17026. (Yothu Yin­di) Freedom
17027. (John Adams) Vio­lin Concerto
17028. (John Adams) Shak­er Loops
17029. (Hot Hot Heat) Elevator
17030. (Johannes Brahms) Hun­gar­i­an Dance #1 in G Minor for Piano Four-hands
17031. (Johannes Brahms) Hun­gar­i­an Dance #2 in D Minor for Piano Four-hands Read more »

Even with­in the fab­u­lous cor­nu­copia of West African music, el hadj N’diaye’s Xel (2001) is a excep­tional trea­sure. N’diaye takes a jour­ney beyond the famil­iar mbal­ax beat of Senegal’s pop­u­lar music to explore more var­ied ter­ri­tory. Some of the rhythms and gui­tar work could have come out of a Clap­ton album. But they are blend­ed per­fectly with African drums and balo­fon. The balo­fon solo on the song “Casa di mansa” is par­tic­u­larly beau­ti­ful. This is a trag­ic song about the ill-fat­ed seces­sion­ist move­ment in south­ern Sene­gal, sung in French and Eng­lish. Most of the songs on the album are sung in Wolof, Senegal’s pri­mary lan­guage. But the emo­tions in them are so pow­er­ful that you have the odd feel­ing that you under­stand every word. “Yoon wil”, “Xale bi” and “Yu sew yii” moved me in par­tic­u­lar. This entire album com­bines a refine­ment and pre­ci­sion of per­for­mance with intense emo­tions: bit­ter­ness, sad­ness, yearn­ing, remorse. I will play this album over and over again, and I’ll do my best to find more of N’diaye’s work.

For quite some time, Cool and Wax dom­i­nated Kore­an pop music. Wax is the stage name for a tal­ented female vocal­ist with a very expres­sive, and some­times beau­ti­ful voice. Her arrange­ments range from cheesy syn­the­sizer pop to fair­ly raunchy rhythm and blues. In some cas­es, gen­res are bizarrely mixed, such as when a cho­rus of grunt­ing male met­al voic­es inex­plic­a­bly fill in the spaces between vers­es of a Brit­ney Spears-ish love song. This may all sound pret­ty trashy to a North Amer­i­can lis­tener, but there’s no law against musi­cal syn­chretism, and in any case, East Asian pop plays by its own rules. I’m told that a lot of her suc­cess comes from the per­spi­cac­ity of her song­writ­ers, Choi Joon Young and Kim Gee Hoonong. It can’t all be in the lyrics: Wax’s pop­u­lar­ity extends far beyond the K‑pop scene, to the much broad­er East Asian pop scene cov­er­ing Chi­na, HK, Tai­wan, Viet­nam, Sin­ga­pore and Japan. My expo­sure is through the dou­ble com­pi­la­tion album Best Day & Best Night and the third album from 2002, Wax 3.

16911. (Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart) Thamos, König in Ägypten, K.345 [336a] [d. Harnoncourt;
. . . . . w. Thomaschke, Per­ry, Müh­le, Alte­na, van der Kamp]
16912. (Martha Wain­wright) Martha Wainwright
Mojo Chess North­ern Soul:
. . . . 16913. (Mar­lena Shaw) “Let’s Wade in the Water”
. . . . 16914. (Mamie Galore) “It Ain’t Nec­es­sar­i­ly So”
. . . . 16915. (Radi­ants) “Hold On”
. . . . 16916. (Dells) “Wear It On Our Face”
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This is an anthro­po­log­i­cal col­lec­tion songs and music which take place dur­ing the initiation/seclusion peri­od (mukan­da) of Luvale boys of Zam­bia. Most Luvale art is in the form of masks, many of which are danced with, dur­ing cer­e­monies to edu­cate the ini­ti­ates and to mark the ter­ri­tory where the cer­e­monies take place. The Luvale (who also live in Ango­la, where they are called Lwe­na) peo­ples are close­ly relat­ed to the Chok­we, and their his­tory is inter­con­nected with both Chok­we and Lun­da polit­i­cal move­ments, which have his­tor­i­cally dom­i­nated the region. They num­ber about 20,000. The agrar­ian Luvale grow man­ioc, cas­sava, yams, peanuts, tobac­co, hemp and maize (grown to make beer). They keep some sheep, goats, pigs, and chick­ens, but pres­tige meats are wild game pro­vided by a restrict­ed secret soci­ety of hunters. The Luvale are divid­ed into two cat­e­gories, those who are descend­ed from the found­ing matri­lin­eal lines and those who are descend­ed from for­mer enslaved pop­u­la­tions. The soci­ety is gov­erned by fam­ily head­men who owe ten­u­ous alle­giance to local chiefs who inher­it their posi­tions matri­lin­eally from the mater­nal uncle. The chiefs (mwana ngan­ga) con­sult with a com­mit­tee of elders and rit­ual spe­cial­ists before mak­ing deci­sions. The Luvale pre­serve tra­di­tional reli­gion, based on Kalun­ga, a god of cre­ation, and a series of nature and ances­tral spir­its. The music in the col­lec­tion is chiefly of inter­est to anthro­pol­o­gists and African musi­col­o­gists, but some of the songs might enter­tain a casu­al listener.

Ever­est Records’ Archive series gives me a selec­tion of fine New Orleans tunes by one of the most ver­sa­tile of ear­ly jazzmen. Bechet (1897–1959) played many instru­ments, but was best known on sopra­no sax, clar­inet, and cor­net. He was a prodi­gy, dis­cov­ered at the age of eight by Fred­dy Kep­pard, and employed in Keppard’s band at eleven. Great­ly admired as a high­ly cre­ative and indi­vid­ual per­former by oth­er jazzmen (notably Duke Elling­ton), Bechet was a cul­tured and poet­ic man, who divid­ed his time between Europe and Amer­ica, and after WW2, mar­ried and end­ed his days in France. It’s said that he was the mod­el for the char­ac­ter “Pablo” in Her­mann Hesse’s Step­pen­wolf. This is quite pos­si­ble. In 1929, he appeared with his own band at the Haus Vater­land café in Berlin, where Hesse could eas­ily have seen him. Some of the cuts on this disk fea­ture Lionel Hamp­ton, and Bechet’s pow­er­ful vibra­to is deli­ciously echoed by his vibes. The Ever­est vinyl is prob­a­bly hard to find, but there’s a good cd col­lec­tion called The Leg­endary Sid­ney Bechet, which includes his per­for­mances with the New Orleans Feet­warm­ers, Tom­my Lad­nier, Jel­ly Roll Mor­ton, and Dr. Hen­ry Levine.

Jazz pianist and com­poser Josef Erich Zaw­inul first came into promi­nence as the founder of the band Weath­er Report, which I will con­sider sep­a­rately. He’s been a major fig­ure in jazz since then. Though he emi­grated to the Unit­ed States from his native Aus­tria as a young man, he always retained strong Euro­pean roots, emo­tion­ally as well as musi­cally, and even­tu­ally returned to Aus­tria. My focus here is on two of his solo albums, Zaw­inul (1970) and Sto­ries of the Danube (1995).

Despite the epony­mous title, the first one is essen­tially a col­lab­o­ra­tion of Zaw­inul and Her­bie Han­cock. It’s an ear­ly exam­ple of the fusion move­ment that swept Jazz in the sev­en­ties, with Miles Davis, Zaw­inul and Han­cock at the fore­front. The Rhodes piano-echoplex-ring mod­u­la­tor com­bo of this album was soon to be super­seded by syn­the­siz­ers. The jazz con­ven­tions are still there, but Zaw­inul is most­ly inter­ested in cre­at­ing ambi­ent sound­scapes, and the feel­ing is not spon­ta­neous. In fact, it’s hard to get emo­tion­ally involved with this music. Only the first cut, the long piece called “Doc­tor Hon­oris Causa”, is sat­is­fy­ing. Woody Shaw par­tic­i­pates on this piece, to good effect. The sec­ond cut, “In a Silent Way”, is par­tic­u­larly dis­ap­point­ing, because Miles Davis did a much bet­ter job cov­er­ing it, lat­er on. The rest is rather dry. Twen­ty-five years lat­er, there is not much jazz left in Sto­ries of the Danube, which is a sym­phonic suite enlivened by frag­men­tary whiffs of jazz and mid­dle east­ern dance music. The melody of “Doc­tor Hon­oris” makes an appear­ance. It’s pret­ty much an updat­ed ver­sion of Smetana’s Mauldau, using a big­ger riv­er and a less inti­mate palette. Most of it will give plea­sure to the lis­tener, espe­cially since the move­ments grow more engag­ing towards the end. I wish I had more of his work in my col­lec­tion, so I could trace out the evo­lu­tion between these two albums.