This was very different music from what I usually listened to, but somehow a lot of it appealed to me and made me pay more attention in future to those artists. At first I bought some albums and cassettes, but later moved on to CDs. I still have all the Celluloid New Africa compilations!
The story is a great read of how King Sunny Adé & His African Beats made 3 albums for Island Records but in the end failed to have a similar impact as Bob Marley… Afterwards I found a similar well-written review about their first album from 1982, Juju Music on Pitchfork.
A final check at Discogs turned up a number of singles, both 7 & 12 inch, and those 3 albums, but not even a compilation of those Island years, unbelievable! Lo and behold, another Jokonky project was born! Ja Funmi: The Island Years (1982 - 84) features 11 tracks from the above, 75 min. of great music, plus the two articles in question!
To get the link to the download (with Koen's liner notes, album cover art, and the two articles), please tell us: who is your favorite "world music" artist or group?
ReplyDeleteMory Kante. Makes me smile whenever i hear the music.
DeleteFela Kuti
DeletePathane Khan; Afous d'Afous; Orchestra Baobab just off the top of the head
DeleteFela Kuti!
DeleteMine would have to be Tinariwen, true rebels in every way, musically, spiritually, & socially. Koen, thanks for the King Sunny Adé.
ReplyDeleteI do not like the term World Music. People like Peter Gabriel, and that Island Boss marketed it. Paul Simon ran away with it and hundreds of musicians were left in the cold/heat with it. I consider Nashville a good example of World Music. It is local folks music with a modern coating for a bigger audience. Or Seatle Grunge.It is not that far from Zydeco or Mississippi Delta Blues. In England you had a Canterbury scene, a Liverpool Scene. In fact you can say that local music with a producer who makes it more professional (ahum) is World Music and thus Parisian and London producers were very much to blame for the uniformity in the sound of nineties African Pop. Also albums by local artists for the local market are definitely NOT World Music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K--fl7cMx4M&t=5s
ReplyDeleteAnd now a lot of African, Asian and Latin American youth are deep into their kind of HipHop/Rap
Have a look at this for some Indonesian Hip Hop. Isn't that World Music in its Core? Or is it just Hip Hop
https://madrotter-treasure-hunt.blogspot.com/search?q=hip+hop Like Osdorp Posse were Dutch HipHop and MC Solaar from France they just are Indonesian Proud and HipHop.
OK, Did you have the spliced Aura? Specially cutting the songs apart for your western ears. The original Nigerian were two uninterruted medleys of the songs.
Franco is probably one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. I like Orchestre Kara De Kinshasa the most.
For good understanding of African Music (Please don't call it World Music) in its great diversity https://wrldsrv.blogspot.com/
Please do not mention Fela.
Koen and I discussed our shared reservations about the term "world music". It tends to be a catchall term for music that does not sound like rock or pop as we know it in Western Europe and North America. You make several valid arguments, Richard. What is appealing about unique musical subgenres and scenes is often more specific to a location (and a culture) rather than it being "worldly". As you say, hip hop from Indonesia (or reggae from Poland, or metal from Brazil) is produced to sound familiar to Western ears and is more properly "World" music (in the sense of being cosmopolitan or international).
DeleteMusic doesn't really have borders. One of my favorite examples is "Stewball", a folk song with roots in England and Ireland. It crossed the Atlantic to the New World and was transformed into a chain gang song that people like Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie performed and recorded, and that version was taught to new generations of performers in the UK who might never have heard the song as it first existed.
I don't find "African music" very descriptive either. It's a huge continent of diverse cultures, languages, and musical traditions. North Africa is as different from South Africa as North America is from South America. Colonization and international travel brought many different styles of music to Africa, just as the enslavement of African peoples exported many musical traditions (and musical instruments such as the banjo) to other parts of the world. America would not be the birthplace of blues, jazz, gospel, bluegrass, country, rock and hip hop without its immigrants.
And why not mention Fela? Is it because he is the go-to name for African music, like Bob Marley is for reggae? I was fortunate enough to see Fela perform twice, and it was unforgettable. As Nathan said of Tinariwen, Fela was a true rebel.
I don't mind the term 'world music'. Yes, it has its limitations and in one sense it encompasses ALL music created by humans. So a bit broad. But I've yet to hear a better term to describe non-English language popular music, which to my mind is what "world music" is trying to capture. As a music lover and hoarder I try to keep my 'genre' categories to a minimum and so am happy to use World/Pakistan (for example) as a designation for Pakistani music. But if I'm writing about it I'll definitely be more specific (qawwali, ghazal, filmi, lokgeet etc.). In the end it is a hook on which to hang a lot of non-English language music and is as good as anything else I've seen proposed.
DeleteYes, do not mention Fela, is a cheeky remark. "African music" is as right or wrong as you want to. Dutch music comes from the Netherlands, nothing special. African music comes from the continent. And when the Dutch Punk band The Ex worked with Ethiopean World musician Getachew Mekuria it suddenly became something else...Fusion? I thought C&W was fusion music, an amalgamation of both kinds of music, Country And Western. But now I am being silly.
DeleteBob Marley, Fela Kuti, both very inspirational humans and influential musicians.
You could reasonably argue that C&W is indeed fusion music: it incorporates folk, blues, gospel music and (more recently) rock and hip hop. Western Swing is another interesting amalgam, as it draws from big band jazz as well as Hawaiian music. I once took an ethnomusicology course where the professor explained that radio listeners in the American West were captivated by broadcasts of Hawaiian lap steel guitar. The guitar itself was introduced to Hawaii by Spanish explorers, and Hawaiian musicians adapted the instrument through "slack key" tunings. And the music goes round and round...
DeleteI agree with ajnabi, "world music" is a hook upon which we hang a very large hat with a lot of holes in it -- but is there a more accurate term? Even to say music not sung in English doesn't really work, as many artists have chosen to sing in English to broaden their audiences, and "Western" music (rock, punk, hip hop) is often sung in other languages.
And then there's the problem of genre names that are used to segregate and "ghettoize" artists. The early 20th century "race records" are the most bald-faced example, but more recently there were tempests in teapots about Lil Nas X making the Country charts and whether Aya Nakamura (a hugely popular French singer of Malian ancestry) should be "allowed" to represent France in the Olympics. This kind of cultural gatekeeping is racist and obnoxious. I think the problem of defining genres also points back to the "dancing about architecture" comment -- the inadequacy of language to describe what we hear.
Upon reading Richard's comment again, I realized that he wrote of African music "in its great diversity" -- not describing it as a homogenous entity. My apologies. I would tend to agree that Chris Blackwell, Richard Branson, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and David Byrne are musical colonizers in a sense (check out Prince Far I's scathing "Virgin" or Los Lobos' story of being ripped off by Rhyming Simon). On the other hand they are cross-pollinators and "influencers". There are musical collaborators with an obvious love for "world music" -- Ry Cooder, Skip "Little Axe" McDonald, and Bill Laswell come to mind, although Fela hated what Laswell did with "Army Arrangement".
DeleteI believe the term World Music is appropriate. To many people, music was from America or England, maybe with the exception of some European music. The rest of the music of the "World" was by in large overlooked. So finally some bright bulb realized that there was a plethora of other music throughout the world. Sure, music from everywhere on our poor planet is "World music" but music from Nashville has for generations been thought of as "Music" while music like Thai luk thung or Mongolian throat singing or African high life or palm-wine. Viva World music...this is a musical world.
Deletecouldn't agree more NO. Jonder whats the
Deletelos lobos story?
Los Lobos participated in the creation of "The Myth Of Fingerprints". After the album Graceland was released, they discovered that they received no songwriting credit. As Steve Berlin tells it, Los Lobos was paired with Paul Simon by record label executives. Simon heard Los Lobos rehearsing the song and lifted it wholesale. When confronted later by the band, Simon allegedly said, “Sue me. See what happens.” Simon later defended himself by saying that artists often borrow from other artists, but this is outright theft.
DeleteSimon didn't write "Scarborough Fair" either. It was credited "Words and Music by Paul Simon", but it's an old song that Simon learned from Martin Carthy, who only received credit and royalties for his arrangement years later. Jimmy Page did the same to Bert Jansch, Jake Holmes, Willie Dixon and others. Some had to sue Led Zeppelin over songs credited to Page/Plant.
Toumani Diabate
ReplyDeleteFor me it is Márta Sebestyén. I think she was presented in one of the Alan Bangs Nightflight radio shows on BFBS in the late 80's.
ReplyDeletewimp
King Sunny Adé, Urubamba
ReplyDeleteFela Kuti
ReplyDeleteFranco! Orchestra Baobab! Thomas Mapfumo! Fela! Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan!
ReplyDeleteFela
ReplyDeleteFela
ReplyDeleteExcellent answers all -- including Fela! Here is the link to Koen's compilation of the Island Records recordings of King Sunny Adé And His African Beats:
ReplyDeletehttps://tinyurl.com/JaFunmi
Ali Farke Toure is another favorite of mine, plus I saw several other great artists names passing by here. Glad to see so much reactions on this post.
ReplyDeleteAs for the term World Music, Jonder already adequatly explained how we feel about it. I still feel though that Chris Blackwell did a very decent and respectful job on The Wailers Catch A Fire!
A heartfelt THANK YOU to all who have shared artists they love (some unfamiliar to me, which will be exciting to explore), as well as the stimulating discussion that we are having here. I'm especially glad that it has been a respectful discussion, presenting different points of view without devolving into arguments or insults!
DeleteA few artists I enjoy: Novalima (Afro- Peruvian fusion!), Bomba Estereo, Cesaria Evora, and Elza Soares. Japanese garage punks Thee Machine Gun Elephant and the Spanish rock group Melenas (who have been exploring Krautrock on their recent records!) A friend of mine who traveled to South America made me a mix CD of Marisa Monte, Ely Guerra, Curumin and Chico Science. My friends from Sierra Leone have introduced me to Burna Boy (Nigerian superstar), Koffee (incredibly talented young Jamaican woman), and this irresistably catchy tune: https://youtu.be/9YqecbxSr4A?si=VeUcc0GeWJOFKcOX
And I'm surprised that the Bulgarian women's choral groups haven't been mentioned yet! "Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares" is a record that everyone seemed to have in their collection, much like "The Indestructable Beat of Soweto" or "Buena Vista Social Club".
The "Baker's Dozen" feature at thequietus.com is a great source of recommendations, while learning about artists' influences as they describe 13 records that shaped their own creative processes. Two of the best things I found through Bakers Dozens are Elza Soares' final album (Beefheart goes to Portugal!) and the music of Lhasa de Sela:
Deletehttps://elzasoares.bandcamp.com/album/the-woman-at-the-end-of-the-world-a-mulher-do-fim-do-mundo
https://lhasadesela.bandcamp.com/album/la-llorona
Also highly recommended is Nathan Nothin's extensive series "Music Around The World":
https://nathannothinsez.blogspot.com/search/label/Music%20Around%20the%20World
And of course the omnivorous C90 Lounge: https://c90lounge.wordpress.com/
A late hit (5 yard penalty): heard the Bulgarian Women's Radio Choir in the dark and found it to be the scariest, most beautiful music ever!. Still a sucker for African guitarists, though, and Brazilian percussionists. Some places just have instruments in their dna!
ReplyDeleteBrazil is an incredible wellspring of musical creativity. And I just remembered the singular musical world of Juana Molina (from Argentina):
Deletehttps://juanamolina.bandcamp.com/
No penalties are assessed here at jonderblog. The harmonies of the Bulgarian Women's Radio Choir are indeed strange and beautiful. I like to believe that the chorus of one song on "Le Mystère" (can't remember which) would translate as, "Can it be true that there is life on other planets?"
Al Kooper, in his book, Backstage Pass, recommends a 1955 recording of Music of Bulgaria (Phillipe Koutez & Chior) https://www.discogs.com/Ensemble-Of-The-Bulgarian-Republic-Philip-Koutev-Music-Of-Bulgaria/release/2109873 as some of the most beautiful music ever. Said to have influenced Frank Zappa, Brian Wilson and CSN. I also have a collection of Armenian spiritual music from 5th to 13th century that I got for a friend, haven't listened to it.
DeleteEvery picture tells a story. This is a good one. It is hard to find out which choir is recorded by Marcel Cellier. We know His (Marcel) name but not the choirs. 10 years later 4AD rereleased this in the UK and Europe, and also in the USA. On the sleeve of the USA version it states the Bulgarian State Choir. On the other sleeves it remains a mystery, with 4AD suggesting Marcel Cellier picked some Bulgarian women and let them sing their magic. Ooh mysterious.
Delete1976 Bulgaria was still a Soviet Ally behind the Iron Curtain. And as so often a lot of people make money from these women's music. And I don't know if they themselves did.
I give you an example of a choir from Bulgaria. An album I have myself. Needless to say I love both these albums.
https://www.discogs.com/release/8512558-%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B8-%D0%9A%D1%83%D1%88%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8-%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B8-%D0%9A%D1%83%D1%88%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8-Sisters-Koushlevi
Recently, I wanted to download one of my favorite songs from the album recorded by Marcel Cellier, "Polegnala E Todora (Theodora Is Dozing)". I ended up finding a different recording of the same song (perhaps from the Philip Koutez recording mentioned by steVe). The (slight) differences are fascinating to hear when you are so familiar with the "definitive" version. Maybe I will compile a set of "alternate versions" of the songs from the album that was reissued by 4AD, and present them in the same track order. As Richard points out, the women of the choirs don't get credit (or money), only the Alan Lomax figure who records them. Folk songs themselves (like folktales) are also mysterious in their origins, as oral traditions pass through generations with additions and alterations.
DeleteRichard's album is by the Sisters Koushlevi, and was first released in 1975. According to Wikipedia, Radka Kushleva and her three sisters (Anka, Maria, and Stefka Kushleva) were the first vocal quartet in Bulgaria, and the first group of singers to recreate traditional Bulgarian folklore songs. The sisters were born into a family of musicians. Radka first performed on Radio Sofia (Bulgarian national radio) in 1942. Her two daughters later joined the Sisters Koushlevi, expanding the group to a sextet. They performed internationally and recorded over 70 songs. In 2020 a statue of Radka (who died in 1984) was erected in the Rhodope Mountains, the home of the Rhodopean folklore songs that she and her sisters revived and popularized. So it appears that not all of the Bulgarian singers were forgotten!
DeleteI had this Sisters Koushlevi album ripped about 10 years ago. Two sides, no seperating the songs.
Deletehttps://www.imagenetz.de/fjEAr Enjoy
I also have another Bulgarean Choir (not yet ripped) https://www.discogs.com/release/9296893-Les-Ch%C5%93urs-Kaval-De-Sofia-Athanas-Margaritov-Various-Chansons-Bulgares The french are never that keen on labeling the year things are recorded.
Thanks for sharing the Koushlevis! I did notice on Discogs that some versions of "Le Mystère" credit a few individual singers: Yanka Rupkina, Kalinka Valcheva, and Stefka Sabotinova. I also found a compilation of hip hop tracks on Soulseek called "The Mystery of Bulgarian Samples"!
DeleteGood searching. Yanka Rupina seems to be the most prolific as far as output/discogs-info goes. It is going to be a search to find some. I remember from the early House days (86-91) an amount of House tunes lazily using one sample over and over. Titles of that era are a fog.... When I hear something back, I think I seem to remember that I might have known that. Never was one (and still) for HipHop.
DeleteAlso found a couple metal songs that sampled the Bulgarian choirs, and some jazz versions of tracks from "Le Mystère". The two songs I haven't find (cover versions, samples or recordings by other Bulgarian folk performers) are Schopska Pesen (Diaphonic Chant) and Mir Stanke Le (Harvest Chant From Thrace).
DeleteTheft is a good word. In numerous ways. You mention Paul Simon, and Led Zep. Also name Lambada, The lion Sleeps Tonight, Da Ya think I'm Sexy and hordes of others. Maybe for Americans and the odd Englishman, Music is their music. And World Music is the rest of the world's music. It is the same with the French. French Music is Music, after that you have other music, same in Germany. Viva Music I would say because there is no Not-World music.
ReplyDeleteHave you read about Aya Nakamura? She was raised in France, sings in French, and her music is incredibly popular there and in other French-speaking countries. But some don't consider it "French Music" and are violently opposed to her performing at the Olympics in Paris.
Deletehttps://www.cnn.com/2024/04/26/sport/aya-nakamura-france-culture-wars-paris-2024-spt-intl/index.html
Thanks Richard for the Sisters Koushlevi, listening to it now.
ReplyDeleteDo check out Márta Sebestyén, she sings in an updated style, but often still based on old folk songs
Regarding the origin of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. there's a very interesting documentary about this song on Netflix: The Lion's Share
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdzdsWkMfVg
I loved THE LIONS SHARE, Koen! Might be time to watch it again - Stinky
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, there was a huge lawsuit over a passage from Kookaburra (an Australian children's song) being incorporated into Men At Work's DOWNUNDER.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kookaburra_(song)
I loved THE LION'S SHARE, Koen. Might be time to watch it again. - Stinky
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, there was a huge lawsuit over a passage from KOOKABURRA (an Australian children's song) being used in Men At Work's DOWNUNDER.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kookaburra_(song)
This is a good point. The Lion Sleeps Tonight/Wimoweh took a line from Mbube to make millions for themselves. The main point is that it is the heart of the song. Men at Work, used it as a sideline, a second motive. There is a wiki list of lawsuits. Very incomplete: (Hot Koki vs Hustle)
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_subject_to_plagiarism_disputes You will also find some funny things. All You Need Is Love using In The Mood. There were some famous quotations before samplers existed. Blue Moon intro to the guitar solo on Sunshine of your Love , and Satisfaction on kazoo in Lazy Sunday, Yes Sir I Can Boogie intro on Speedtwins' My Generation. And a correct way is sampling a song out of copywright. like Fad Gadget Scapegoat where he uses (twinkletwinkle little star) Altijd Is Kortjakje Ziek. I'd like to have more song where the sample is obvious but not so obvious as taking a classical tune and make A Whiter Shade Of Pale, If I Had Words etc.
I remember singing Kookaburra in music class, back when they had such a thing.
ReplyDeleteFor those of you who missed it, more 'global sounds' at my post last year at https://majorshole.blogspot.com/2023/03/dance-music-for-borneo-horns-more.html
ReplyDeleteOne thing I forgot to mention, sorry, sorry
ReplyDeletehttps://globalgroovers.com/?s=sunny+ade&post_type%5B%5D=any&search_limit_to_post_titles=0&fs=1
I'm a sucker for most Brazilian music though I'm not sure all the great Bossa Nova classics could be considered "World" (i.e. Non-Western) music since it has been so widely adopted by American and European artists. Also love Orchestra Baobab, all those 70s Nigerian comps, the Ethiopiques comps and more currently Mdou Moctar really floats my boat.
ReplyDelete