Last week was spent in Hanoi. This week I’m in Dili, Timor
Leste. It is my first time to this very new country surrounded by the ocean and
Indonesia. It is a little outpost of
Catholicism, youth (75% of the population is under 25 years of age) and untested
potential just an hour’s flight from Australia.
The place is overrun with aid workers, UN officials,
international police and armed forces from places close (New Zealand) and far
(Namibia). Along the narrow tarmac strip of a road running cheek and jowl with
the Timor Sea are restaurants with names like Nautilus and Castaway where large
screen TVs show the Olympics and Australian rules football matches, dispense
champagne and serve pizzas of all varieties.
Across the road on the sandy beach Timorese women sell pork, chicken,
fish and beef satay and banana juice.
An hour across the water you can get a hotel room, cold beer
and three meals a day for $30. All on a pristine beach with some of the most
amazing snorkeling in the world. A huge
statue of Jesus, with his arms outstretched in a mighty blessing over the
coastline, stands atop a mountain giving
the feeling of Rio de Janiero. (When Rio was just a village).
The internet connection is improving but still so weak that
it is impossible to upload a file or two. Today I bought some Timorese music
from a cavernous electrical shop on the main drag of town. I’ll post some of
those in due course, but since its been a while since the past post I’ll resort
to some files that have been sitting around for a long time waiting for just
this sort of occasion.
Think of it as a musical smorgasbord with absolutely no
connection with Timor Leste. Just good
music.
First up is Sonny
Terry (accompanied on guitar by the one and only Sam Houston ‘Lightnin’ Hopkins). The album is from 1963, Sonny is King and one of my favorite
acoustic blues discs of all time. Sweet
Tater Pie is great nasty fun.
Second off the rank, and all the way from the bayous of
Louisana, the one and only and ultimate king of swamp blues, Tony Joe White, recorded in 1980 on the
famous American TV show, Austin City Limits. Guitar playing, voice, subject
matter and attitude all supremely unique. I
Get Off On It, has to be one of the funkiest (and funniest) songs of the
Age. Here
Thirdly, from another sleepy colonial city, comes the
amazing Franco and TP OK Jazz. Originalite
is a collection of early compositions by the genius of African electric guitar
from 1956. Music so sweet and sublime it could give you cavities. From a time when rumba ruled the bars and music halls of Africa and jazz bands
needed a quorum of at least 10 to be taken seriously. Every song is worthy of classic status. Here
In fourth place, George
Benson, another fabbo guitarist, crosses back to contemporary jazz after crossing
over to pop from jazz in the mid 1970s. George always loved to sing and some
fans never forgave him for going poppy. But he made some of the grooviest
jazz-pop of that era and still swung on his guitar. I picked this up 2000 release up in a shop in
Tashkent, Uzbekistan some time ago and figure it is as fine an example of
contemporary American jazz as anything else from that first year of the new
millennium. The opening track, a cover of Donny
Hathaway’s The Ghetto connects
back to George’s Breezin’ best both vocally and
guitar-ily. Here
Finally, representing India comes the New Bharat Brass Band. A wedding band extraordinaire showing off
its considerable wayward talents on the trumpet, clarinet, tuba and drums,
blasting a wicked way through Bollywood hits, folk songs and matrimonial
delights, like Chumma Chumma (Kiss
Kiss). here
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