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From: B-Haile (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Sun Dec 12 2010 - 02:45:28 EST
"There are some interesting albums on the EBU chart. One I am definitely going to order is French producer Bruno Blum's amazing recordings of the best singers in Eritrea (set to the grooves of a wonderful house band), Eritrea's Got Soul by the Asmara All Stars. I've only heard one track so far but it has a hypnotic rhythm and a distinctive catchy, nasal singing style. If you like Ethiopian, Sudanese or Somalian music, then this one is for you."
Bankok Post
Together at last
Cuban and Malian artists team up to explore the musical possibilities of both cultures
Published: 10/12/2010 at 12:00 AM
The Buena Vista Social Club brought to international attention a talented bunch of veteran musicians from Cuba - people like bandleader Compay Segundo, pianist Ruben Gonzalez and singers Omara Portuondo and Ibrahim Ferrar. The initial album they collectively released is still in many charts after more than 10 years, a documentary of the musicians won an Oscar and each of the stars have released their own follow-up albums, again to great acclaim.
Sadly, many of the aged stars have passed away since, with only Elias Ochoa remaining of the original line-up. But not a lot of people know that had a select group of Malian musicians turned up for a flight to Cuba during the late '90s, the Buena Vista Social Club would have sounded very different.
Faced with many no-shows at the airport, World Circuit producer Nick Gold enlisted the help of songwriter Juan de Marcos Gonzalez to round up some musicians and use the studio time he had booked - the rest, as they say, is history.
The original idea was to get Cuban and Malian musicians together to explore the musical possibilities of both cultures. Cuban music, with its roots in Africa, was hugely popular in the 1940s and '50s in West Africa, becoming a key element in the development of local musical styles in Francophone West Africa. Malians worked and recorded in Cuba during this time.
Finally, after many years, World Circuit has managed to get them all in the same studio and the result is a huge hit, Afrocubism by Afrocubism (the new name for this cross-cultural band), which is sitting pretty on top of the European Broadcast Union's World Music charts for December. I've heard several sample tracks and they sound terrific, so this album is going on my festive season shopping list.
There are some interesting albums on the EBU chart. One I am definitely going to order is French producer Bruno Blum's amazing recordings of the best singers in Eritrea (set to the grooves of a wonderful house band), Eritrea's Got Soul by the Asmara All Stars. I've only heard one track so far but it has a hypnotic rhythm and a distinctive catchy, nasal singing style. If you like Ethiopian, Sudanese or Somalian music, then this one is for you.
Other albums to look out for include the traditional throat/overtone singing of Huun Huur Tu, and the more fusion-oriented and punkish style of Yat-Kha, both from Tuva in Siberia and the only Asian bands to make the top 20 this month.
Look out also for The Creole Choir of Cuba and the distinctive vocals of Sami ethnic music on Finnish star Maria Kalaniemi's latest album, Vilda Rosor.
Finally, it is great to see the Reunion island maloya singer/instrumentalist Danyel Waro at last getting some international recognition for a style of music that is not well known outside of the Indian Ocean region and France. I saw Waro perform during his Japan tour in the early '90s, and I was struck by his unusually high-voiced singing style and the sound he and his band made from their own homemade, mainly percussion instruments, as well as the great intensity he brought to his performance.
Waro told me that the bluesy maloya style was originally developed as chanting by enslaved sugarcane workers, some of whom chanted over traditional instruments. This brings to mind field hollers and work songs that were such an essential element of early blues styles in the United States. Waro actually performs what I would call "sound poems" (sometimes he just recites a poem unaccompanied) that deal with the harsh realities and history of Creole people on Reunion. He talks of injustice, racism and the ubiquity of mainstream French culture, and of the harsh realities of life, and he does this when he performs live with an astounding intensity. Indeed, he hasn't released that many albums - I have one of his early cassettes from Reunion - as he told me that he loves and prefers to perform rather than record. His last album, Foutan Foonker (1999), won him accolades and awards in France and he has been busy spreading the word, and sound, of maloya on tours to West Africa and Europe. Bangkok-based promoters please take note.
His new double album, Aou Amwin (Cobalt, 2010) has just been released and on it he is joined by Corsican choral group A Filetta. I have heard a couple of songs, including a haunting number called Voulvoul. More on this amazing artist when I get my clammy hands on his album.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/entertainment/music/210606/together-at-last
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