French and Spanish: Music from the Caribbean

Two favorites tonight. One recent and one old. Both from the Caribbean a region of the world I’ve never spent time but where music is fresh and exhilarating.

Lilting biguines, heavy gwo ka drums and tumbélé rhythms collide with the sounds of the carnival. Haitian, Congolese and Puerto Rican influences are added to the pot in a percussive celebration of Afro-Caribbean spirit.

Martinique and Guadeloupe are overseas départements of France, situated in the Eastern Caribbean island chain of the Lesser Antilles. Successive waves of immigrants and a strong French colonial presence have combined to produce a strong musical culture that takes in African and latin rhythms alongside Jazz, calypso and the local biguine style.

Often overlooked in the English speaking Caribbean, the scattering drums and soaring clarinets of the biguine ruled the airwaves and dancefloors of Martinique and Guadeloupe in the 1960s.

This album showcases the vibrancy of the scene on the islands in the ‘60s and ‘70s – a scene that would go on to develop the all-conquering sound of zouk in the ‘80s. Uptown bands like Ensemble La Perfecta and Les Loups Noirs combine heavy rhythms and psychedelic effects in an inimitable style – check out the crazed Jet Biguine for a better idea! The deep and introspective sounds of Monsieur Dolor and Guadeloupean hero Robert Loison show the deep African roots of the music – songs born out of the plantations, with an insistent rhythm and mournful vocals that are unique to these islands.

Overlooked outside of Paris, Montreal and the French Caribbean for many years, this collection redresses the balance by presenting the vital sounds of Martinique and Guadeloupe – missing pieces of the musical jigsaw puzzle of the Caribbean.

(http://www.soundwayrecords.com/catalogue/tumbele.html)

This is really exciting fast moving dance music. Unfortunately, as one listens to it one is filled with regret that these small musical islands are so blasted far away from the neighborhood.

            Track Listing:

01   Jeunesse Vauclin – Barel Coppet et Mister Lof


02   Jet Biguine – Les Loups Noirs D’Haïti


03   Pas O Soué La – Abel Zénon


04   Manzè Mona – Raphaël Zachille


05   Henri Te Vlé Mayé – Robert Mavounsy Quartet

06   
La Vie Critique – L’Orchestre Jeunesse de Paul-Emile Haliar


07   Mussieu A Têt’a Poisson La – Orchestre Combo Zombi et Michel Yéyé

08   
Oriza – Les Kings

09   
Colas-la – Claude Rolcin et Le West Indian Combo


10   Ti Fi La Ou Té Madam’ – Anzala, Dolor, Vélo


11   D’Leau Coco – Les Leopards


12   Jojo – Ensemble La Perfecta


13   Dima Bolane – Le Ry-co Jazz


14   Edamise Oh! – Lola Martin


15   Chombo Meringue – Les Aiglons de Basse Terre


16   Son Tambou La – Les Gentlemens


17   Chonga – L’Ensemble Abricot


18   Fileo – Francisco


19   Panty – Monsieur Dolor et Les Guitar Boys


20   Jean Fouillé, Pie Fouillé – Robert Loison

Listen here.

A part of the world I have had the privilege of working in is Angola which throughout its 25 years of civil war was supported by Cuban troops and doctors.  When I was there Angolans were ambivalent about the value the Cuban soldiers had added to their country. But I never met one Angolan who had anything but awed respect and praise for the dedication of the thousands of Cuban doctors and medical staff who worked throughout the country in shocking conditions and on very low wages. 

The experience obviously made an impression on the Cubans themselves, as is heard in the song De Kabinda a Kunene Un Solo Pueblo (The Only Person from Kabinda to Kunene) on the collection of Cuban music Sabroso! Havana Hits. The song is a humorous musing of a Cuban (Doctor perhaps?) who is stuck alone in the vastness of Angolan landscape.

All the songs on this record are similar but very different from those of the French Caribbean and make a nice complement to Tumbele!

            Track Listing:

            01 A Los Rumberos De Belen - Grupo Sierra Maestra

02 Camina Y Ven - Celina Gonzalez

03 El Son De Nicaragua - Orquestra Chepin

04 Rucu Rucu A Santa Clara - Grupo Irakere

05 Chilindron De Chivo - Conjunto Casino

06 De Kabinde A Kunene Un Solo Pueblo - Conjunto Los Karachi

07Anda Ven Y Muevete  - Orquestra Los Van Van

08 Vuela La Paloma - Conjunto Rumbavana

09 Se Que Tu Sabes Que Yo Se - Orquestra Revé

10 Frutas Del Caney –  Grupo Monumental

Listen here

Super Afro Soul: Orlando Julius

My first introduction to African music was Fela Kuti many many years ago. Orlando Julius, a fellow Nigerian sax player, was both a predecessor and contemporary of Fela.  Tonight’s post brings Mr. Julius with two of the bands he led in the 1960s and early 70s: The Afro Sounders and the Modern Aces.

The evolution of 20^th century popular music was propelled by the musical earthquakes which happened in cities across the world. For a few years a particular city became a musical epicenter sending waves, ripples and after shocks across the planet and then the quake would move on. The list is long but consider a few: 1950’s Chicago, 1920’s New Orleans, 1980’s Soweto, Harare 1985-90, Accra 1955-75, Kingston, 1965-1980, Liverpool 1962/3, 1970s’ Conakry, London 1965-68…just add to the list as you please. But one of the most profound seismic musical earthquakes had its epicenter in Lagos, Nigeria for a decade or so from 1965, five years after the country won its independence from Britain.

On Super Afro Soul you can hear the early musical tremors. It was Orlando’s first album, released in 1966, a head-on collision between highlife-the soundtrack of Independence in Ghana, and then in neighboring Nigeria (the music of West African political/social aspiration at that time, ‘the successful africanisation of a western structure,’ as Prof. John Collins says)-and 60’s Soul from the USA, the soundtrack of Afro-America’s struggle for civil rights and equality.  While Fela Kuti’s Koola Lobitos was experimenting with highlife and jazz with little response from Lagos youth, still 4 years and a spell in LA from creating Afrobeat, Orlando Julius unleashed this pioneering Highlife Soul gem and Lagos clubs responded to the new sound.

Orlando Julius

Orlando (some say he borrowed that name from Nigerian film actor, Orlando Martins) Julius Aremu Olusanya Ekemode started life in 1943 in Ijebu-Ijesha in the Osun State of Nigeria.  His first instruments were drums and later flute at school, and then he discovered his favorite instrument, the alto sax, which he studied for two years before he joined local highlife heroes the Flamingo Dandies of Akure. Highlife was the breaking wave and he surfed it, an unstoppable talent. At 19 he even briefly became leader of Juju music star I.K. Dairo’s Dance Band, but then he returned to highlife heaven with Eddy Okunta’s Top Aces in Lagos, and immersed himself in highlife and the jazz of Parker and Coltrane.

“I used to follow the priests and worshippers to where they performed their traditional worship from where I picked up Kokoma music’”. In 1964 he formed his Modern Aces and on their first massive hit single, Jagua Nana, released in October 1965, you can hear that he had married  congas, bongos and the agigdigbo of Kokoma with the sax into his beats. It took the country by storm and spawned a host of evolving sensual wriggles and def dance steps in the clubs.  Three more singles followed. Topless (for a while he was ‘The Topless Man’), Oloufe and E Se Re Re.

Around this time, his two musical obsessions, jazz and highlife, were joined with a third, as the airwaves filled with the sounds of 60’s soul from the USA. Smoky Robinson, The Temptations, Otis Redding, Motown, Stax, Atlantic…and his Modern Aces became one of the very first in Nigeria to forge new directions with traditional highlife, alongside Fela’s Koola Lobitos, with whom he shared band members. On this first album, Super Afro Soul, released by Polygram in 1966 in the triumphant wake of his hit singles, its clear that he’d caught the soul bug  but he was going to play it his way.  Lagos transforms the Memphis Soul Stew!  Check his unique cover of Smoky Robinson’s  My Girl, the James Brown ‘echoes’ in Ijo Soul, the Stax-like brass riffs and dominant bass throughout the album but the highlife and kokoma are never far away.

Orlando recorded 3 albums for Polygram in Lagos. Orlando’s Idea and Ishe followed Super Afro Soul, each evolving its own sound along with the changes that were happening on the Lagos music scene. 

The outrageously successful arrival of Geraldo Pino and the Heartbeats from Sierra Leone with their soul covers, tight choreography, slick costumes and expensive new sound system upped the ante for every band.  The Lagos scene countered.  Fela Kuti announced the creation of a new sound, Afrobeat, and then left for a tour of the USA which would keep him away from Lagos till the end of the decade, when he would return totally politicized, his band now called Africa 70, ready to change Nigeria and the world with full on Afrobeat.  Orlando, on the other hand, formed a much larger band, the Afro Sounders in the late 1960’s. They wore the sharpest suits, and began to explore an altogether funkier, deeper highlife fusion, responding to rock and psychedelia (Pyschedelic Afro Shop), the deeper funk grooves that were coming from the US (James Brown Ride On) and also to Fela’s new Afrobeat (Alo Mi Alo).  The tracks are longer, the sound mellower, the rootsier grooves profoundly hip shaking.

As the 70’s rolled on, corruption and militarism became business as usual in Nigeria and it was Fela, not OJ or Geraldo, who was now the epicenter of musical upheaval and radical social comment in Lagos, with a huge following across Nigeria. OJ decided to explore the country whose jazz and soul sounds he had fallen for all his musical life. He left Lagos for New York and Washington DC. There, he formed Umoja, (later Oja) in 1974 and toured with the cream of 70’s soul: Issac Hayes, The Bar Kays, the O’Jays, Chaka Khan, Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott-Heron.

The doors to the jazz world opened when he worked with Hugh Masakela on his The Boys Doin’ It  LP.  OJ was just whom Masakela was looking for. “Hugh had just come back from Zaire…from doing the Rumble in the Jungle gig and had lost his Ghanaian combo Hedzolleh Soundz backing band.”

Now OJ was playing jazz festival gigs with stars like Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Chick Corea and Art Blakey. It also led to more work with Masakela’s producer Stuart Levine which led to appearances on records by the Crusaders  and Lamont Dozier…check the Yoruba chant he wrote for Back to My Roots.

After a successful career in the USA, through the 80’s and 90’s, he returned to Lagos in 1999, set a recording and rehearsal studio in Surelere and formed The Nigerian Allstars with whom he recently celebrated his 40^th anniversary as one of Nigeria’s funkiest musical pioneers.  Long may his Super Afro Soul light up our lives!! 

Max Reinhardt (May 07)

(Liner Notes)

            Track Listing:

            (Modern Aces)

            01 Mapami

02 Efoye So

03 Ise Owo

04 Solo Hit (Instrumental)

05 Oni Suru

06 Wakalole

07 Ma Fagba Seyeye

08 Bojubari

09 My Girl

10 Jagua Nana

11 Ijo Soul

12 Topless

13 Olulofe

14 E Se Rere

Listen here.

            Track Listing:

            (Afro Sounders)

            01 Home Sweet Home

02 Psychedelic Afro Shop

03 James Brown Ride On

04 Mura Sise

05 Esamei Sate

06 Alo il Alo

07 Ketete Koro

08 New Apala Afro

09 Igbehin Adara

Listen here.

Thunder in the Mountains: Himalaya Blues

Vajra Virahi (Newari painting)

There are two types of people in this world, I reckon. Mountain people or ocean people.  I’m the former.  Mountains give me peace. They form a mysterious connection to something ancient in my soul. They are where I feel most at home.

I grew up in the Himalayas, so that probably is why I feel this. Oceans to me were as familiar as my American cousins and visited with about the same (in)frequency.

In the early 90s I spent some time in the refugee camps of south eastern Nepal where I worked with Bhutanese like those pictured here. I visited Kathmandu fairly regularly and stayed just a short evening stroll from the Durbar (royal) square of Patan (below), one of three ancient cities that make up modern Kathmandu. Patan is rich with culture, arts and the narrow galis that meander off the main square are full of curio, antique and traditional handicraft shops.  It was always exciting and invigorating to wander through the area absorbing as one does in Asia, a thousand smells, sounds and sights  in each step.   

Sadly, during my stay in Nepal I was too focused on buying cheap tapes of western music to delve into the local scene. About as close as I got were regular trips for kebabs, beer and great conversation with a dear friend, Pratap, at a local restaurant that had live ghazal singers most evenings. 

My memory of the music of the Garhwal mountains where I went to school in India is dominated by the flute. Played lonely but beautifully by an unseen shepherd or dudhwala (milkman) around the next misty corner. It still stirs my spirit in a way no other music can. Bringing home feelings of comfort, loss, security and wonder.  

Tonight’s post is a wonderful record called Himalaya Blues.  It is the work of two Norwegian musicians, Knut Reiersrud, an accomplished blues guitarist and Hans Fredrik Jacobsen a composer, multi instrumentalist and a Nepali folk band Vajra.  The Scandianvians had a group called the Funky Homosapiens which toured India and Nepal where the idea of this record was born. The Funky Homosapiens and Vajra played together at a jazz festival in Kathmandu and so loved the experience they determined to make record. 

The result is Himalaya Blues a superb blending of Nepali flute based folk tunes and western music.  It is elegant, never precious, meditative without being dull. It is also full of surprises.  Ever thought you’d hear She Holds the Whole World in Her Hands sung in Nepali?  And for those of you who, like me, love wandering the bazaars of Asia with no particular destination the opening few minutes will be a complete delight!

This is a east-west fusion of high quality, up there with some of Ry Cooder’s, Taj Mahal’s and Ravi Shankar’s cross cultural work.  Fantastic.

            Track Listing:

       01 Kuvisa

02 Morning Song

03 Mother Himalaya

04 Sylvartun

05 Shangri-La

06 Loknes

07 Ballad Of The Sad Young Tigers

08 Golden Tap

09 Himalaya Blues

Listen here.