Slow Road to Senegal: Spirit of Teranga

My first exposure to African music was to Fela’s record Zombie.  My second was to the dance music of Toure Kunda,  the Senegalese band whose records spiced up countless mid-80’s parties at University.  After their bright flash across the consciousness of American college kids TK seem to have faded from view. Sad, because they opened an intriguing window into the music of that West African country, that their disappearance or fall from critical favour, seemed to slam shut.

Today the spotlight is back on Senegal with a fabulous double disc set called African Pearls: The Spirit of Teranga Senegal.

A languid tour of Senegalese music as if on a local bus that stops frequently at village after village.  In no hurry to get to wherever you think you’re supposed to be going but by the time you get there your questions have been answered. Though curiosity is peaked and you are hungry for more.

Disc one is traditional music played on traditional instruments, to ancient rhythms. Disc two is full of that sleepy, sexy Latino club sound, played on loosely strung guitars and drum kits from another era.

All very addictive.

Track Listing: (Disc 1)

01 Mbueguel [Aminata Fail]

02 Boulmamine [Ensemble National du Senegal]

03 Niani [Amadou N’Diaye Samb]

04 Bambo Bodian [Lalo Keba Drame]

05 Fall Amadou Abdoulaye [Diabou Seck]

06 Tiedo [Ensemble National du Senegal]

07 Nieti Abdou [Ndiaga Mbaye]

08 Listakhar [Ensemble National du Senegal]

09 Saraba [Samba Diare Samb]

10 Birma Maofal [Ensemble Lyrique Sorano]

11 Bandia [Soundiolou Cissokho and Mahawa Kouyate]

12 Balingor [Soleyamama Et Watoo Sita]

13 Laagia [Samba Diabare]

14 Irando [Ensemble Lyrique Sorano]

15 Diegoye [Fa Mbaye Issa Diop]

16 Borom Keur [Thione Seck]

17 Lamine Gueye [Orquestre Baobab]

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Track Listing (Disc 2)

2-01 Senegal Sunugal [Orquestre Baobab]

2-02 Jankaake [Star Numer One]

2-03 Santa Barbara [Super International Band]

2-04 Nobel [Ouza Diallo]

2-05 Laagia [Nigewei International]

2-06 Saraba [Ifang Bondi]

2-07 Simbondon [Star Numer One]

2-08 Aduana Jarul Naawo [Orquestre Baobab]

2-09 Thiely [Star Band]

2-10 Wallou ! [Guelewar Band]

2-11 Aminta [Labah Sosseh]

2-12 Waalo [Star Number One]

2-13 Ade [Xalam]

             

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Bollywood Gone Africa: Harafinso

For our last in this mini-series of the cinematic ‘woods’ taking or providing inspiration to Bollywood, we travel to Kannywood, in northern Nigeria.

In the early 1990’s I was working for some months on the borders of Iran and Iraq. We lived in tents on a sort of heavily mined DMZ on a plateau in the dry dun hills that rose steadily into the Zagros mountains. The nearest city, to which we repaired once a fortnight or so, was Suleymaniah, the largest centre of Kurds in Eastern Iraq.

On one trip into town I swung through the crowded bazaars in search of a particular brand of cigarette.  The constricted street led into a small square which was crowned with a cinema hall.  That evening’s show was a potboiler from India called Insaaf ke Tarazu (Scales of Justice). I had been aware that Bollywood films were popular beyond the borders of India but this was the first time I had actually seen Indian heroes and heroines doing their moves and making their faces on posters in a foreign land.

A few months before arriving in Iraq, I had spent a long time in Pakistan working for the UN; I was interviewing refugees from Iraq and Iran for resettlement in the West. One Iranian young man took the interview in flawless Urdu.  I was surprised and impressed and asked him how he had become fluent. I suspected he might be a local student and was trying to rort the UN system to get to Europe. He insisted that he’d learned Urdu from watching Bollywood movies on TV. One day, he hoped to return to the sub continent to try his hand at acting. 

Raj Kapoor’s giant hit of 1955 Shri 420 , had been a major hit in the Soviet Union and other East European countries. Across the Middle East and South East Asia, people who otherwise spoke not a word of Hindi, could rattle off entire dialogues from Indian films.  Indeed, for the developing and recently Independent former colonies of Asia and Africa, the films of Bombay were a sort of cultural security blanket, far more important to popular culture than the films and heroes of Hollywood which were causing similar waves in post war Europe. 

And like jazz, that American music that found such fertile ground around the world, the playback singer based music of Hindi cinema, was the soundtrack for millions of African, Middle Eastern and Asian youth growing up in the 50s-70s.

So I wouldn’t say I was surprised but rather entirely pleased to discover through today’s featured record, Harafinso: Bollywood Inspired Film Music from Hausa Nigeria. Put out by the excellent cultural warriors at sahelsounds this record gives the world the chance to listen into contemporary popular music from Kano and Kaduna and the Islamic lands of northern Nigeria.

Full post and goodies here

Tuareg Trending: Tinariwen

I’ve had this album since it came out a few years back. But hesitated to really listen to it because something about a Tinariwen record with lots of American and European ‘guest stars’ did not appeal.  So I ignored it, preferring the older and earlier efforts by the Tuareg collective.

Well, what a mistake. I can listen to nothing but this record these days.  This is album Nr. 5 for the group and for my money their acme. It wallows in laid back rhythms, tightly tweaked guitar riffs and spare, world weary vocalisations.  Here you will find the lost chord of a sleepy Mississippi bluesman sipping flat 3.2 beer near the end of a Sunday evening set. Singing almost to and only for himself.  Yet the message and spirit is not diminished. In a lot of ways it is all the more arresting because of its simplicity. 

And as for those American guests, well like well behaved visitors, they speak only when spoken too.  They actually add some nice color to the desert sound, especially the contributors from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

Here’s Pitchfork’s review.

In southeastern Algeria, there is a vast plateau set aside as a national park called Tassili N'Ajjer. It's close to the border with Libya, and years ago, in the 1980s and early 90s, it was a place of relatively safe passage for Kel Tamashek fighters moving between the refugee camps in Libya and the battlefront in northern Mali. To look at it in satellite images, you might think you were looking at he surface of some distant moon, long ago scarred by geologic activity but now barren and strangely beautiful. It wasn't always this way. Thousands of ancient cave and rock paintings dating from 8,000 to around 1,700 years ago depict a place of plenty that slowly dried to become the modern desert. There are lost religions and civilizations out there.

The Tassili N'Ajjer covers some 45,000 square miles. Near the southern rim of the plateau is a town called Djanet, and it's out in the rocky desert near this town that Tinariwen chose to record its fifth album. The group would have preferred to record near its homebase, Tessalit, in northern Mali, but the security situation was too precarious. The re-flaring of a conflict the group hoped was put to bed clouds some of the album they made-- the first couplet on the album, sung in weary Tamashek by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, translates to, "What have you got to say, my friends, about this painful time we're living through?" It's not only about the new conflict, though. From there, the song calls out to people who have given up the nomadic life of the desert, lamenting that they've left but seeming to understand why they have.

These complex emotions run through the album, and the predominant feeling that comes out of them is longing, for home, for peace, for old friends, for a way of life whose place in the modern world is uncertain. Tinariwen have mostly put aside their electric guitars for this album and returned to the acoustics they first played together, backing the rhythmic playing with small hand drums and clapping. They've invited in a few friends as well. Nels Cline contributes a beautiful wash of ambient guitar to opener "Imidiwan ma Tennam", two members of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band add rough, sonorous texture to "Ya Messinagh", and TV on the Radio's Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe, who traveled out to the desert recording site, are on hand on five songs, adding subtle backing harmonies and even a bit of lead vocal on one song.

(http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15767-tassili/)

With Mali making the evening news of late (for all the wrong reasons) it is a good time to remember that those ancient people are among the most amazing music makers on the planet.

I hope you enjoy this the Washerman Dog's 501st post!

Track Listing:

01 Imidiwan Ma Tennam (feat. Nels Cline)

02 Asuf D Alwa

03 Tenere Taqqim Tossam (feat. Tunde Adebimpe & Kyp Malone)

04 Ya Messinagh (feat. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band)

05 Walla Illa

06 Tameyawt

07 Imidiwan Win Sahara

08 Tamiditin Tan Ufrawan

09 Aden Osamnat

10 Tenidagh Hegh Djeredjere

11 Swegh Attay

 Groove and mellow down here.

Suez Canal Social Club: El Tanbura

El Tanbura are a collective of veteran Egyptian master musicians, singers, fishermen and philosophers. For the past seventeen years they've been custodians of some of Egypt's oldest folk melodies at their home in Port Said, the Mediterranean gateway to the Suez Canal. 

No one knows the exact origins of the Simsimiyya. One Egyptian legend tells how the first instrument was fashioned from the shell of an unfortunate turtle that had swum too far along the Nile and ended up as dinner for a hungry musician. Other stories say the Simsimiyya has existed for centuries in the Arabian Gulf, and her music (the lyre is always referred to as feminine and her players as lovers) has the ability to calm the waters of the Red Sea. Another folk tale attributes her origins to a mysterious enchanting Siren who slowly seduces both the lover and the audience with mesmerising melodies derived from ancient exorcism rituals.

We do know that the instrument only arrived in Port Said during the 1930s; much to the frustration of the local Suhbagiyya (musicians) who had previously enjoyed the undivided attention of local audiences with Damma songs - a fusion of Sufi inspired vocal chants and frenzied drumming. It was only after the Suez Crisis of 1956 that Dama and Simsimiyya musicians embraced both repertoires. The War drew the former rivaling musicians together as the Simsimiyya provided a voice for the resistance movement through protest songs; a tradition that continued in the subsequent War of 1967 and exile of the people of Port Said during the Israeli occupation of Sinai. In exile, the diaspora communities would gather and sing the old songs reminding them of home.

In the 1950s Zakaria Ibrahim, El Tanbura's founder, first heard the Suhbagiyya in Port Said as a young boy. The music he heard as a child haunted him all of his adult life and, on returning to Port Said in 1980, and seeing the desperate musical conditions, he spent nine years seeking out the old masters and building friendships, trying to convince the musicians to perform once again. And El Tanboura group was born.

At first, news of the group's rehearsals drew scorn and ridicule from the commercial musicians; however the infectious atmosphere of the initial performances convinced others with an interest in Sufi philosophy and the pre-War traditions of Port Said to join the floating collective of El Tanbura's members.

Over time, the band grew to include not only folk musicians and percussionists, but dancers and singers drawn from local fishermen, market traders and builders, alongside the unlikely addition of master instrumentalists from some of the State-approved music troupes who were desperate to perform with others who had a vibrancy of spirit and to play long-forgotten songs from antiquity - praising something other than the government approved subjects.

Band members dress in an eclectic mix of gallibiyas and Levis with Gucci sunglasses, fez and Nike caps.  Their music is driven by the seductive call of the Simsimiyya. They perform regularly in Port Said and at Masrah El Damma in downtown Cairo. (http://www.el-mastaba.org/el-tanbura.html)

This is great music. Sometimes sacred sometimes frolicking always pleasurable.  A real Suez Canal Social Club!

Track Listing:

01 Ghosen el Habib

02 Friends of Bamboute

03 Noh el Hamam

04 Khaly anka al yhom

05 Song for the Prophet

06 Lally

07 Heela Heela

08 Afra

09 Badr Arid

10 El Madad

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