Spain and Cat­alo­nia have always stood apart from the main­stream of Euro­pean cul­ture, doing things after their own fash­ion. Among these dis­tinc­tions was their fond­ness, over sev­eral cen­turies, for zarzuela, an alter­na­tive to Opera, with its own styles and con­ven­tions. While zarzue­las were staged as ear­ly as the mid-sev­en­­teenth cen­tury, they reached their apogee of pop­u­lar­ity and artis­tic glo­ry in the ear­ly 20th cen­tury, and were still going strong decades after opera had ceased to be broad­ly pop­u­lar. There are dis­tinc­tive styles of zarzuela sung in Cata­lan (sar­suela) and in Basque (zartzue­lak). The roman­zas of this kind of music-dra­ma are the equiv­a­lent of opera’s arias.

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18441. (Jim Car­roll) Pray­ing Mantis
18442. (Perth Coun­ty Con­spir­a­cy) Does Not Exist
18443. (Paul Joseph Lorieau & Edmon­ton Fans) “Oh Canada”
18444. (Paul Segari­ni) Edi­son Twins Theme
18445. (Michael Mitchell) “Cana­da Is…”
18446. (Blood, Sweat & Tears) “Spin­ning Wheel”
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Jake Thomas (“Jake the Snake”) and the Fun­da­men­tals have been the dean of the local R & B scene in North Bay, Ontario. I have a tape, The Fun­da­men­tals Live at the Dive, from a per­for­mance I attend­ed and enjoyed. But the band line-up does not cor­re­spond to the cur­rent ver­sion of the band. It has a fine ren­di­tion of “Sum­mer in the City” and also of one my favourite John Hyatt songs “Where is the Next One Com­ing From?”

My old friend Peter Svi­lans gave me a cd col­lec­tion of Jim­my Cliff. Cliff was my first taste of Reg­gae. His appear­ance in the 1972 Jamaican film The Hard­er They Come, still sticks in my mind. I saw it at a rep-house show­ing in Petaluma, Cal­i­for­nia, with my friend Simon Agree. Cliff played the lead char­ac­ter, and some of his best songs were played on the sound­track: “You Can Get It If You Real­ly Want”, “Many Rivers To Cross”, “The Hard­er They Come”, “Sit­ting Here In Lim­bo”. The first two of those are in the Tro­jan CD col­lec­tion, and twen­ty-three oth­er songs of uni­formly high qual­ity. Jim­my Cliff was even­tu­ally eclipsed in the pub­lic mind by Bob Mar­ley, and that man’s genius is unde­ni­able. But Jimmy’s music had a jaun­ty, inno­cent charm to it, and he should not be neglect­ed in anyone’s col­lec­tion. In his day, Reg­gae was still Island music, a down-home kind of thing. Mar­ley made it cos­mopoli­tan, uni­ver­sal. But Cliff, too, some­times touched uni­ver­sal chords. Who is there, who has ever had to trudge through the weary ups and downs of life, who won’t respond to “Many Rivers to Cross”, the kind of song best heard late at night, strand­ed in a donut shop on a high­way you nev­er planned to drive.

I haven’t been able to find out any­thing bio­graph­i­cal about Zhao Li, com­poser of at least five film sound­tracks — not even a birth date. I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the sound­track of Xiǎochéng zhī chūn [Spring­time in a Small Town], an acclaimed 2002 film by Tian Zhuangzhuang. The songs are a bit sug­ary, rather like Burt Bacharach, and not to my taste, but I like the orches­tral interludes.

Car­ni­val in Brazil: 40 Latin Classics:
. . . . 18306. (Brazil­ia Par­ty Squad) “Brazil La La La La”
. . . . 18307. (Sam­ba De Janeiro) “Sam­ba De Janeiro”
. . . . 18308. (Maria Lopez) “Garo­ta de Ipane­ma [The Girl from Ipanema]”
. . . . 18309. (João Fer­nan­des) “Mais Que Nada”
. . . . 18310. (Del Paz) “Soul Bossa Nova [from Austin Powers]”
. . . . 18311. (Astrud De Mata) “Sway”
. . . . 18312. (Luis Alves) “Copaca­bana”
. . . . 18313. (Sam­ba) “Lam­ba­da”
. . . . 18314. (Enrique Paz) “La Vida Es Un Carnival”
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There’s noth­ing pon­der­ously “spir­i­tual” in Nava­ho Two-Step songs. This is par­ty music, light-heart­ed and iron­ic songs of love and court­ing that you can hear at week­end social gath­er­ings all over Dine­tah. The genre has made stars of singers like Ed Lee Natay and Davis Mitchell. Nava­ho music is a bit far from my cur­rent stomp­ing grounds, but years ago, I used to hang out in that part of the world, and I picked up some good tapes. This is one of my favourites, record­ed at the Chin­le Val­ley Fes­ti­val in April of 1986. Fine per­for­mances by the Toh-Den-Nas Shai Singers, Twin Lakes Swingers, Smoke Sig­nal Trav­el­ers, Four Cor­ners Singers, Nataani Nez Trav­el­ers, Beclabito Val­ley Singers, and the Chin­le Val­ley Boys. Most note­wor­thy are the boun­cy first num­ber, “Six Pack To Go” by Toh-Den-Nas Shai and the amus­ing “My Moth­er Dis­likes Our Rela­tion­ship” by Four Cor­ners Singers.

If you’re accus­tomed to the jaun­ty rhythms and vocal stylings at Cana­dian pow-wows, then the music from the New Mex­ico pueb­los will seem a bit lan­guid and monot­o­nous to you. But the Gar­cia Broth­ers were good musi­cians, and their Green Corn Dance is quite appealing.

I’m lis­ten­ing again, with plea­sure, to L’amour est sans pitié, a 1990 album by the inter­est­ing Cana­dian rock­er Jean Leloup. Leloup (“The Wolf”) is a stage name for Jean LeClerc, who was born in Que­bec, but spent his child­hood in Togo and Alge­ria, return­ing home at age fif­teen. After an appren­tice­ship in the Que­bec rock scene, he briefly found some nation­al and inter­na­tional suc­cess with this album, which has songs in both French and Eng­lish. He com­bined rock with rai ele­ments long before any­one else was doing this in North Amer­ica, and his lyrics are clever. I’m told that a sub­se­quent album, Le Dôme, which was not as wide­ly dis­trib­uted, is even bet­ter. I haven’t found a copy yet. I under­stand that he sub­se­quently pub­lished a philo­soph­i­cal nov­el called Noir des­tin que le mien, which I haven’t seen.