

Cliff Furnald: Thursday mornings, 6 AM to 9 AM

Live playlists and audio archives (well, as live as I can handle in the morning) will be online during the show


Thursday, May 27th, at 8:00 AM, WPKN Radio will feature a special English-language edition of "Folk Danmark, 2010," a program of music from the little Nordic country with the big musical heart. The program is produced and hosted by Danish musician Morten Alfred Høirup and will feature contemporary and traditional music from the tradition and beyond. Artists presented will include Carl Erik Lundgaard, Phønix, Henrik Jansberg, Rasmus Lyberth, Valravn, Klezmofobia, Afenginn and Evald Thomsen among many others. This program is co-produced with Danish radio D2R. Thursday, May 27 at 8:00 AM.

I will also be featuring Nordic music, new and old, throughout the regular program starting at 6 AM.

Please join me, and pass the word along about this special program?

Tab Benoit: Hurricanes, oil spills and Cajun blues

A little over a year ago after storm surges from Ike and Gustav almost washed away Terrebonne Parish, Delta bluesman Tab Benoit took the mic in defiance as wisps of wind snaked through the scrim draping the backside of the stage. Friday's early evening crowd stayed put as Benoit offered reassurance that this, the sixth annual Voice of the Wetlands Festival, would continue come hell or high water..."This is our rally. This is our cry for help." Just a few months later, the explosion of British Petroleum's Transocean/DeepwaterHorizon's wellhead took eleven lives, and the subsequent "river" of oil is now poisoning shrimp, oysters, bottlenose dolphins and sea turtles, as well as human livelihoods. The Louisiana Delta, shorelines and marine sanctuaries from Grand Isle to the Florida Keys are in peril, but the men and women profiled in this article are not giving up. New roots singers have joined with their voices. Sadly, this account will not be "outdated" for decades to come.

Georgianne Nienaber talks with Tab Benoit (and also Ann Savoy, Waylon Thibodeaux, Cyril Neville and other musicians who are part of the "Voice of the Wetlands" All-Stars) about the the music, the culture, and the future of the Lousiana coast.

Read more

Whatever happened to Dirty Linen Magazine?

Dirty Linen Magazine was where I first started writing about music in a serious way. In fact, my column, Radio Planet 3, was in the first edition of the magazine to appear under that name (it was called "Fairport Fanatics" before then).

So it is a shame to see that, after so many years of working so hard to maintain a magazine of great musical and writing standards, Paul and Sue Hartman have been forced to abandon the magazine. After a few years of trying to work with a new publisher, impossible differences have led them to announce their "retirement" from DL.

I know them both pretty well after all these years, and I know they will not be out of the game for long. You can find out more about their future plans on their blog, What happened to Dirty Linen?.

The Golden Age of Youssou N'Dour

Etoile de Dakar featuring Youssou N'Dour

Once Upon A Time In Senegal: The Birth Of Mbalax 1979-1981 (Stern's Music)
2 CDs

There are not many African artists whose names are as well-known as Youssou N’Dour’s. And it’s not just his ‘7 Seconds’ duet with Neneh Cherry, or his frequent collaborations with Peter Gabriel and others. No, you don’t reach his status just by who you hang out with, you get there by who you are and what you do. On one level these 2 CDs form a chapter in the story of who Youssou N’Dour is. But on another they show him simply as an equal member of a band … a band in the right place at the right time and doing the right things. That brief but vital moment in time is captured in these 23 tracks selected from the cassettes that Etoile de Dakar recorded between 1979 and 1981. Several have never been released outside of Senegal, and all have been sensitively re-mastered from the earliest available audio source. These are the best sounding recordings of this material available.

Listen to some audio samples

Buy the CD at cdRoots

Norah Jones: new directions

I know, this is not the usual RootsWorld fare, but bear with me and maybe just humor me a bit. Norah Jones has released new video for the song "Young Blood" from hew CD 'The Fall' this week! Jones is experimenting with different sounds and some new collaborators, including Jacquire King, a noted producer and engineer who has worked with Kings of Leon, Tom Waits, and others, and a new group of musicians to perform on the album, including drummers Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M.) and James Gadson (Bill Withers), keyboardist James Poyser (Erykah Badu, Al Green), and guitarist Marc Ribot. You can find links for the video and some audio samples at hear.com

Valravn pushes the limits of Nordic Roots, and shines

“Valravn is testing the extremes of Nordic roots music and its application here and now; in that process we are open to outside influences. The point of departure is on the cusp of something very ancient and something brand new." – Juan Pino, Valravn

The Danish folktronica band Valravn grew out of the acoustic medieval music ensemble Virelai, which had specialized in performing traditional music at medieval festivals. Valravn, updating old Faroese ballads sung in the original language, accompanied on hurdy-gurdy, flutes, hand drums, viola, mandola and electronic samples, have no equals on the Danish music scene. Ask Valravn percussionist, Juan Pino, and he will tell of an explosive development from the band's first album of mainly traditional material to their second, Koder på snor, which relies more on their own compositions.

Morten Alfred Høirup investigates the new sound of Danish roots in his interview in RootsWorld

Italian New Waves: Consoli, Avitabile and Ferrante

The public face of Italy today is una brutta faccia. Silvio Berlusconi's regime is a riotous carnival of corruption, abuse of power, and sexual sleaze; organized crime wields enormous economic power throughout the peninsula and in Sicily; the Vatican intrudes with an ever more heavy hand into Italian politics; and racism, xenophobia, and homophobia are surging. The civil society organization Justice and Liberty raises alarms over the "unequivocal signs of social decay," but much of the populace couldn't care less - they'd rather turn on Berlusconi's TV channels and submit to the mindless mediated reality that historian Paul Ginsborg calls "videocracy."

Given all this, it's up to artists to limn the current malessere... Carmen Consoli, Massimo Ferrante, and Enzo Avitabile, all from Italy's southern regions, have released new recordings that comment on the current situation or evoke traditions and stories of an Italy at risk of being forgotten in the seemingly interminable Berlusconi era.



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North American tour for King Sunny Ade and his African Beats cancelled

Here's the official word:

"It is with great sadness that we announce the cancellation of the entire April/May 2010 North American tour for King Sunny Ade and his African Beats.

On March 26th 2010 a tragic car accident took the lives of two members of the African Beats, talking drummer Gabriel Ayanniyi and percussionist Omo Olope, who were en-route to a video shoot for a forthcoming recording. When the US Embassy refused to grant visas to replacement members in a timely manner, there was confusion about the possible courses of action.At the same time, it became clear that the artist and the band had neither recovered from the impact of the tragedy, nor were they able to find consensus on how to move forward with normal touring.

As a result, the North American April/May 2010 tour has been canceled until such a time as King Sunny Ade and his group have sufficiently regrouped and are ready to face the rigors of an International tour again.

We offer our heartfelt condolences to the band and the families of the deceased. On behalf of the artist and his band we extend our apologies to all who will be disappointed by their inability to perform in North America this year."

Fair Turn Around for Chicago Afropop Ensemble

Chicago based Afropop ensemble Occidental Brothers Dance Band International has scored a major coup with the signing of legendary Kenyan/Congolese singer Samba Mapangala as their new lead singer. A chance meeting last year, followed by a few gigs - and a recording session with Orchestra Virunga of Mapangala's tribute to Barak Obama - has led to the union of the two, the Chicago reader reports today.

Listen:
Obama Ubarikiwe by Samba Mapangala


Read the full story in Chicago Reader

Ethiopiques: the funkier side of Ethiopia

For those who have kept up with the Buda Musique series, the otherworldly novelty of the earliest volumes released in the late 1990's has perhaps worn off. But they have also been rewarded with everything from solo pianists, King David's Harpists, historic recordings of orchestras as well as classic, 1970's-era Ethiopian soul as interpreted by Cambridge, Massachusetts' Either/Orchestra live in Addis Ababa... The latest in the series, Ethiopiques 24, is devoted to the funkier side of 1970's Ethiopia. Stars of earlier volumes, such as Seylou Yohannes and Ayalew Mesfin, appear here and the music, as always, is spectacular. Wubshet Fisseha and the Exception Five Band's lone track, "Sew Endayhon Yelellem," mixes a horn line that could come from nowhere but the landlocked East African nation with scratchy guitars, one of which takes a brutally raw solo midway through. Tamrat Molla and the Venus Band's "Ber anbar Sebelewo" steals quietly in before erupting in celebratory handclaps so typical of Ethiopian and Tigray music. Behind it all are the usual assortment of cheap organs, jubilant horn charts and choked guitar and bass licks...

Read More and Listen in RootsWorld

Music from the heart of the Batonga

Like those 70s-era Electra/Nonesuch LPs, Africa: Shona Mbira Music and Music of the Shona People, The Kankobela of the Batonga Vol. 1 features music played on the kankobela (commonly referred to as the thumb piano), and like those records, the music contained here is a thing of lullabye-like guilelessness. In fact, this disc can be seen as the long-awaited companion to the recordings South African ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey made of the same music between 1952 and 1957. Those recordings have been reissued, along with another 20 discs worth of Tracey's material, as Kalimba and Kalumbu Songs by SWP.

The music here was recorded in 1996 and 2008 by label owner Michael Baird. Baird, who is Zambian-born, traveled to the region his birth country shares with Zimbabwe, the Zambezi valley, an area dominated by the finger-shaped Lake Kariba, in order to see what was left of the type of music he heard on those Tracey recordings half a century ago. And while the musical results are wonderful, the reality on the ground is depressing. About a decade after Tracey's initial visit, the Zambezi river was damned, making the lake and pushing the Batonga people away from what had been fertile ground. Several decades of displacement have not only taken their toll on these people's quality of life, it has caused the younger generations to turn away from the traditions, because, as far as the generations who've come of age since the lake was formed are concerned, those traditions now represent failure.

Read more and listen on RootsWorld

Mariem Hassan's 'the thorn' expands the Saharan 'blues' tradition

Saharaui singer Mariem Hassan releases her new CD this month, in collaboration with with the poet Lamin Allal and the guitarist, Lamgaifri Brahim. A highlight of the CD is the innovative title track “Shouka,” a cantata developed by using all scales and rhythms of the traditional vocal style, the haul.

A full review will be coming in RootsWorld soon.

Listen!

More audio and Biography of the artist at cdRoots